Revision as of 22:58, 17 September 2018

A brief biography

AAKAR PATEL, Why Manto is so relevant in these prudish and communal times, August 26, 2018: The Times of India

My friend Bachi Karkaria, whom readers of this paper have long known, wrote this week to ask if I could come to the Times Literary Carnival in Mumbai in December. This was for a session on the writer Saadat Hasan Manto, with actress Nandita Das, who’s bringing out a movie on him, starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Manto. I like the Times jamboree. It is set in a Bollywood institution, Bandra’s Mehboob Studios. And it has packed sessions. I wrote back to Bachi saying unfortunately I would be away at the time. But I really wish I was there, to talk about Manto. Why? Let me tell you.

A brief biography goes as follows: Manto was of Kashmiri origin but raised in Punjab, and moved to Bombay (as it was then called) in his 20s. He had dropped out of college, having failed, of all subjects, in Urdu. He was a journalist for a film magazine and for radio. He dabbled at writing scripts, but none of his movies did that well.

It is clear that he was not particularly accomplished in a city that does not have much respect for average people. But it is also true that he was able to attract towards himself some of the most famous people in Bollywood (it wasn’t called that then), including one of its biggest stars, Ashok Kumar. Why was this?

It was his writing of the short story, an art of which he was a true master. Like Maupassant, he needed very little space to be able to create a world. And in the best traditions of literature, Manto did not run away from difficult subjects. He examined sex work and religion, in a period when India was even more prudish than it is today, and unfortunately, just as communal.

Sigmund Freud said humans had the narcissism of small differences. Meaning that one hated those people whom one most resembled, barring minor and almost indiscernible differences. The writer Christopher Hitchens wrote an essay in which he explored this to understand why there was such hatred and violence between Irish Catholic and Irish Protestant, between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot, between Serb and Croat, between Kyrgyz and Uzbek and, of course, between Indian and Pakistani.

Manto understood this and wrote about it much before Hitchens. He was totally above religion, like so few of us can be even in our time. This gave him the ability to put us all under a microscope and record our failings. He loved Indianness because it was the only identity he had. His record of Bombay during Partition, in two short essays, is a masterpiece that should be required reading in all our schools. Manto had three little daughters, not much money and a wife whose brother had moved to Karachi.

Fearful for the safety of his young family, he moved to Pakistan. He was given a refugee flat in a building called Lakshmi Mansion in Lahore (where, it will interest readers to know, Mani Shankar Aiyar was born). He had not much work in Pakistan, a place he disliked, and he was fond of his drink. He died in his early 40s in 1955 and was forgotten. India forgot him because he wrote in Urdu, the enemy’s language. Pakistan forgot him because his material was essentially anti-Pakistan. His daughter Nighat told me that till she was in her 30s, she did not know how famous her father had been. And she had no idea then how famous he was again to become.

About 35 years ago, Debonair magazine published a short story by Manto, translated by Khushwant Singh, that caused a sensation. It was called ‘Bu’ (the odour). It is the story of a man, Randhir, standing in the balcony of his Mumbai flat in the rain. He sees a peasant woman under a tree getting drenched. He invites her into his place. They become intimate (the narrative is flat, direct and not at all contrived). He becomes intoxicated by the odour of her armpits. The story ends with him in bed, newly married, to a beautiful woman, still thinking of that afternoon and of that odour.

I was 13 when I read it and it affected and disturbed me. I read it again recently, this time in the original Urdu, and my hair stood on end. It is one of literature’s great works. This story and this translation brought Manto back into fashion in Mumbai and Bollywood. Writers and actors began using his material, and Naseeruddin Shah’s troupe has a superb theatre series around Manto.

Manto was tried five times for obscenity, being convicted the fifth time, and fined, in Karachi, just before his death. He is a writer for the ages, relevant in his time and in ours and I hope Nawazuddin Siddiqui will bring him to life again.

