Basharat Peer

Basharat Peer Biography

Basharat Peer is an Indian journalist, writer and screenwriter, who wrote the script of highly praised movie of 2014 – Haider, aside its director Vishal Bhardwaj. The movie is an Indian adaption of Shakespeare’s masterpiece – Hamlet, in the backdrop of political stress of Kashmir in the 1990s. The movie starred Tabu, Shahid Kapoor and Irfan Khan in the pivot roles and emerged as a sleeper hit of the year 2014. Basharat Peer is a native of Kashmir, now settled in New York. This young Kashmiri journalist is known for ‘Curfewed Night’, the first English memoir by a Kashmiri.

 
Peer was born in Seer, Anantnag of Jammu & Kashmir. His childhood days were spent in Srinagar in the 1980s. Peer's father was an officer in the state government. He completed schooling from Kashmir and graduation in Political science from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. Later he moved abroad and studied Journalism at Columbia University. He worked in Delhi for a short period as a journalist, associated with Rediff and Tehelka and later moved to his hometown. The call of Kashmir was too strong for him to resist and he went to Kashmir in search of stories that haunted him. He later moved to New York.

 
He published the book, ‘Curfewed Night’ while at New York. He narrated his childhood, his village, school life, his family and Kashmir conflicts as an eye witness, through this memoir. Peer doesn’t belong to that group of Kashmirians who crossed the border to receive training from Pakistan. Yet his work depletes those incidents that frequently occur in Kashmir, in detail. He writes about South Asian Politics exclusively for several international magazines. He also runs the "India Ink" blog in the website of The New York Times.

Published: N/A

Updated: October 27, 2014