Manto Fasaadaat Par

Over the past decade, the New Literature movement has made invaluable contributions to Urdu fiction. However, it cannot be denied that the driving force behind most of these new short stories was not an inner creative urge, but rather external circumstances and events—whether related to the author's personal life or their environment. This may largely be due to the prevailing belief that human beings' internal lives can be transformed simply by changing their external environment. Regardless, it has generally been the norm that whenever our fiction writers felt their literary output waning, they did not blame themselves. They never worried that their inner growth might have stagnated, or that they needed an internal process to revive it. Instead, they consoled themselves with the thought that nothing worth writing about was happening in the outside world. Six or seven years ago, I heard an Urdu fiction writer—who had gained considerable popularity by writing stories about poverty, subjugation, and Kashmir—remark that if the Japanese were to attack India and cause some chaos in the country, literature would truly blossom.

As the proverb goes, God gives sugar to the sugar-eater. The Japanese may not have attacked, but a famine certainly did. Some amassed wealth by selling rice on the black market, while others garnered fame by writing short stories. Well, whatever happens in the world ultimately benefits someone. During that time, the subject of the famine acquired such sanctity that even students began writing about the starving masses instead of their own sexual experiences. The pressure was such that if a magazine editor refused to publish these stories, he would be branded as callous and cruel. In short, thanks to the tragedies of Bengal, our fiction writers enjoyed a period of great ease, receiving ready-made stories on a silver platter. Events and emotions were all readily available; there was no need for any creative struggle.

When the famine eventually subsided, the naval mutiny took place. Elsewhere, riots broke out during victory celebrations. In short, the literary business kept running one way or another. And when the riots of 1947 erupted, it was as if God had granted them a windfall. If one wished, they could write a tragic short story; otherwise, a satirical essay would do. You could gnash your teeth at the state of human existence, or expose the cunning machinations of imperialism. Once you had your fill of that, you could generate some sensationalism by detailing the violation of women. Along the way, you could occasionally point out that amidst this bestiality, examples of compassion and human sympathy could still be found. Then, putting on an innocent face, you could express astonishment at what had happened to the sanity of Hindus and Muslims—how those who were brothers until yesterday were now thirsting for each other's blood. The only remaining risk was being accused of bias. But even that was easily managed. If five Hindus were killed at the beginning of the story, the tally had to be balanced with five dead Muslims by the end. To keep the scales perfectly even, the blame had to be distributed equally. The real trick was to prove your own humanism, good-heartedness, impartiality, and pacifism, all without offending anyone.

If a person possesses the skill to walk a tightrope, we must certainly applaud them. After all, publicly displaying one's noble sentiments—and thereby stirring the noble sentiments of others—is also a service to humanity. However, the slight flaw with noble sentiments is that they cannot produce literature. I am not saying this based on some imaginary or impractical standard. The fiction writers producing literature about the riots make it their primary claim that they will speak the truth. Yet, simultaneously, they are anxious to ensure that neither Hindus nor Muslims are offended. Impartiality is interpreted as never holding one community more culpable than the other. This literature seeks to condemn oppression, cruelty, and bestiality, but it lacks the courage to call oppression by its true name. It wants to evade this responsibility. We do not demand the same kind of factual truth from literature that we expect from books on history, economics, or politics.

We do not demand that a writer speak the truth about an ideology or the external world as much as we demand that they speak the truth about themselves. Those writing about the riots may speak the truth about the rest of the world, but they do not speak the truth about themselves. Their greatest endeavor is to conceal their natural inclinations and prejudices, even though the surfacing of such prejudices during times of such immense upheaval is a biological necessity. If these writers genuinely wish to infuse their stories with human significance, they must first acknowledge their own human frailties. Authentic literature cannot be created by turning a blind eye to the truths and falsehoods buried within oneself. Popular literature, however, can certainly be produced this way—because readers, too, simply want to reassure themselves that their own noble sentiments are not dead.

Fundamentally, literature is not concerned with who commits atrocities and who does not, or whether oppression is taking place at all. What literature examines is the internal and external behavior of human beings as they inflict or endure cruelty. As far as literature is concerned, the external act of oppression and its outward trappings are meaningless. Our fiction writers focus solely on the sociological aspects of violence. They have no interest in how this cruelty connects to the inner lives of the oppressor and the oppressed. Our writers display dozens of swords and guns; if only there were living, breathing hands behind those weapons, and living, breathing chests in front of them... I am not suggesting that those writing about the riots are entirely insincere. Some of them are genuinely good-hearted and well-intentioned. But the kind of sincerity that works in everyday life does not work in literature. These writers craft their stories with the intention of depicting the external acts of cruelty to incite hatred against oppression. However, unless we understand the human context behind an action, merely witnessing an external act cannot evoke a lasting, concrete, and profoundly meaningful response within us. We can love or hate human beings, but not abstract categories of oppressors and oppressed.

