Basharat Peer

Barsharat Peer is a journalist and screenplay writer of Indian American origin. He was born in Anantnag, Jammu, and Kashmir in 1977. He received his early education from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Aishmuqam, a school situated near the city of Anantnag. Later, he pursued higher education in political science from Aligarh Muslim University and in law from the University of Delhi. Barsharat also attended the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in the United States for further studies. Barsharat Peer began his career as a reporter for Rediff and Tehelka, based in Delhi. He worked as an Assistant Editor at Foreign Affairs and was a Fellow at the Open Society Institute in New York Click to look into! >> Read More... . He also served as a Roving Editor at The Hindu and has written extensively on South Asian politics for publications such as Granta, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs, FT Magazine, The National, The New Yorker, and The Caravan.

He has also written books and is the author of Curfewed Night, a first-hand account of the Kashmir conflict that won the Crossword Prize for Non-Fiction and was named one of the Books of the Year by The Economist and The New Yorker. Additionally, Peer managed the India Ink blog on the digital edition of The New York Times. In addition to his literary work, Peer is recognized for his contributions as a scriptwriter for the 2014 Bollywood film, Haider, which he co-wrote with Vishal Bhardwaj The most outstanding of a successful film producer >> Read More... . He also made a special appearance in the film. His open letter titled Letter to an unknown Indian sparked a literary debate on the Kashmir dispute. In 2013, Peer married Ananya Vajpeyi, an academician based in Delhi with a Hindu-Sikh background. The couple had been in a courtship for eight years before tying the knot.