Background
Sabharwal was born in the city of Mumbai. He is the great grandson and grandson of freedom fighters Laxmi Devi Sharma and Som Kumari Sabharwal and great grandson of Sardar Bahadur Ram Singh Sabharwal, Secretary Military Finance in the British Indian Government.
Education
He finished his schooling at the Lawrence School, Lovedale in 1996.
Career
He is the elder of two sons born to a Punjabi father and a Catholic mother of mixed Goan-Portuguese and Anglo-Irish descent. He is a graduate of the London Film School, London, United Kingdom under the guidance of Oscar-nominated Mike Leigh O.B.E.
His paternal ancestors were a well known Khukhrain family/clan of Peshawar ( now in Pakistan ). His Great Great Grandfather, Rai Bahadur Kanshi Ram Anand started the first ever Girls High School in Peshawar sometime in the early 20th century.
His mother, Carmen ( Rozario ) Sabharwal, is a designer in Mumbai.
Here he shot his 16-minute graduation film Shunyata, which premiered at the International Cooperation Administration cinema in London and generated mixed reviews, though most were favorable. He has been criticized for his views on censorship, especially that in Shunyata, his showing of an amputated leg was unnecessary and served as an attempt to disturb the audience rather than illustrate the film"s point.
He denies this and says the shot was not in bad taste and was absolutely necessary to illustrate the horrors of unnecessary communal disharmony. He became widely recognized as a filmmaker after the Celebrate Bandra Committee picked his 25-minute short Romson and Juliana to show at their biennial festival Celebrate Bandra in 2007.
His most recent film is the first episode of a television documentary series called India Rediscovered, inspired by Jawaharlal Nehru"s book The Discovery of India.
The series proposes to cover places of historic importance in India that have been ignored by text books Sabharwal has begun working on his comedy feature, There Are Number Americans in Taxis, that tells four stories that happen on a day when all cellular networks in Mumbai fail and a whole city is rendered helpless. He is also in the process of producing a feature documentary on the Jewish community in India.
Membership
Supporter and Member of Amnesty International.