Views of Mobin Mirza in Saadat Hasan Manto: Fun Aur Shakhsiyat

Reviewed By Saba Ekram

Dawn

Saadat Hasan Manto

Saadat Hasan Manto occupies a conspicuous place among the fiction writers of Urdu. His many admirers remember him as a playwright, a translator and an essayist.

In his latest book on Manto titled Saadat Hasan Manto: Fun Aur Shakhsiyat, Mobin Mirza has devoted separate chapters to discuss Manto’s contributions in various areas apart from his achievements as a short story writer.

Yet another chapter has been added to discuss the issue of his nationality, which remains a controversial subject due to faulty interpretation by some Indian writers like Musharraf Alam Zauqui and Khem Chand. Mobin Mirza is very critical of both of them and has tried to prove that Manto was not opposed to the idea of partition. He has referred to Dr Fateh Mohammad Malik’s interpretation of Toba Tek Singh which supports his contention.

India’s official TV channel too seems to be affected by the same prejudice in this regard. In Doordarshan’s dramatisation of Toba Tek Singh a few years back, Manto was badly misinterpreted. The point of view of the main character (Bishan Singh) on Partition, as presented in the play, was altogether different from what was actually portrayed in the original story.

It is immaterial whether a writer is Pakistani or Indian, more so when he is a humanist and his creative pieces aim to foster brotherhood between the peoples of the two neighbouring countries.

Like our classical writers — Meer, Ghalib, Zauq and even Iqbal, progressive writers too should be regarded as the joint heritage of both Pakistan and India. What globalisation is trying to do today in the economic sphere, literature did much earlier. Centuries ago it broke all geographical boundaries for art and literature.

In the chapter titled Manto Ke Afsanay, the writer has made an in-depth study of some of his stories and in certain cases he has even reinterpreted them. He differs with Waris Alvi’s views with particular reference to his analysis of Zard Kutta.

Discussing Manto’s art of story-telling, Mirza thinks that he assimilated the complexities of the themes and the characters before turning them into art.

However, he has praised Mumtaz Sheerin and Dr Fateh Mohammad Malik’s assessment of Manto as carried out in their books Manto Nari Na Noori and Manto Ek Mutalia, respectively. Mirza also differs with yet another literary giant, Syed Hasan Askari, on the evaluation of Siyah Hashiay. He says Askari has overrated the pieces that, in fact, are of purely journalistic in nature and lack any creative touch.

Mirza maintains that controversies surrounding Manto’s personality lifted him to a height where no other Urdu short story writer had reached before. He is of the view that Manto is still controversial and will remain so in the years to come. There are two camps of his admirers — one hails him as a unique storyteller while the other criticises him for his ruthlessness as a realist.

Discussing Manto’s art of story-telling, Mirza thinks that he assi-milated the complexities of the themes and the characters before turning them into art.

Howsoever complex the themes and characters, in the hands of Manto they became simple and highly communicative. Another reason that his stories were not nebulous is that he used the vocabulary used by people around him.

Like other progressive fiction writers Manto too practiced realism, but in the making of a short story he developed his own creative method. Thematically too his realism goes far beyond the social inequality and social injustice and focuses on the complex problem of sex.

To the writer, Manto was a realist in the true sense. The characters he shaped are quite natural and free from any kind of artificiality. This shows that he was honest in their portrayal. However, some people did not admire this particular aspect of his work and they accused him of indulging in obscenity.

This is a research-based and insightful book.

Saadat Hasan Manto: Shakhsiyat Aur Fan By Mobin Mirza Printed by Pakistan Academy of Letters, Islamabad. ISBN: 978-969-472-164-4 228pp. Rs220

Writings on partition of India and Pakistan, 1947

The Hindu, September 18, 2016

Saadat Hasan Manto is largely known for his stories on the Partition but his empathy for those on the margins is what makes him equally relevant today

Saadat Hasan Manto’s works have always been in vogue, with Partition stories such as ‘Toba Tek Singh’, ‘Thanda Gosht’ and ‘Khol Do’ forming a bulk of literary discourse not just in Pakistan and India but across the world. That the icon has such a fan following is not without reason, for no other writer comes close to describing so vividly, and with a brutal honesty, the horrors of that rupture the way Manto did. His stories, contentious and daring, are masterpieces of literature.