Fiction writers who write about the riots have often relied on a specific technique to evoke a hatred for violence: depicting acts of cruelty to strike terror into the hearts of their readers. However, these events are so fresh, and people have witnessed so much with their own eyes or heard so much from close friends, that a mere catalog of atrocities no longer affects them. If you depict the violation of a few women or the murder of children in your story, it fails to provoke any visceral reaction. The times we live in are simply that extraordinary. Cruelty has become an incredibly ordinary occurrence nowadays. Extraordinary events no longer shock people; such accounts do not even arouse their curiosity. A moral response is out of the question. If these stories about the riots failed as literature, that would be one thing, but they cannot even fulfill their social purpose properly. The events these stories depict do not even qualify as news anymore.

Manto has also written about the riots. He has compiled anecdotes and short vignettes. Actually, I have used the wrong phrasing. These stories are not about the riots; they are about human beings. In Manto’s fiction, you have always seen humanity in various forms—the human as a prostitute, the human as a spectator, and so on. In these stories, too, you will see the human being. The only difference is that here, the human is presented as either the oppressor or the oppressed. Furthermore, Manto has not bothered to burden himself with any social purpose regarding the specific circumstances of the riots. If people could be reformed through preaching, Mr. Gandhi would not have lost his life. Manto harbors no grand illusions about the social impact of fiction, nor has he taken on a responsibility that literature simply cannot fulfill. Truth be told, Manto has not even placed any particular emphasis on cruelty. He has certainly depicted a few incidents, but he never dictates whether these events or actions are inherently good or bad. He neither curses the oppressors nor sheds tears for the oppressed. He has not even passed judgment on whether the oppressors are evil or the oppressed are virtuous.

The riots of the Indian subcontinent are incredibly complex. They are so deeply entangled with centuries of past history and centuries of the future that one cannot easily issue a verdict of good or evil regarding them. At the very least, it does not befit a sensible writer to descend to the level of politicians and pass judgment on such mind-boggling events. In his stories, Manto has done exactly what an honest writer—not honest in the political sense, but honest as a literary artist—and a true author should do when writing under such circumstances, so soon after the events occurred. He has dismissed the very question of good and evil as irrelevant to the discussion. His perspective is neither political, nor sociological, nor moral; it is purely literary and creative.

Manto has merely attempted to examine the relationship between an act of cruelty and the various psychological demands of the oppressor or the oppressed. He explores what other tendencies are at play within the oppressor beyond the mere desire to inflict pain, how much space cruelty occupies in the human mind, and whether other interests in life survive alongside it. Manto has not incited feelings of pity, anger, or hatred. He simply invites you to reflect upon the human mind, human character, and personality through a literary and creative lens. If he is concerned with evoking any emotion at all, it is only the emotion that an artist is legitimately meant to evoke: a boundless sense of wonder and astonishment at life. Of all that has been written about the riots, if anything deserves to be called a human document, it is these stories.

Because Manto’s stories are genuine literary creations, they also manage to shock us morally, even though Manto’s primary objective was not moralizing, but pure creation. In extraordinary circumstances, if any news can shock us, it is not the extraordinary events or actions, but rather the completely ordinary, everyday details. If a man murders two hundred women and children and then wears a necklace of their skulls, it is not entirely unexpected. When murder has become a common pastime, it loses its capacity to inspire fear. However, when we see murderers worrying that the train compartment might get dirty from the blood, we inevitably feel a profound sense of unease. The fact that murderers continue to kill is not what is terrifying; the true terror stems from the realization that people who still retain a sense of hygiene and cleanliness are also capable of murder. Ultimately, meaning is born out of juxtaposition and contrast.

Extraordinary actions in extraordinary circumstances can, at most, tell us that extreme situations drag humans down to the level of animals. However, paying attention to ordinary details while committing extraordinary acts in extraordinary circumstances reveals a much deeper and more fundamental truth about humanity: that a person is always, and simultaneously, both human and beast. The terrifying aspect of this is how, despite retaining a sense of humanity, a person can bear to become a beast. Conversely, the comforting aspect is that even after becoming the most savage of beasts, a person cannot entirely rid themselves of their humanity. Both of these aspects are present in Manto’s stories—the terror as well as the consolation. In these vignettes, humanity is laid bare, complete with its fundamental helplessness, follies, refinements, and purities.

