Comrade Manto - IV

Let the reader think about what sort of mind would write lines like these:

“This too does not mean that these evil spirits (hunger and poverty) will not descend again, they will disappear from our view and we will forget them. We will try to reassure ourselves that they do not exist anymore and that even if they do so in name, it is the law of nature, having nothing to do with us.”

It was the thought and ideology of Maxim Gorky and the Russian revolutionary experience that compelled Saadat Hasan Manto to boldly write:

“But now the torch of knowledge is illuminating our relations and very soon we will be present before the world as a dangerous criminal; such a criminal who is caught while committing a crime due to sudden sunrise.”

Then there is a brief discussion in the essay regarding the relations between capitalist, worker and peasant; the conditions during the government of the Tsars of Russia. Summing up the significance of the Russian revolution for the rest of humanity, Manto writes:

“We are at a square of two roads and we have to choose one road. One road involves Man in unending evils and curses. Within it, fear of revealing those of bad character and doubt about change from the present system, can be seen on every step.

The second road is open for accepting the real principles with an honest heart and to make a sincere effort for their dissemination. Those are the principles for the dissemination of which human intelligence and understanding are calling out. To exploit this power indeed can save the country and nation from all these evil spirits and calamities.”



In these writings, Manto speaks like a rebel of the Marxist tradition. This was the period when he agreed with socialism by understanding it directly as mediated by Bari Alig. He was also boldly expressing this perspective in his other columns, reviews and essays. In his short stories from this period, from Tamasha (Spectacle) to Inquilab Pasand (Lover of Revolution) which are found in his initial collections Aatish Paare (Sparks of Fire) and Manto ke Afsane, he wrote about progressiveness, a love of revolution and socialism directly. He was influenced by the Indian politics of that period and in turn influenced them as well. In no way can Aatish Paare be seen as separate from the incidents and thoughts of Angaare and Soz-e-Vatan, which created such foundations that even after proceeding further Manto could not separate himself from these references. They are to be found throughout his writings:

“Strange indeed is politics, another name for it being Saadat.”

(Shards and Pieces)

“We have to change the circumstances and we will indeed. A revolution should occur which could overturn the circumstances.”

(I Have a Complaint)

“The labouring workers can indeed only be properly psychologized by their sweat in the best possible manner.”

(Daughters and Fathers of Sin)

“Every revolution is like Shab-e-Barat (night of feasting and light) but every Shab-e-Barat is not a revolution.”

“I will become an Amrood (guava), but will never countenance the divinity of Namrood (Nimrod) here.”

When Manto reached Bombay around 1938 with these feelings and thoughts, how could he ever take to the commercialized, deceitful and pretentious life there? Now seths had replaced the landlords. There was an abundance of wealth, luxury and women selling their bodies.



Manto’s progressive character took a turn and he laid new ground for the short story by presenting oppressed women as the central characters – and, above all, as humans. The city changed, the environment changed, the current of thought and creation also changed. A new world of creation was cultivated. According to Brij Premi:

“The writer of stories like ‘Aatish Paare’, ‘Naya Qanoon’ (New Constitution) and ‘Naara’ (Slogan) forges a new path for himself. This path was strange, distinct and separate from everything. Manto made the male and female victims of sex, the courtesan, sadism and masochism the subject of his study and began to present the mutilated characters of Indian society with total honesty and layering. No storyteller of Urdu literature could match him in this field to date.”

The short story has demands different from the essay and one after the other, despite writing his later successful and “seditious” short stories, Manto also wrote essays by himself or in response to those of others. In one of his essays Mujhe Bhi Kuch Kehna Hai (I Too Have Something to Say), he writes:

“The existence of Asia itself is a funeral which society carries on its shoulders. It will continue to be talked about until they bury it somewhere. This corpse might indeed be decayed, foul-smelling, rotten, horrible but what harm is there in viewing its face? Is it nobody to us, we will keep viewing its face often by removing the shroud and make others view it as well.”

In the same manner, he also writes with great boldness about ordinary people and paints an effective and meaningful portrait of rootless men through characters like Mangu Coach-vaan, Mammad bhai, Khushia and Babu Gopinath. He assails hypocrisy whether it came from the Left or the Right. For this reason, Manto often makes fun of Progressive writers – people of his own tradition.

And on the other hand, while writing about a poet like Iqbal, he writes with great simplicity and frankness:

“I am unqualified to talk about Iqbal’s poetry and the complexities of its philosophy. I have nothing else to say but there are two grievances which I must express. The first grievance occurred when a self-respecting poet like Iqbal had to write odes to fictional kings. Another is cropping up now when I think of the poet who declared, in Rumuz-e-Bekhudi, the heavens, earth, air, rivers, mountains and valleys, the sun, moon and stars, fruits and flowers in fact the whole universe to be man’s inheritance, and see that his ascetic poetry is in the custody of a few self-serving attendants. Custodianship of tombs is pretty common here but Iqbal’s poetry is living – to sit over it like an attendant is definitely against the norm, if nothing else.”

