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Life & work of Saadat Hasan Manto - IV
Arvind Gupta translates Manto’s stories
Prominent Indian writer, Arvind Gupta, evaluates Manto’s works:
In Siyah Hasbye, Manto’s collection of vignettes and sketches about the 1947 killings (included in entirety in this volume!, none of the bloody participants is identified by religion because to Manto what mattered was not what religion people professed, what rituals they followed or which gads they worshipped, but where they stood on a human level. If a man killed, it did not matter whether he killed in the name of his gods or for the glory of his country or his way of life. To Manto, he was a killer. In his book, nothing could justify inhumanity, cruelty or the taking of life. In the holocaust of 1947, he found no heroes, except those whose humanity occasionally and at the most unexpected moments caught up with them as they pillaged, raped and killed those who had done them no personal harm and whom they did not even know. Manto saw the vast tragedy of 1947 with detachment, but not with indifference because he cared deeply. 
The sketches, some of them no longer than a line or two, bring out the enormity of the tragedy set in motion by the great divide. They are deeply ironic and often profoundly moving. A Kashmiri labourer finds himself in the middle of a street riot and as the crowd breaks into stores and begins to loot the goods, he too picks up a sack of rice; but is pursued by the police and shot in the leg. He falls to the ground and is made to carry the bag he has stolen to the police station. After he fails to persuade them to let him keep it, he stutters, ‘Exalted sirs, you keep the rice, all poor me ask is my wages for carrying the bag, just four annas.’
In another sketch, a husband and wife save themselves by hiding in the basement of their home, but emerge two days later to get some food and are caught by the new occupants who happen to be members of a faith that forbids the killing of any living thing. They refuse to let the couple leave and instead send for ‘help’ from a neighbouring village whose inhabitants have no compunction about taking life. The fugitives perish but the religious obligations of the pacifists stand duly fulfilled.
The greatest of Manto’s Partition stories is Toba Tek Singly, now an acknowledged masterpiece. The madness that has gripped the subcontinent at the time of Independence has permeated even the lunatic asylums and the great decision-makers in the two countries decide that since there has been a transfer of populations and assets, it is only logical that non-Muslim lunatics should be repatriated to India and Muslim lunatics in India to Pakistan. On the day of the great exchange, there is only one man, Bishan Singh, who refuses to leave because he wants to stay where he was born and where his family lived, in the town of Toba Tek Singh in Pakistani Punjab. The exchange takes place at the line that divides the two new states which, until a few days ago, were one state. The guards try to push Bishan Singh into India but he refuses to move because he says he wants to live neither in India nor in Pakistan, but in Toba Tek Singh. They leave him alone because he is known as a harmless old man who talks gibberish that nobody can understand. As the morning breaks, Bishan Singh screams just once, falls and dies. This is how Manto ends this classic parable: ‘There, behind barbed wire, on one side, lay India and behind more barbed wire, on the other side, lay Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth which had no name lay Toba Tek Singh.’
‘Colder Than ice’, another masterpiece that earned Manto an obscenity charge and a trial, is the story of Isher Singh, a Sikh who abducts a Muslim girl during the riots and rapes her, only to realize later that she has been dead all along. Another story, ‘The Assignment’, is set in Amritsar in 1947. A dying Muslim judge who is alone with his teenage daughter, is visited by the son of an old Sikh whom he had once done a favour, in acknowledgement of which he sends him a gift of food every year on the occasion of the festival of Id. The old Sikh has died but has instructed his son from his deathbed never to discontinue the giving of the annual gift. The son comes to Amritsar from his village, finds the city in flames, with bands of crazed killers roaming the streets. Some of them are about to attack the Muslim judge’s house, but delay their assault at the young Sikh’s urging. What happens next chillingly illustrates the savage irony of those times.
‘The Dog of Titwal’ and ‘The Last Salute’ relate to the war in Kashmir in the wake of independence. In the first story, bored soldiers whose one link with normalcy is a dog that keeps shuttling between the two positions decide one day to have some fun by firing at the animal while he tries to seek the safety that the players are unwilling to give him. Their sport ends in tragedy. In the second story, two men fighting on opposing sides in Kashmir, discover that they had fought together during the Second World War and were the best of friends. They shout across the dividing line to each other, recall old times, crack jokes and call each other by their regimental nicknames. But their reunion ends tragically, underscoring the ironic dilemma of yesterday’s comrades having become today’s enemies because of a line drawn across a map.
Conclusion
Manto was a great writer the world knows this now but his work was acknowledged late. When he was alive he was not given recognition. It is now during his centenary this year that he is being feted on such a big scale. A little before his death, in 1955, Manto had worried—it is hard to tell whether he was being sarcastic as usual—that the Pakistani government might one day “find itself pleased with me and place a medal on my coffin, which would be a great insult to my commitment to what I believe in.” In August 2012, on the occasion of Pakistan’s sixty-fifth birthday, in the year of Manto’s hundredth, the Pakistani government did just that: after years of neglect and denial, it gave in to a Manto-esque irony and awarded him the Nishan-e-Imtiaz (“Sign of Distinction”) medal. On January 18, 2005, the fiftieth anniversary of his death, Manto was commemorated on a Pakistani postage stamp.
According to I. A. Rehman, Manto, one of the greatest short story writers the world has known, is still a largely misunderstood genius. He has been praised to heavens and he has also been denounced unreservedly, but not enough attempts seem to have been made to fully appreciate his multi-layered writings, Reman says adding:
“Manto was truthful enough to admit that he had difficulty in understanding the idea of Pakistan but he came to accept what the moving finger had written and moved on. Still, difficulty in resolving the question of identity had clogged his proverbially exuberant mind. He wrote: “When I sat down to write I found my thoughts scattered. Though I tried hard, I could not separate India from Pakistan and Pakistan from India. I would repeatedly ask myself: Will Pakistani literature be different — if so, how? To whom will now belong what had been written in undivided India? Will that be partitioned too? Will the basic problems of Pakistanis and Indians be identical or different? Will Urdu become extinct in India? What shape or form will it take in Pakistan? Will loyalty to the state permit criticism of the government? Now that freedom had come, would conditions be any different than they were under foreign rule? (Khalid Hasan’s translation)
It should not be difficult to see that Manto could examine the Pakistani people’s post-1947 identity only with reference to the identity (Indian) they had till August 14, 1947.” [6]
References:
[1] Manto to Uncle Sam by Khalid Hasan http://www.khalidhasan.net/2004/07/16/manto-in-uncle-sam%E2%80%99s-cabin/
[2] Quotations for letters 4, 5, 7, and 8 are taken from Farooq Sulehria’ article “Manto’s letters to Uncle Sam” at http://www.viewpointonline.net/mantos-letters-to-uncle-sam.html
[3] Foreign Policy – Sept/Oct 2011 issue
[4] The Hindu – September 28, 2012
[5] http://www.ludhianadistrict.com/personality/saadat_hasan_manto.php
[6] Separating Pakistan from India by I. A. Rehman – The News – May 6, 2012 Special Manto Edition]
Appendices:
1 - Texts & excerpts of Letters to Uncle Sam
2 - Four stories of Minto, translated by Arvind Gupta
3 - Toba Tek Singh in Urdu
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