There is a great deal of poison in Manto’s laughter, yet this laughter also offers us immense consolation. In extraordinary circumstances, it is a profound statement to assert that a person's ordinary interests and mundane inclinations cannot be suppressed by any force. Manto has labeled the human being as neither the oppressor nor the oppressed; he has simply pointed out that many aspects of human nature are entirely contradictory and disjointed, and then fallen silent. This realization can induce a deep sense of despair. Yet, looked at from another angle, this very disjointedness of human nature can serve as the foundation for true optimism. If human beings were entirely one-dimensional—purely good or purely evil—they would be incredibly dangerous creatures. If there is any hope to be found in humanity, it is precisely because human beings are unpredictable; they can be good, and they can be bad. Secondly, humans are confined within the boundaries of their own humanity. They can become neither angels nor devils. No matter how extraordinary a person may wish to become, the demands of ordinary life inevitably drag them back within their limits. The mundane routine of everyday life is such a powerful force that if a person cannot become exceptionally good, they cannot become exceptionally evil either. Ordinary life eventually hammers them back into shape.

The greatest attribute of these stories by Manto is this very acknowledgment of the power and greatness of ordinary life. Other fiction writers attempt to guide Hindus and Muslims back to the right path by repeatedly shaming them. Yet, upon finishing their stories, we cannot say with any certainty whether their protests will even be effective. Manto neither shames anyone nor seeks to guide anyone to the right path. Instead, with a deeply ironic smile, he tells human beings: even if you wanted to, you could not stray too far. In this regard, Manto appears to have far greater trust in human nature. Others want to see humanity in a specific light; they impose conditions before accepting a human being. Manto accepts the human being exactly as he is, no matter what form that takes. He has seen that a person's humanity is so resilient that even his own barbarity cannot destroy it. It is this very humanity that Manto places his faith in.

Of all the fiction written about the riots, these stories and anecdotes by Manto are the most horrifying and the most optimistic. Manto's horror and optimism are not those of politicians or the good-hearted servants of humanity, but rather those of an artist. They are not rooted in debate, analysis, or abstract thought, but in concrete creative experience. This is the singular distinction of these stories by Manto.

Over the past decade, the New Literature movement has made invaluable contributions to Urdu fiction. However, it cannot be denied that the driving force behind most of these new short stories was not an inner creative urge, but rather external circumstances and events—whether related to the author's personal life or their environment. This may largely be due to the prevailing belief that human beings' internal lives can be transformed simply by changing their external environment. Regardless, it has generally been the norm that whenever our fiction writers felt their literary output waning, they did not blame themselves. They never worried that their inner growth might have stagnated, or that they needed an internal process to revive it. Instead, they consoled themselves with the thought that nothing worth writing about was happening in the outside world. Six or seven years ago, I heard an Urdu fiction writer—who had gained considerable popularity by writing stories about poverty, subjugation, and Kashmir—remark that if the Japanese were to attack India and cause some chaos in the country, literature would truly blossom.

As the proverb goes, God gives sugar to the sugar-eater. The Japanese may not have attacked, but a famine certainly did. Some amassed wealth by selling rice on the black market, while others garnered fame by writing short stories. Well, whatever happens in the world ultimately benefits someone. During that time, the subject of the famine acquired such sanctity that even students began writing about the starving masses instead of their own sexual experiences. The pressure was such that if a magazine editor refused to publish these stories, he would be branded as callous and cruel. In short, thanks to the tragedies of Bengal, our fiction writers enjoyed a period of great ease, receiving ready-made stories on a silver platter. Events and emotions were all readily available; there was no need for any creative struggle.

When the famine eventually subsided, the naval mutiny took place. Elsewhere, riots broke out during victory celebrations. In short, the literary business kept running one way or another. And when the riots of 1947 erupted, it was as if God had granted them a windfall. If one wished, they could write a tragic short story; otherwise, a satirical essay would do. You could gnash your teeth at the state of human existence, or expose the cunning machinations of imperialism. Once you had your fill of that, you could generate some sensationalism by detailing the violation of women. Along the way, you could occasionally point out that amidst this bestiality, examples of compassion and human sympathy could still be found. Then, putting on an innocent face, you could express astonishment at what had happened to the sanity of Hindus and Muslims—how those who were brothers until yesterday were now thirsting for each other's blood. The only remaining risk was being accused of bias. But even that was easily managed. If five Hindus were killed at the beginning of the story, the tally had to be balanced with five dead Muslims by the end. To keep the scales perfectly even, the blame had to be distributed equally. The real trick was to prove your own humanism, good-heartedness, impartiality, and pacifism, all without offending anyone.

