Balraj
Sahni, one of the finest actors to have graced the Hindi film screen,
was born Yudhisthir Sahni on 1 May 1913 in Rawalpindi (now part of
Pakistan) to a Punjabi family. He died on 13 April 1973.
As a
youngster he studied Hindi and English literature in university, and
worked as a teacher at Shantiniketan (Bengal) and for the BBC radio’s
Hindi service in Britain. One of the pioneering members of the Indian
People’s Theater Association, he acted in plays like Zubeida and The
Inspector General. Though Sahni is best remembered as a film actor, his
colleagues in theater had fond memories of the time he spent with them.
In
his memoirs, Habib Tanvir, one of the leading names in Indian theatre
after Independence, wrote: “For all his work in films, cinema wasted his
(Sahni’s) talent. He was such a brilliant comedian, he was so effective
in Jadu ki Kursi that his performance was unforgettable. I have seen
many of his films too; he always acted with great control and subtlety
but he was never given a comic role.”
Sahni’s debut Hindi film
was Insaaf. This was followed by films like Dharti Ke Lal (based on the
1943 Bengal famine) and Door Chalein. In 1951, he worked with actors
Dilip Kumar and Nargis in Hulchul. In between the film’s shooting, Sahni
was arrested for being a communist sympathiser, and the film director
K. Asif took special court permission to allow Sahni to shoot.
It
was, however, in 1953 that Sahni’s acting prowess was widely recognised
after the release of Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen, which won a prize at
the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France. In it he played the role
of Shambhu, a farmer trying to save his small plot of land from an
unscrupulous landlord. Unable to pay a loan, he goes to Calcutta where
he pulls a rickshaw to earn a meagre income.
Another famous film
of Sahni was Kabuliwala (1961), based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore.
Sahni effectively portrayed the character of a dry-fruit seller who
comes from Afghanistan to sell his goods in Calcutta.
His other
films include Lajwanti, Kathputli, Seema, Pavitra Paapi and—more
famously—Garm Hava, Haqeeqat and Waqt. In Haqeeqat, one of India’s best
war films (based on the disastrous 1962 war with China), Sahni played
the role of an Indian army officer.
Garam Hawa, directed by M.S.
Sathyu, was a story about Partition and its effects on individuals.
Sahni depicts the inner turmoil of a Muslim businessman from Agra who
refuses to leave everything behind and go to the newly created Pakistan.
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