Bhisham Sahni (8 August 1915 – 11 July 2003) was an Indian writer, playwright in Hindi and an actor, most famous for his novel Tamas ("Darkness"/'Ignorance") and the television screenplay adaptation of the same name, a powerful and passionate account of the partition of India.

At the time of partition, he was an active member of the Indian National Congress and organized relief work for the refugees when riots broke out in Rawalpindi in March 1947.

On his return to India, Bhisham Sahni resumed teaching at Delhi College, and also edited the reputed literary magazine Nai Kahaniyan from 1965 to 1967.

He was the founder and chairman of SAHMAT, an organization promoting cross-cultural understanding, founded in memory of the murdered theatre artist and activist Safdar Hashmi.

Bhisham Sahni's epic work Tamas (Darkness/Ignorance 1974) is a novel based on the riots of 1947 partition of India which he witnessed at Rawalpindi.

[3] Tamas portrays the horrors of senseless communal politics of violence and hatred; and the tragic aftermath – death, destruction, forced migration and the partition of a country.

It has been translated to English, French, German, Japanese and many Indian languages including Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kashmiri, Marathi and Manipuri.

Sahni's prolific career as a writer also included six other Hindi novels: Jharokhe (1967), Kadian (1971), Basanti (1979), Mayyadas Ki Madi (1987), Kunto (1993) and Neeloo, Nilima, Nilofar (2000)., over hundred short stories spread over ten collections of short stories, including Bhagya Rekha (1953), Pahla Patha (1956), Bhatakti Raakh (1966), Patrian (1973), Wang Chu (1978), Shobha Yatra (1981), Nishachar (1983), Pali (1989), and Daayan (1996); five plays including Hanoosh, Kabira Khada Bazar Mein, Madhavi, Muavze, Alamgeer, a collection of children's short stories Gulal Ka Keel.

His immense popularity was not a result of any pandering to vulgar tastes but a reward for his literary merits—his sharp wit, his gentle irony, his all-pervasive humor, his penetrating insight into character, his mastery as a raconteur, and his profound grasp of the yearnings of the human heart.

[10] Noted writer, Nirmal Verma, stated, "If we see a long gallery of unmatched characters in his stories and novels, where each person is present with his class and family; pleasures and pains of his town and district; the whole world of perversions and contradictions; it is because the reservoir of his (Bhisham Sahni's) experience was vast and abundant.

This sprawling reservoir of experience collected in the hustle-bustle of various occupations ultimately filtered down into his stories and novels, without which, as we realize today, the world of Hindi prose would have been deprived and desolate.

"Bhisham Sahni's last published book, an autobiography with the quiet title Aaj Ke Ateet (The Pasts of the Present), is a beautiful culmination of a lifetime of excellent writing.

With characteristic elegance and an unfailing eye for significant detail, the elderly author looks back with nostalgic longing at the world of his childhood and achieves a small but brilliant portrait of the artist as a little child.