Manto’s Nuances of Freedom

By Sana Hussain

This stained light, this night-bitten dawn –
this is not the dawn we yearned for.
this is not the dawn
for which we set out so eagerly

~ from “Morning of Freedom” by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (translated by Daud Kamal)

The pall that stretches over the horizon of a newly liberated country in Faiz’s “Morning of Freedom” is also echoed in Saadat Hasan Manto’s perception of this freedom. Manto lived most of his life in Bombay before migrating to Lahore in 1948. After the move, he described his predicament in the first of a series of letters to Uncle Sam as being like “a bird whose wings had been clipped”, never coming to termswith the inhumanity and bloodshed he witnessed during partition. The brutalities humanity inflicted upon itself were permanently etched onto his consciousness and are communicated vividly in much of his work; lacking a better coping mechanism in dealing with the sadism shown by both countries during partition, for a man as insular as Manto, there was only one way to comprehend the madness: rendering his horror into his work.

As a humanist, Manto’s idea of freedom never quite matched the conventional perception of his contemporaries. Even today, despite their author posthumously being given the highest national award for his contribution to literature by the Government of Pakistan, Manto’s stories continue to be considered salacious and immoral, shocking twenty-first century readers with their progressiveness. The idea that prevails in Pakistan is that Manto was against independence, and consequently against Pakistan. This, however, is untrue. He was against the damage the War of Independence unleashed: the senseless killings, irrepressible hatred, opportunistic plundering, and brutalities against both women and children. In his short story For Freedom’s Sake, Manto, through his protagonist, voices his indignation, saying “To strive for freedom is fine. I can even understand dying for it. But to turn living people into mere vegetables, without passion or drive, is beyond me. To live in poor housing, shun amenities, sing the Lord’s praises, and shout patriotic slogans– fine! But to stifle the very desire for beauty in humanity! … Students coming out of these madrasas and ashrams look like the udders of a cow from which every drop of milk has been squeezed.” In retrospect, it is perhaps not completely incomprehensible that the conservative, orthodox citizens of the country declared Manto an anti-state, anti-Islam reactionary.

Manto’s deep-seated humanism extended beyond religion and was of far more importance to him than any ideal of perceived liberation. This is perhaps why his stories do not aggrandize characters of the partition, because he saw no “heroism” in murdering for national glory or raping to preserve honor, and is also probably why his characters are not tethered to a distinct national, religious or ethnic identity. They remain anonymous, and in their anonymity Manto presents his case for humanity. In Siyah Hashiye, Manto uses detached irony that captures the absurdity behind most acts of violence while evoking a sickening sensation in the minds of readers, of the mentality and depravity of the time, still not completely absent today. In one of the stories of Siyaah Hashiye, titled Sharing the Loot, the chaotic looting of a house is underway when a man appears and orders the plunderers to be organized in their endeavor, demonstrating how they could steal more in less time; the man turns out to be the owner of the house being looted. The grotesque vividness of an ice vendor’s blood soaking into the melting ice as he lies murdered on the road, a knife slid down a man’s groin by someone confirming his religion, or a young girl mistakenly raped by members of her own community because the enemy “pulled a fast one” on them, all recount the tragedies that took place on both sides of the border. Not knowing whether it is the enemy who kills or is killed humanizes the characters, leaving even the most jingoistic of men in doubt.