Saadat Hasan Manto

Saadat Hasan Manto (born May 11, 1912, Samrala, Ludhiana district, Punjab province, British India—died January 18, 1955, Lahore, Pakistan) was an Indo-Pakistani writer of Urdu fiction and nonfiction whose works presented untempered depictions of the grim realities of society, including sexual violence, prostitution, murder, the inhumanity and trauma brought on by the partition of India, and more. His oeuvre of more than 250 short stories, written in incisive prose, unsettled readers and resulted in multiple court trials for obscenity. However, the writer forged on and even proclaimed, “If you cannot bear these stories then the society is unbearable.”

Initial years

Manto, the son of Ghulam Hasan and his second wife, Sardar Begum, was born in a Kashmiri Muslim family. Hasan, who was a judge, had high academic expectations for his son. Manto went to school in Amritsar, Punjab province, and Hasan expected him to perform well and become a lawyer. Manto, however, did not show academic promise, failing his matriculation exam twice—even in Urdu as a subject.

Manto’s relationship with his father remained strained, and it is said that Hasan’s stern demeanor fueled the rebel in his son. In contrast, Manto’s mother showered him with affection. Their differing influences may be discerned in Manto’s portrayals of a number of negative male characters juxtaposed with sensitive women and tender maternal figures, notably Zubaida in “Aulaad” (“Offspring”) and Nikki and Sharda in eponymous stories.

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In 1934 Manto enrolled at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), struggling again as a student. He dropped out within months after being diagnosed with tuberculosis, although it turned out to be a false alarm. However, he had already begun writing, having translated French author Victor Hugo’s The Last Days of a Condemned and Irish writer Oscar Wilde’s Vera. During his months at AMU, Manto also wrote and published original stories. Later he worked at various organizations, including Paras magazine in Lahore (now in Pakistan), a film weekly called Musawwar in Bombay (now Mumbai), and All India Radio in Delhi. He eventually settled in Bombay, a city dear to him.

Works

Manto lived through tumultuous times. During his formative years, India was going through political unrest, struggling to gain freedom from colonial rule. India’s independence and partition in 1947 uprooted the writer from Bombay, forcing him to relocate to Pakistan in 1948. All these experiences informed his stories. Although he is best known for depicting the strife and terror during India’s partition, Manto’s body of work also includes sharp critiques of social, religious, and political hypocrisy as well as vivid sketches of those living on the fringes of society. His literary style—clear, concise, and marked by striking endings—was shaped by his readings of Western writers such as Guy de Maupassant, O. Henry, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and W. Somerset Maugham.

Short stories

Some of Manto’s stories—such as “Tamasha” (1934; “A Spectacle”), “1919 Ki Ek Baat” (1951; “It Happened in 1919”), and “Swaraj Ke Liye” (1952; “For the Sake of Freedom”)—drew from the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, an incident in Amritsar on April 13, 1919, in which British troops opened fire on a large crowd of unarmed Indians, and its aftermath.

Manto was a member of the Progressive Writers’ Association, which included authors such as Mulk Raj Anand, Munshi Premchand, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and Ismat Chughtai. This movement raised a voice against orthodox writing and regressive society and promoted innovation in Urdu writing. But Manto had disagreements with the members and was expelled from the group.

“Toba Tek Singh” (1955), “Thanda Gosht” (1951; “Colder Than Ice”), and “Khol Do” (1948; “Open”) are among Manto’s most poignant stories on the partition. Set in a mental institution, “Toba Tek Singh” highlights the madness that ensued after the partition through the tale of an inmate, Bishan Singh. This man refuses to leave Toba Tek Singh, the place he knows as his home, finally dying on the line dividing India and Pakistan. ​Bordering on the macabre, “Thanda Gosht” explores the psychological aftermath of communal violence: As his mistress stabs him, Ishwar Singh confesses that he had tried to sexually assault a girl, only to realize that she was already dead. “Khol Do” depicts the harrowing experience of a father searching for his teenage daughter amidst the chaos of partition. It culminates in a tragic moment when, upon hearing the word “open” that was intended for a window, the girl begins to mechanically remove her pants.

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Among his other popular stories are “Bu” (1940s; “Odor”), describing the oddities of a sexual encounter, “Hatak” (1941; “Insult”) on prostitution, and “Titwal Ka Kutta” (1951; “The Dog of Titwal”) on nationalistic divisions bordering on the cruel and ludicrous. The stories that led to trials on grounds of obscenity and moral perversity are “Dhuan” (1941; “Smoke”), “Kali Shalwar” (1941; “Black Trousers”), “Bu,” “Thanda Gosht,” “Khol Do,” and “Upar, Neeche, Aur Darmiyan” (1954; “Above, Below, and in Between”).

Family, death, and legacy

Manto married Safia Deen sometime in the mid- to late 1930s and together they had four children, but their firstborn died early. Manto was a devoted father and husband. He faced persistent financial difficulties, especially during his years in Pakistan, where publishers frequently paid him modest sums. His proclivity for alcohol, exacerbated by the trauma of migrating to Pakistan, ultimately led to his death a few months before he turned 43.

Manto is likely the most widely translated Urdu fiction writer; many of his stories are available in several languages. On the 50th anniversary of his death in 2005, the government of Pakistan released a postage stamp featuring his portrait. In 2012 he was posthumously awarded Pakistan’s highest civilian honor, Nishan-e-Imtiaz. Many of Manto’s works, including “Toba Tek Singh,” “Kali Shalwar,” and “Hatak,” have been adapted for the stage and screen. Two biopics, both titled Manto—the first directed by Sarmad Sultan Khoosat in 2015 and the second by Nandita Das in 2018—pay tribute to the writer. But Manto’s legacy is perhaps best summarized in his own words from Manto on Manto (1951), a sketch he wrote about himself, in which he says: “[I]t may also come to pass that Saadat Hasan may die and Manto may not.”