Niranjan Pal

Niranjan Pal Biography

Niranjan Pal was a famous screenwriter and film director in the silent era and early era of talkies. His father was the noted freedom fighter, Bipin Chandra Pal of Lal-Bal-Pal trio.  Niranjan wrote many powerful scripts for Himanshu rai-Franz Osten duo of Bombay Talkies. Achhut Kanya (1936), Janmabhoomi (1936), Jeevan Naiya (1936) and Jawani Ki Hawa (1935) are some of the landmark movies in this association, which turned to be huge blockbusters as well. He also collaborated with noted artist Uday Shankar for early music ballets. The prominent journalist, and film historian - Colin Pal was his son and Niranjan's grandson Deep Pal is a cinematographer.

Niranjan was born to the famous freedom fighter Bipin Chandra Pal in the year 1889 in Kolkata. Like his father, Niranjan too was a young freedom fighter for a brief period before he reached entertainment world. He was associated with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Madanlal Dhingra in London during his teens. He was introduced to the literary world in those days, while his stay in London. He started writing in the 1910’s and the staged plays include - The Light of Asia and Shiraz, both staged at London. German filmmaker Franz Osten got attracted to his work and wanted to make its Indian version. Himanshu Rai was a stage actor then, who has performed for one of Pal’s plays in London.

Very soon Niranjan moved to India with his family where he started his new beginning as a screenwriter with Bombay talkies. He wrote many powerful scripts for Himanshu rai-Franz Osten team. He also directed a few movies like Needle's Eye (1931), Pardesia (1932), and Chitthi (1941). But he couldn’t achieve fame as a successful director and concentrated his time on script writing.

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Updated: October 10, 2014