A prolific writer

However, the greatness of Manto’s writing on the Partition eclipses his other works; their long stay in the limelight has robbed them of their surprises. These stories, which only form a small part of his writings, have often skewed assessment of his work. Manto was a prolific, determined writer who produced nearly two dozen collections of short stories, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches, and one novel.

Shahid Anwar, whose play Ghair Zaroori Log (persona non-grata) was based on six of Manto’s stories, said during an interaction with me in 2014: “The principal problem with Manto’s literary work was that somehow he got confined to the Partition and its framework.” No wonder that most of the stories that Anwar chose for his play, including ‘Hatak’, ‘Pairan’ and ‘Mummy’, are those that often go unnoticed in Manto’s body of work. So impressed was Habib Tanvir by Anwar’s pick that he wrote a rare foreword to the play.

Stories about the nameless

Manto was a fearless champion of the truth and was disdainful of any kind of hypocrisy. He wrote for marginalised peoples, openly mocking orthodoxy that sought to suppress some voices. Manto’s critics got louder, angrier, but he produced one story after another that showed empathy for those on the periphery. Manto’s characters are prostitutes and pimps, writers, even madmen. They are often nameless people whose human essence and relentless quest for identity and dignity he sought to explore.

‘Mummy’is about an ageing and compassionate matron of a brothel. Although she is seen as a nuisance and is harassed by outsiders, Mummy cares for her clients. She is furious when her favourite client seduces a minor and beats him mercilessly. Yet, when the same client falls sick, she is the one who takes care of him. Despite her kind-heartedness, Mummy is compelled to leave town while those who visit her mehfils, the well-off and the so-called respected people, continue to enjoy their status in society. Manto brings out this irony beautifully. The story shows his respect for women who are ostracised by society, but who nevertheless retain their dignity and humanness and expose society’s hypocrisy. Manto believed that if given an opportunity, the marginalised could challenge the unjust mores of the times.

What Manto constantly tries to point out through his stories is that society has failed to provide succour to those who are most in need. It’s a dog-eat-dog world; only the fittest survive. But even in those circumstances, love flourishes and dies, and small human deeds stand out for their poignancy. Manto’s stories shock the reader with their graphic yet humane descriptions.

‘Hatak’ is another such story where a fille de joie, Saugandhi, falls in love with a policeman. One night, he warns her that no other man can come close to her. A constant game of betrayal and lies plays out with the human body as its site.

“Manto not only profiles his times but reflects unforgivingly on our collective consciousness. He clearly visualises the politics of marginalisation which disowns the very people that are the real constituents of a civic order,” Anwar had said.

In fact, Manto thought of himself as uncared for, long before he migrated reluctantly to Pakistan. He was tried thrice for obscenity before he moved to the new country. He saw what lay in store for him in India and in Pakistan. He understood that people like him would never get their due. And while he lived, he was acutely conscious of his predicament.

“What drew me to the writer was his free spirit and courage to stand up against orthodoxy of all kinds,” Nandita Das said, responding to a question on why she chose Manto for her next directorial venture. “He wrote with a rare sensitivity and empathy for his characters.”

The sacred and the filth

Manto never wrote from a distance. What society considered filth, he considered sacred. He always walked hand-in-hand with his characters. He is present in every scene that he depicts — he is the invisible ethereal form, assessing, empathising, dissecting. His stories are up close and personal, giving us the feeling that they are not fictional accounts but personal anecdotes. This is also perhaps why Manto carried throughout his life the accusation of being vulgar. But he never apologised. For his detractors, Manto had this to say: “If you find my stories dirty, the society you are living in is dirty. With my stories, I only expose the truth.” It is perhaps this faith in what he believed in that makes Manto as relevant today.