Saadat Hasan Manto

Colonialism has been such a multifaceted and complicated phenomenon that it often juxtaposed the culture of the colonized in simultaneous assimilation of, and resistance to, the culture of the colonizers. Embedded in the theory of Post colonialism, this research aims at carrying out a qualitative analysis of discursive strategies used in Saadat Hassan Manto’s literary work Letters to Uncle Sam from a neo-colonial perspective. It seeks to highlight the issues of globalization and the effects that it engendered upon the then newly-established independent state of Pakistan. The research findings conclude that globalization has resulted in putting an end to the so-called purity of culture. Manto, therefore, explicitly satirizes the super power (read the United States of America) for its hidden agendas of manipulating and exploiting the economic system as well as the cultural beliefs of Pakistan under the mask of prospering nations by building a global market to create a new means of dom...

Colonialism has been such a multifaceted and complicated phenomenon that it often juxtaposed the culture of the colonized in simultaneous assimilation of, and resistance to, the culture of the colonizers. Embedded in the theory of Post colonialism, this research aims at carrying out a qualitative analysis of discursive strategies used in Saadat Hassan Manto's literary work Letters to Uncle Sam from a neo-colonial perspective. It seeks to highlight the issues of globalization and the effects that it engendered upon the then newly-established independent state of Pakistan. The research findings conclude that globalization has resulted in putting an end to the so-called purity of culture. Manto, therefore, explicitly satirizes the super power (read the United States of America) for its hidden agendas of manipulating and exploiting the economic system as well as the cultural beliefs of Pakistan under the mask of prospering nations by building a global market to create a new means of dominance that works through consent.

This is an English translation of an Urdu short story "Hatak" by Saadat Hasan Manto who, in the words of Salman Rushdie, is "the undisputed master of the modern Indian short story." The translation was published by the late Muhammad Umar Memon in the Annual of Urdu Studies (urdustudies.com).

The partition of India was the division of India into two independent states: India and Pakistan, which occurred in August of 1947 after the termination of the British Raj. The conception of the partition project carried out by the Britishers before their exit was principally based on the idea of dividing the subcontinent....................

This paper probes into the genre of the highly acclaimed biographical film on the noted Urdu writer, Saadat Hasan Manto, directed by Nandita Das as Manto (2018). The matter of enquiry of this research paper involves an analysis of the genre and sub-genre of biopic and literary biopic respectively, to understand the postmodernist narrative method of interweaving fact and fiction in order to understand the author and his works through a mutual dialogue and dynamism. In the second part of the essay, there is an examination of the strategies through which the film overcomes the conventional portrayal of the writer-hero as an artistic genius in order to present the contradictoriness that is the cornerstone of Manto’s fictional corpus. Finally, there is an attempt to understand the implications of a film such as this both in the immediate cinematic context of rising popularity of biopics fostering jingoistic nationalist sentiments, and the larger global context fuelled by increasing communal hatred, violence and curbs on freedom of speech and expression.

Traduction de l'urdu en français de la nouvelle Toba Tek Singh (ٹوبہ ٹیک سنگھ) de Saadat Hasan Manto publiée en 1955.

The original Urdu text can be found here:
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urdu/tobateksingh/phundnetext1955.pdf

The paper focuses on the treatment of female sexuality in the respective societies of the
Mahabharata and the period of partition in India. Using the Mahabharata’s Sabha Parva as the primary text, it traces the concepts of regulation and ownership of women’s sexuality, established during the times of the Mahabharata, which then became conventional in both the societies. The paper argues that the Mahabharata, as a primary text of philosophy, history and polity, has contributed to the normalcy of the treatment of women’s sexuality as property, and the most prominently remembered women in the Mahabharata lack individualized sexual agency. It
examines the texts of Manto, primarily focusing on women- Mozel, Hatak, and Thanda Gosht- along with the text of the Mahabharata to prove the difference in the approach of the representation of female sexuality through their women characters. It looks at the lack of individualization of sexuality and the concept of its control as a way to systematize patriarchy by using the evidences from the Mahabharata, and then compares these with the tone of Manto’s texts that portrayed full-
fledged human beings, not metaphors for an external ideal. The mimesis/poesis dynamic of the mentioned texts has been explored through a feminist reading. At the end, the paper concludes that the treatment of women in the text of the Mahabharata has manifested itself into the attitudes of the society, such that its projection of controlled, owned women is revered and accepted, while Manto’s representation of women as full-fledged human beings with sexual desires, expressions and individual ownership of their sexuality has been criticized among the masses, and even in the circle of writers, as a lesser, obscene form of literature.

http://thegnosisjournal.com/online/book/issue_3_6512bd43d9caa6e02c990b0a82652dca_11.pdf


This paper seeks to enunciate the manner in which Manto explores the themes of illicit pregnancy, the condition of childless women and above all, his radical naturalization of “motherly” spirit as one standing for inclusiveness, genuine concern and unconditional affection albeit uniquely shorn off the conventional significations around it such as piousness, purity and rigid control of the woman’s sexuality and autonomy. For this purpose, four short-stories namely, “Basit”, “The Rat of Shahdole”, “By the Roadside” and “Mummy”, as well as one radio play, viz. “Mamta Ki Chori” (“The Theft of Motherhood”) are analyzed.