If a person possesses the skill to walk a tightrope, we must certainly applaud them. After all, publicly displaying one's noble sentiments—and thereby stirring the noble sentiments of others—is also a service to humanity. However, the slight flaw with noble sentiments is that they cannot produce literature. I am not saying this based on some imaginary or impractical standard. The fiction writers producing literature about the riots make it their primary claim that they will speak the truth. Yet, simultaneously, they are anxious to ensure that neither Hindus nor Muslims are offended. Impartiality is interpreted as never holding one community more culpable than the other. This literature seeks to condemn oppression, cruelty, and bestiality, but it lacks the courage to call oppression by its true name. It wants to evade this responsibility. We do not demand the same kind of factual truth from literature that we expect from books on history, economics, or politics.

We do not demand that a writer speak the truth about an ideology or the external world as much as we demand that they speak the truth about themselves. Those writing about the riots may speak the truth about the rest of the world, but they do not speak the truth about themselves. Their greatest endeavor is to conceal their natural inclinations and prejudices, even though the surfacing of such prejudices during times of such immense upheaval is a biological necessity. If these writers genuinely wish to infuse their stories with human significance, they must first acknowledge their own human frailties. Authentic literature cannot be created by turning a blind eye to the truths and falsehoods buried within oneself. Popular literature, however, can certainly be produced this way—because readers, too, simply want to reassure themselves that their own noble sentiments are not dead.

Fundamentally, literature is not concerned with who commits atrocities and who does not, or whether oppression is taking place at all. What literature examines is the internal and external behavior of human beings as they inflict or endure cruelty. As far as literature is concerned, the external act of oppression and its outward trappings are meaningless. Our fiction writers focus solely on the sociological aspects of violence. They have no interest in how this cruelty connects to the inner lives of the oppressor and the oppressed. Our writers display dozens of swords and guns; if only there were living, breathing hands behind those weapons, and living, breathing chests in front of them... I am not suggesting that those writing about the riots are entirely insincere. Some of them are genuinely good-hearted and well-intentioned. But the kind of sincerity that works in everyday life does not work in literature. These writers craft their stories with the intention of depicting the external acts of cruelty to incite hatred against oppression. However, unless we understand the human context behind an action, merely witnessing an external act cannot evoke a lasting, concrete, and profoundly meaningful response within us. We can love or hate human beings, but not abstract categories of oppressors and oppressed.

Fiction writers who write about the riots have often relied on a specific technique to evoke a hatred for violence: depicting acts of cruelty to strike terror into the hearts of their readers. However, these events are so fresh, and people have witnessed so much with their own eyes or heard so much from close friends, that a mere catalog of atrocities no longer affects them. If you depict the violation of a few women or the murder of children in your story, it fails to provoke any visceral reaction. The times we live in are simply that extraordinary. Cruelty has become an incredibly ordinary occurrence nowadays. Extraordinary events no longer shock people; such accounts do not even arouse their curiosity. A moral response is out of the question. If these stories about the riots failed as literature, that would be one thing, but they cannot even fulfill their social purpose properly. The events these stories depict do not even qualify as news anymore.

Manto has also written about the riots. He has compiled anecdotes and short vignettes. Actually, I have used the wrong phrasing. These stories are not about the riots; they are about human beings. In Manto’s fiction, you have always seen humanity in various forms—the human as a prostitute, the human as a spectator, and so on. In these stories, too, you will see the human being. The only difference is that here, the human is presented as either the oppressor or the oppressed. Furthermore, Manto has not bothered to burden himself with any social purpose regarding the specific circumstances of the riots. If people could be reformed through preaching, Mr. Gandhi would not have lost his life. Manto harbors no grand illusions about the social impact of fiction, nor has he taken on a responsibility that literature simply cannot fulfill. Truth be told, Manto has not even placed any particular emphasis on cruelty. He has certainly depicted a few incidents, but he never dictates whether these events or actions are inherently good or bad. He neither curses the oppressors nor sheds tears for the oppressed. He has not even passed judgment on whether the oppressors are evil or the oppressed are virtuous.

