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. "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, and Manipuri. "Tamas" won the 1975 Sahitya Akademi Award for literature and was later made into a television film in 1987 by Govind Nihalani. Two of his masterpiece stories, "Pali" and "Amritsar Aa Gaya Hai", are also based on the Partition.