Considered to be one of the most traumatic chapters in India’s history, the partition witnessed a saga of
bloodbath and communal riots that left an indelible mark in the narrative of the country’s independence.
The haphazard formation of the two nations resulted in the eviction of countless number of families from their
ancestral roots. Nearly fourteen million people, who were forced to embrace the political ‘solution’ thrust upon
them, underwent this wrenching experience. However, the official historiography perceives ‘partition’ as a
fleeting moment of collective madness and the post-independent nationalist and ‘secularist’ historiographies
has been reconstructed as glorious narratives of freedom struggle and a tale of modernization. Creative
writers have captured these human dimensions of partition far more effectively than historians, as evident
from the works of Saadat Hasan Manto, the Indo-Pakistani writer. This paper attempts an analysis of Manto’s
short-story “Bitter Harvest” as a divergent narrative of those tumultuous times, and thereby examines that the
official narratives (and sometimes testimonies even) aren’t adequate enough to understand a cataclysmic
event like the India-Pakistan Partition. It is necessary to recognize and incorporate the creative modes of
experience (sometimes dismissed as fictive), within the discourse of official historiography.

While scholars of Partition frequently reference witnessing as a necessary frame for understanding Partition literature, and particularly the work of Saadat Hasan Manto, I analyse Manto’s short story ‘Khol Do’ (‘Open It’) to argue that the text’s use of Urdu-inflected tropology both deploys and exceeds the discourse of testimony. Through its turn toward magical realism in its devastating ending, ‘Khol Do’ demonstrates both the futility of attempting to definitively fix meaning in the context of unrelenting ambiguity, as well as the vital necessity of Urdu literature in constructing new communities of reading and interpretation in the wake of the ruptures of Partition.

This review article charts how the obscenity law has been a shaping influence across different forms of media in India, especially literature and art. By taking into account the effect of Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code on the lives and careers of a few renowned creative professionals, from Manto to M.F. Husain, this article reveals the shortcomings of a moralistic approach to obscenity. Over the course of the 20 th century and the early years of the 21 st , the law has undergone notable changes, some inspired by comparative law developments around the world and some unique to the Indian context. Through a thematic arrangement of case law, this paper attempts to throw light on the Indian judiciary's quest to gauge obscenity and penalize it. The various ideologies which are brought to bear on obscenity highlight the need for an objective test in this area. Moreover, by criticising the existing legislative definitions of obscenity and its doctrinal development over time, this paper will map the trajectories towards that objective standard.

Paper Published in Indraprasth - An International Journal of Culture and Communication Studies (ISSN 2278-7208), University School of Humanities and Social Sciences (USHSS), Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi.

The journal can be accessed at http://ipu.ac.in/indraprasth/issuesnew140618.pdf

http://www.ipu.ac.in/indraprasth/

This paper highlights the important prose work of Saadat Hasan Manto a Letters to Uncle Sam which are well written documents on the Manto's foreign policy and understanding of world politics way ahead of his time. Though not many paid attention to what he has mentioned in these letters as he is known for his stories but these letter are extremely important to understand the political views and ideas of this great author.

The Partition of the South Asian subcontinent in 1947 into modern nation states of India, Pakistan is the historic event that not only inaugurated nationalities where political identities were based on religious differences, but also erased the collective identities different religious communities shared in their struggle against British colonialism over two centuries. In the celebration of India’s independence, the unprecedented violence of Partition is written out of the narrative of the nation as an aberration, a cataclysmic moment of madness. This chapter engages with this moment of madness captured in the Urdu short stories of Sa’adat Hasan Manto and highlights the psychoanalytic role of literature in remembering the violence that haunts India in the its pervasive communal strife. Focusing on Manto’s short stories, this chapter explains how literature allows working through the repressed violence of Partition fostering possibilities of mourning collective communal losses.