It should be noted that these bold lines were executed at a ceremony on Iqbal Day in Pakistan, from which one can gauge Manto’s extraordinary boldness and commitment to truth-telling. Behind it was indeed his difficult disposition, but also the training in a Progressive background and socialist ethos – which had become an indispensable part of his thought and ideas.

Another proof of this are the essays Yaum-e-Istiqlal (Independence Day), Allah ka Barra Fazal Hai (Allah is Very Kind), Taraqqi-Yafta Qabaristan (Progressive Cemetery), Emaan-o-Eeqaan (Faith and Certitude), etc and those letters written to Uncle Sam which demand a separate study, in which new angles of Manto’s socialist vision can be seen. It is also notable that he wrote a feature-length essay on Karl Marx while he was in Pakistan.

Indeed, he writes:

“This is the same socialism whose map was prepared approximately 150 years ago by Karl Marx – he is worthy of our respect, he who found a source of equality and fraternity not for himself, for his nation, his race, his country, but for the whole world, for all humanity.”

It is clear that even after reaching Pakistan, he was not detached from socialist thought in the last part of his life. There are other essays and examples where clear examples of his thought during that latter era; on the study of Marx, Lenin, Gorky, Turgenev, etc.

Given Manto’s rebellious disposition, it was natural that uproar, cases, disputes, etc. took such shape because of which his short stories came under discussion, even became “infamous” and he was prosecuted.

In such a context, scant attention seems to have been paid to Manto’s essays. I think the complete and real Manto cannot be understood, indeed, without reading these essays. In particular, I would argue that one particular side of him, which I would call “Comrade Manto”, absolutely cannot be understood without reference to these works. His whole literary output, in a larger sense, owes itself to those socialist and progressive ideas. Manto’s anguishes and migrations have changed the forms of that which is natural and what is necessary for a vigilant artist, even on an intellectual axis. But his restless spirit and agitated philosophy of life could not be satisfied with any social system, which he boldly and thoughtfully expressed continuously. The highest example of this is the story Toba Tek Singh, which Manto was repeatedly punished for – and for which he, too, punished himself. During the final years of his life, which he spent in Pakistan, his restlessness and anguish was at its height. So was his boldness. In an essay Do Garhe (Two Potholes), he writes:

“You know me as a short-story writer and the courts [know me] as a perverted writer. The government calls me a communist and sometimes a great writer of the country. Sometimes the doors to my livelihood are closed; sometimes [they are] opened. I used to think then as I think now: ‘What am I?’ In this country which is called the greatest Islamic state in the world, what is my status? What is my utility?

You may call it a short story but for me it is a bitter reality that so far I have not been able to find my true place in my country which is called Pakistan and which is very dear to me. This is the reason that now I am in the (mental) asylum and then in the hospital”

See where the journey of an extremely intelligent and extraordinary artist begins and where it ends!

There are countless sorrowful and regrettable examples of such figures and Manto tops the list of great thinkers who simply could not stop telling the truth – at great cost to themselves.

“I am a short-story writer. The flight of my imaginations is very high but alas that after flying high I fall such that I reach the extreme depths of the netherworld and while lying upturned I think if such a fall was indeed my lot, why did I undertake the formality of flying in the first place?”

But he flew on all his life, on the wings of greatness from here to there – Amritsar to Bombay, Bombay to Lahore.

Today, what to talk of the common reader, even the flight of thought of the greatest of critics begins to burn, the pen cowers and a sort of nameless fear is ever present – lest Manto denude them too!

I will conclude with the following words of Varis Alvi:

“His initial essays were influenced by socialism, Marxism, Red Revolution, the independence struggle, Jallianwala Bagh and the Non-Cooperation Movement. Afterwards sectarian politics, riots, division, the fight for Kashmir, US imperialism and the money-lending system, the idea of a religious state, the domination of politics by maulvis, their narrow-mindedness, female emancipation, the problems of sex, nudity and perversion in literature and the problems of courtesans and kidnapped women in society engaged him…”

He further writes about Manto:

“While reading Manto’s essays, an image of such a man with blisters on his feet emerges in front of us who is running in all four directions in a world which is aflame, wherever he goes, there is no peace or rest[…]it seems that Manto could not acquire the dense shade of romanticism, lyricism and welcome dream-making in the weltering sunshine of realism.”

And finally this line:

“It is a reality that with Manto, the artist was born from the womb of a journalist…”

Note: All translations from the Urdu are the writer’s own.

Raza Naeem is a Pakistani social scientist, book critic and translator. His translations of Saadat Hasan Manto have been re-translated in both Bengali and Tamil, and he received the Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship in 2014-2015 for his translation and interpretive work on Manto. He is presently working on a book of translations of Manto’s progressive writings, tentatively titled ‘Comrade Manto’. He can be reached at: razanaeem@hotmail.com