The partition of India in 1947 was a cataclysmic event that, according to some estimates, saw communal violence on an unprecedented scale killing at least two million innocent people and forced the migration of about 14 million more on the Indian subcontinent, turning most of them into homeless refugees in what was once their own country. Saadat Hasan Manto, acclaimed as the finest Urdu short story writer of the twentieth century, lived through those traumatic days that preceded Partition. The days after Partition were no less traumatic for Manto, who was born in 1912 in Ludhiana in undivided India and died in 1955 in Lahore in Pakistan, the country that was created as a result of it.
Indeed, Manto was one of the many victims of Partition as he, too, became a refugee after 1947, choosing to move from Bombay (as Mumbai was called then) to Lahore. He was often in doubt about the choice he had made as he struggled to seek recognition and acceptance of his literary work in a country that he had thought would give him both security and freedom to practise his art. Lahore had given Manto some form of physical security and shelter in a building ironically called Lakshmi Mansions. But the city had clearly robbed him of that creative space and opportunity that Bombay with its more vibrant film industry and a cosmopolitan environment could have given.
Reading Ayesha Jalals reconstruction of the life of Manto, you would be, therefore, tempted to wonder if truth is really stranger than fiction. Also, at least at a subliminal level, whether his short stories were a creative outburst of a man comprehensively disillusioned first, by the communal divide that led to Partition and then by the false hope that Partition generated. When you go through Jalals biographical assessment, many characters in Mantos stories on Partition will come alive, showing a striking resemblance to those with whom Manto interacted with in real life. Mantos dilemmas and doubts at the end of his life were perhaps little different from those of Bishan Singh, the protagonist of Toba Tek Singh, Mantos most powerful and famous short story on Partition, ironically published in 1955. Bishan Singhs death on the no-mans-land between the borders of India and Pakistan is somewhat reminiscent of and little different from Mantos death in 1955 in Lahore.
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Yet, the highlight of Jalals work is that she has not let her proximity to Manto and his family affect in any way the objectivity that such a study would demand. Her unbiased approach to presenting Manto with his failings and foibles helps a more considered understanding of the writer. There are also intimate details of Mantos special affection for his sister, who was instrumental in arranging his marriage with Safia and yet could not be at the wedding because of her husbands instructions to not to have any links with her brother. There is a touching scene in the book where Jalal describes how Manto stands in his wedding clothes on a street in Mahim to meet his beloved sister before he goes off for the nikaah.
Manto enjoyed a special relationship with his mother, whose letters to her young son, living in Bombay, show a sensitive mind providing both inspiration and critical appreciation of the young writers work. Mantos frontal attack on communal politics thriving on a divide between the Hindus and Muslims in Bombay had made him unpopular even among the Muslims in the city, and he even came close to being physically assaulted. His mother had anticipated such trouble for her son and had forewarned him in one of her many letters Jalal has reproduced in the book.
Few biographers of Manto have dwelt on Mantos romanticism and sense of humour in his personal life. Unlike his Bohemian lifestyle and personality, Manto settled for an arranged marriage with Safia without meeting her even once. Mantos personal account of how the two were made for each other is worth recounting here: Her father is dead. My father is also not alive. She wears glasses; I wear glasses. She was born on 11 May and I too was born on 11 May. Her mother wears glasses. My mother wears glasses as well. The first letter in her name is S. The first letter in my name is also S. We have all these things in common. The rest I am as yet unaware of. Previously she did not observe purdah, but ever since I have acquired a right over her she has been observing purdah (only from me).
Manto, by all accounts, had built a strong network of friends while he was in Mumbai. He had written for many films made in Bombay and even acted in a few of them. His decision to leave Bombay was sudden, surprising many of his friends including the Hindi film worlds popular actor, Ashok Kumar. A few of the contemporary Urdu writers even spread canards about the reasons for his sudden decision the lure of a big house and financial security. But these remained wholly unsubstantiated. Eventually, Manto died without too many friends around and had to suffer the ignominy of his work being tried for obscenity by the very state he had adopted by choice. In many ways, Manto, like Ritwick Ghatak (another creative giant of the same era whose films on the theme of Partition were also an outcome of his personal trauma caused by it), could never come to terms with the idea of Partition. He could not belong to either Pakistan or India. Almost like Bishan Singh of Toba Tek Singh!
THE PITY OF PARTITION
Author: Ayesha Jalal
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Pages: 265
Price: $27.95