One of the leading lights of the Progressive Writer’s Movement, Saadat Hasan Manto’s biting critique of post-colonial India remains one of the extant instances of erudite literary resistance. He created characters out of the imperialist characters of the day, astutely questioned religious methods, systems and traditions, and brought to light the moral dilemmas afflicting an aching society struggling to come to terms with communal strife and violence, much like writers such as Munshi Premchand, Bhisham Sahani, Sajjad Zaheer, Firaq Gorakhpuri and Ismat Chugtai. With alacrity and unsettling prose, Manto’s stories disturbed readers, put them in a moral quandary, and created an unsettling universe where social commentary went hand in hand with literary beauty and what emerged was an immensely effective body of resistance literature which questioned social mores and literary tradition.
As part of the Movement, which peaked from 1936 until the late 1940s, Manto remains one of the stalwarts of socially relevant, independent literature. The socialist tradition of the Progressive Writer’s Association provided the relevant background to the questions being raised by Manto, his contemporaries, those who came before and after him. The paper therefore seeks to explore the Manto’s writings as leading sentinels of social resistance, particularly addressing themes such as exploitation of the powerless, religious orthodoxy, communalism, caste discrimination, and ineffective administrations.

The Indian short story is not merely a derivative of the Western genre, but owes much to the great story-telling tradition of Indian antiquity. The mythical and legendary tales as well as folktales have provided a fertile soil for the modern Indian short story to germinate. Beginning towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Indian short story flourished in the twentieth century. It became evident by the end of the past century that the canon is attuned to Indian landscape whose heterogeneous people and their diverse experiences it reflects so faithfully. The Indian short story as a distinct genre resembles a “multicoloured glass” scattering myriad hues which is analogous to the diversity of our country itself. The variegated and unbeaten genre righteously deserves critical attention which it has been deprived of.

With twenty-seven scholarly articles by academics, professors and researchers, the present critical volume is a tribute to an affluent but neglected genre of Indian literature. In accord with the genre itself, the scope of the book allows for such diversity as the classic writers like Tagore and Manto; the feminist writers like Ismat Chughtai, Kamala Das, Shashi Deshpande and Indira Goswami; the dalit writers like Bama and Ajay Navaria; the diaspora writers like Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri. The reworking of myth by Mahasweta Devi, the nature lore of Ruskin Bond, the saga of exile by the Kashmiri Pandits, the satire of Hari Shankar Parsai, the macabre tales of Satyajit Ray, the problematics of identity in Manoj Das and memory in Temsula Ao—all are taken into consideration within the structure of a single volume to make this a stimulating overview for students and scholars of Indian literature.

Discuss the similarities of method, assumptions and approach between the following two authors: 1. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, The Muslim League and the FOREWARD In the words of the Urdu writer, Ismat Chughtai (1915-1991): " The flood of communal violence came and went with all its evils, but it left a pile of living, dead, and gasping corpses in its wake. It wasn't only that the country was split in two-bodies and minds were also divided. Moral beliefs were tossed aside and humanity was in shreds. Government officers and clerks along with their chairs, pens and inkpots, were distributed like the spoils of war. Those whose bodies were whole had hearts that were splintered. Families were torn apart. One brother was allotted to Hindustan, the other to Pakistan; the mother was in Hindustan, her offspring were in Pakistan; the husband was in Hindustan, his wife was in Pakistan. The bonds of relationship were in tatters, and in the end many souls remained behind in Hindustan while their bodies started off for Pakistan " 1 How well can we narrate the story of the victors? Or why call them victors when all that they gained had been but 2 nation states, which was no match for how much they lost! Who are the heroes and villains of such creations? They are nothing but a historian's construct and thus are relative. However what led them to be identified as such had been primarily the then

Saadat Hasan Manto, an Urdu Indo-Pak writer, is famous for his writing pertaining to the concept of partition and the two nation theory. Though he also has highlighted some social issues about children and women. The Dog of Tithwal, a short story written by Manto explores the psyche of two characters, a Muslim and a Hindu, from two different faiths and their attitude towards Sub continent’s geographical and political conditions. Two Nation Theory, in real was the theory of one nation, aims to divide Sub continent, while Hindus were struggling for independence from British rule. The method of this study is qualitative, it is very close to the nature of research. This research article explores the reasons of conceptualizing two nation theory, it also examines the characters of Manto and their psyche. This article tends to show the partition impacts on later generations. This research will also help future researchers to work on Manto's writing style, themes in his writings and psyche of his characters.