The riots of the Indian subcontinent are incredibly complex. They are so deeply entangled with centuries of past history and centuries of the future that one cannot easily issue a verdict of good or evil regarding them. At the very least, it does not befit a sensible writer to descend to the level of politicians and pass judgment on such mind-boggling events. In his stories, Manto has done exactly what an honest writer—not honest in the political sense, but honest as a literary artist—and a true author should do when writing under such circumstances, so soon after the events occurred. He has dismissed the very question of good and evil as irrelevant to the discussion. His perspective is neither political, nor sociological, nor moral; it is purely literary and creative.

Manto has merely attempted to examine the relationship between an act of cruelty and the various psychological demands of the oppressor or the oppressed. He explores what other tendencies are at play within the oppressor beyond the mere desire to inflict pain, how much space cruelty occupies in the human mind, and whether other interests in life survive alongside it. Manto has not incited feelings of pity, anger, or hatred. He simply invites you to reflect upon the human mind, human character, and personality through a literary and creative lens. If he is concerned with evoking any emotion at all, it is only the emotion that an artist is legitimately meant to evoke: a boundless sense of wonder and astonishment at life. Of all that has been written about the riots, if anything deserves to be called a human document, it is these stories.

Because Manto’s stories are genuine literary creations, they also manage to shock us morally, even though Manto’s primary objective was not moralizing, but pure creation. In extraordinary circumstances, if any news can shock us, it is not the extraordinary events or actions, but rather the completely ordinary, everyday details. If a man murders two hundred women and children and then wears a necklace of their skulls, it is not entirely unexpected. When murder has become a common pastime, it loses its capacity to inspire fear. However, when we see murderers worrying that the train compartment might get dirty from the blood, we inevitably feel a profound sense of unease. The fact that murderers continue to kill is not what is terrifying; the true terror stems from the realization that people who still retain a sense of hygiene and cleanliness are also capable of murder. Ultimately, meaning is born out of juxtaposition and contrast.

Extraordinary actions in extraordinary circumstances can, at most, tell us that extreme situations drag humans down to the level of animals. However, paying attention to ordinary details while committing extraordinary acts in extraordinary circumstances reveals a much deeper and more fundamental truth about humanity: that a person is always, and simultaneously, both human and beast. The terrifying aspect of this is how, despite retaining a sense of humanity, a person can bear to become a beast. Conversely, the comforting aspect is that even after becoming the most savage of beasts, a person cannot entirely rid themselves of their humanity. Both of these aspects are present in Manto’s stories—the terror as well as the consolation. In these vignettes, humanity is laid bare, complete with its fundamental helplessness, follies, refinements, and purities.

There is a great deal of poison in Manto’s laughter, yet this laughter also offers us immense consolation. In extraordinary circumstances, it is a profound statement to assert that a person's ordinary interests and mundane inclinations cannot be suppressed by any force. Manto has labeled the human being as neither the oppressor nor the oppressed; he has simply pointed out that many aspects of human nature are entirely contradictory and disjointed, and then fallen silent. This realization can induce a deep sense of despair. Yet, looked at from another angle, this very disjointedness of human nature can serve as the foundation for true optimism. If human beings were entirely one-dimensional—purely good or purely evil—they would be incredibly dangerous creatures. If there is any hope to be found in humanity, it is precisely because human beings are unpredictable; they can be good, and they can be bad. Secondly, humans are confined within the boundaries of their own humanity. They can become neither angels nor devils. No matter how extraordinary a person may wish to become, the demands of ordinary life inevitably drag them back within their limits. The mundane routine of everyday life is such a powerful force that if a person cannot become exceptionally good, they cannot become exceptionally evil either. Ordinary life eventually hammers them back into shape.

The greatest attribute of these stories by Manto is this very acknowledgment of the power and greatness of ordinary life. Other fiction writers attempt to guide Hindus and Muslims back to the right path by repeatedly shaming them. Yet, upon finishing their stories, we cannot say with any certainty whether their protests will even be effective. Manto neither shames anyone nor seeks to guide anyone to the right path. Instead, with a deeply ironic smile, he tells human beings: even if you wanted to, you could not stray too far. In this regard, Manto appears to have far greater trust in human nature. Others want to see humanity in a specific light; they impose conditions before accepting a human being. Manto accepts the human being exactly as he is, no matter what form that takes. He has seen that a person's humanity is so resilient that even his own barbarity cannot destroy it. It is this very humanity that Manto places his faith in.

Of all the fiction written about the riots, these stories and anecdotes by Manto are the most horrifying and the most optimistic. Manto's horror and optimism are not those of politicians or the good-hearted servants of humanity, but rather those of an artist. They are not rooted in debate, analysis, or abstract thought, but in concrete creative experience. This is the singular distinction of these stories by Manto.