Niranjan Pal

Nanu Pal

Calcutta, India

Niranjan Pal was the son of the moderate Indian nationalist Bepin Chandra Pal. He came to Britain in the early twentieth century to study in London, and lived in a boarding-house with Sukhsagar Datta, Ashutosh Mitter and his father. It was to this boarding-house at 140 Sinclair Road, London that David Garnett was invited by Datta and where he was introduced to Pal, who was also known as Nanu. In The Golden Echo, Garnett described Pal's politics as not clearly defined, but more sympathetic to Indian revolutionaries than his father's moderate views.

Niranjan Pal later rose to fame as a playwright and then film director and producer. His play The Goddess was performed in London in 1922. This play had a successful run, starting at the Duke of York's Theatre on 6 and 7 June 1922; it was then shown at the Ambassador's Theatre and finally moved to the Aldwych Theatre in July 1922. The play was performed sixty-six times in total and there were plans after this success to form an Indian Repertory Theatre Movement in London.

Niranjan Pal was married to an English woman, Lily, and they had a son called Colin in 1923. Pal then began a collaboration with the lead actor in The Goddess, Himanshu Rai, and went to Bombay to produce films. He collaborated with the German silent film director Franz Osten to film The Light of Asia in 1925 in Bombay, and then became a successful screenwriter for Bombay Talkies film studio in Bombay.