Writers of all generations have explored the role of women towards the family, society and country. Role of women have also expanded with time. Where earlier role of a woman was supposed to make rotis in the kitchen and take care of the children and other family members, now women are taking up job and businesses of any kind which were previously handled by men only. Men always dominated the societies and women had no right to take the big decisions for the families. Even women did not have the rights over their own lives. They had to follow the decisions of the males in their families. For centuries, patriarchal system ruled the societies. As the time progressed and societies evolved, voiced were being raised against this suppression of the other gender. Intellectuals and thinkers, social reformers, and writers have played an important role in bringing social reforms in the society and curbing the evils prevailed. Writers like Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chugtai, Amrita Pritam, and many other writers have wrote explored the female characters in their stories and novels.

This paper aims to compare ‘Ten Rupees’ by Saadat Hasan Manto with ‘In Other Rooms, Other Wonders’ (2009) by Daniyal Mueenuddin, using Gayatri Spivak’s theory, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ (1988) as the primary text, in order to determine which of the two writers is a more authentic voice for the subaltern in their respective context.
Keywords: Subaltern, Manto, Mueenuddin, feminist, writing, fiction.

15 अगस्त का दिन हमारे लिए ख़ुशी का दिन है। मगर यह हमें उस ऐतिहासिक त्रासदी की भी याद दिलाता है जिसे हम मुल्क के बंटवारे या विभाजन के नाम से जानते हैं। इस त्रासदी का जो असर सआदत हसन मन्टो पर पड़ा और जो असर उन की रचनाओं ने हम पर छोड़ा, वह शायद हिन्दी-उर्दू साहित्य के बाकी सब लेखकों और उन की रचनाओं के असर से बिल्कुल अलग और अनोखा है। इसी लिए मन्टो हमें विभाजन की त्रासदी पर लिखने वाले सब लेखकों के बीच अपनी मुख़्तलिफ़ पहचान के साथ खड़े दिखाई देते हैं। उस त्रासदी की दर्दनाक और शर्मनाक घटनाओं का मन्टो द्वारा किया गया चित्रण उन हालात में सरगरम और फंसे हुए इन्सान के दिलो-ओ-दिमाग़-ओ-रूह के अन्दर तक की तसवीर जैसे हमारे सामने रख देता है। उस की हैवानियत और इन्सानियत, दोनों हमारे सामने आते हैं। महसूस होता है कि जैसे लेखक ने इन दोनों रूपों को आत्मसात कर लिया है, एक-एक किरदार को अन्दर तक महसूस करते हुए पेश किया है – लेकिन मन्टो हमें दूर खड़े, हालात का जायज़ा लेते, उन पर टिप्पणी करते हुए भी महसूस होते हैं।

While scholars of Partition frequently reference witnessing as a necessary frame for understanding Partition literature, and particularly the work of Saadat Hasan Manto, I analyse Manto’s short story ‘Khol Do’ (‘Open It’) to argue that the text’s use of Urdu-inflected tropology both deploys and exceeds the discourse of testimony. Through its turn toward magical realism in its devastating ending, ‘Khol Do’ demonstrates both the futility of attempting to definitively fix meaning in the context of unrelenting ambiguity, as well as the vital necessity of Urdu literature in constructing new communities of reading and interpretation in the wake of the ruptures of Partition.

This is the introduction chapter of my monograph, "Postcolonial Modernity and the Indian Novel: On Catastrophic Realism (Palgrave 2020). The chapter argues that British colonialism in South Asia was marked by modernisation programmes of agriculture and industry. These programmes resulted in a long-term agrarian and food crisis which then led to a number of catastrophic events in the long twentieth century. The book is about three such events from India’s late-colonial and postcolonial periods—the 1943–1944 Bengal famine, the 1967–1972 Naxalbari movement, and the 1975–1977 national emergency. The chapter contends that these events are all linked with the historical crisis and yet distinct in their nature and orientation. It further argues that such a condition of relation through difference can be better understood via a reading of form and mode of the novels of these events. Showing that writers have predominantly used the realist form to represent the long-term historical crisis, the chapter then points to their employing a range of modes—from social realist, critical realist to metafictional, urban fantastic, gothic, and others (many of which are conventionally understood as anti-realist or non-realist). These modes have shaped their realisms into a deeply heterogeneous and dynamic form, and, in so doing, composed the aesthetic framework of catastrophe-prone, crisis-ridden condition of life and living in postcolonial India, which is called here as “catastrophic realism.” The chapter situates the link between crisis and event by drawing upon the works of Fredric Jameson, Veena Das, Shahid Amin, and Louis Althusser. Its take on catastrophic realism is mediated through a thorough reading of realism, form, and mode in the European and postcolonial/Indian contexts, where Sa’adat Hasan Manto’s pre- and post-partition stories are offered as examples.

