While There Is Light is a fictionalised account of the events leading up to the arrest of one of the so called 'Bradford 12' - twelve Asian and African Caribbean men charged and imprisoned in 1982 for making petrol bombs as a way of defending their communities against The National Front. As well as taking in a host of still pertinent questions about national identity, the treatment of asian and muslim communities in British society, and the political milieu of the US-propped up General Zia administration in Pakistan, it is also a deeply personal journey of one man seeking forgiveness.

Tariq Mehmood co-directed Injustice, a feature documentary dealing with deaths in police custody which won the 2002 Black Film Maker Best Documentary Award. His first novel Hand on the Sun, was published by Penguin in 1983. He also writes in Pothowari, his mother tongue, and is a founder of the Pothowari-Pahari language movement which aims to develop a script to enable the language to be written down.

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