La partición de la India se refiere a la división del país en dos estados independientes, a saber: India y Pakistán, que aconteció en agosto de 1947 después de la terminación del British Raj. El proyecto de la partición realizada por los británicos antes de su salida estaba principalmente fundamentado en la idea de dividir al país a base de. . . . . . . . . . .

The Partition of India was a cataclysmic event that altered the socio-cultural topography of the Indian subcontinent. Coming at the heels of the grand narrative of India's glorious independence, the Partition of India became the problematic occasion the echo of which still reverberates in contemporary conflicts. As such, Partition needs to be acknowledged more forcefully as an indelible part of India's national history. With an intention to develop a composite understanding of the complexities of the Partition experience, the paper reads Saadat Hasan Manto's literary vignettes in Black Marginalia (Siyah Hashye) to examine how these minimalist cultural texts document the sectarian violence of the time. Through an intensive study of Manto's vignettes on Partition, the paper attempts to understand how religion as the quintessential factor that incited communal and gender violence during the Partition is forcefully critiqued by Manto in Siyah Hashye. By problematizing the politics and poetics ofManto's vignetteson Partition as cultural representations that documented the phenomenon, the paper aims to assert the significance of these cultural texts as supplementary historiography of the Partition as well as underline the importance of religion as the essential element that stimulated communal violence. The Partition of India in 1947 grafted a new history of the Indian subcontinent wherein the noun freedom transmogrified to assume the aspects of violence that shook the foundations of the new nation states of India and Pakistan respectively. Remembered as a catastrophe, that Tan Tai Yong and Gyanesh Kudaisya calls-dramatic‖ with its-refugee movements, whose scale even at that time was described as unprecedented in human history‖ (Tan and Kudaisya 8), Partition questions the very idea of cartographic negotiation of national borders. The problem that manifests before us, therefore, is how this tectonic shift in the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent happen in the first place? How and why, most importantly, twelve million people were forced to vacate their natal homes and cross borders in an unprecedented

Colonialism has been such a multifaceted and complicated phenomenon that it often juxtaposed the culture of the colonized in simultaneous assimilation of, and resistance to, the culture of the colonizers. Embedded in the theory of Post colonialism, this research aims at carrying out a qualitative analysis of discursive strategies used in Saadat Hassan Manto’s literary work Letters to Uncle Sam from a neo-colonial perspective. It seeks to highlight the issues of globalization and the effects that it engendered upon the then newly-established independent state of Pakistan. The research findings conclude that globalization has resulted in putting an end to the so-called purity of culture. Manto, therefore, explicitly satirizes the super power (read the United States of America) for its hidden agendas of manipulating and exploiting the economic system as well as the cultural beliefs of Pakistan under the mask of prospering nations by building a global market to create a new means of dom...

The topic of this research is 'New Historicist Aspects in Manto's Stories'. New historicism integrates both literary and historical texts without discrimination and gives equal importance to both texts. New historicism upholds that the individuals and society or culture are mutually formative and shape each other. New historicism focuses on power structures, ways of interpretation and representations, and issues of identity and how these are fashioned. The present research seeks to analyze selected new historicist aspects in Saadat Hassan Manto's stories from his representative collection: Manto's World (2000) translated by Khalid Hassan, delimiting itself to the aspects of representation, identity and circulation of power. The stories picked to be analyzed are The Price of Freedom and The Great Divide. Relevant passages of these stories are analyzed to identify afore mentioned aspects. The study reveals that these aspects of new historicism are interwoven and reflected in these stories. The network of powerful creates identities and represent things in a self-serving method. They generate favorable cultural ambiance; in which these representations and identities become part and parcel of people's awareness; which serves to perpetuate their power. Moreover, Manto through the characters and setting transfers his far-reaching and open-minded vision, contrary to the conventional one.

Against a great deal of contemporary Cold War scholarship, this chapter argues that Pakistan’s complex relations with the United States—as well as with the Soviet Union, China, India and Afghanistan—place it firmly at the centre of global Cold War politics. What’s more, as a curious site of many a ‘cold’ and ‘warm’ regional war since its inception, including those occurring well after the supposed end of the global Cold War, Pakistan’s story to date is one of seemingly infinite warfare and political instability. This chapter contends that this story is a reflection of the state’s continuous internal class struggle as well as its early less-than-successful attempts to excel in Cold War international lawfare in which its neighbouring states and the two global superpowers have arguably been more successful. The chapter shows that often-idiosyncratic interventions of Pakistan’s diplomats and international lawyers form a distinct legal and political trajectory, which is at odds with arbitrary, yet ubiquitous, conceptual delineations between ‘cold’ and ‘warm’ wars, in particular in the Global South.