A case for truth: Saadat Hasan Manto's work made him a parrhesiastes

Manto stuck to his desire to speak the truth as he saw it, not compromising by seeking epithets or diluting his narratives with the window dressing of aesthetics

Those who wanted to catch a show of the Nandita Das-directed biopic of Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto were in for a rude shock when the filmmaker tweeted that some shows of the film were cancelled. "Hugely disappointed... six years of work and many people's collective intent and commitment was [sic] to find its culmination this morning," she wrote. By afternoon, however, the issue had been fixed. Distributors Viacom 18 tweeted that all shows were "up and running now" but did not give a reason for the disruption. Though this is obviously not a case of censorship, the initial hiccup is a sort of a poetic event in the history of the life of perhaps one of the most troubled writers of the 20th century.    

 

The film depicts the last 10 years of Manto's life, but does not deal directly with the obscenity case against his short story "Bu" ("Smell") in 1943-44. In my opinion, this is perhaps a key event in Manto's life. His friend and contemporary, Ismat Chughtai, has written in some detail about the case and the events leading up to it in her memoirs, Kaghazi Hai Pairahan. She, too, was charged in the same case for the short story "Lihaf" ("The Quilt"). She writes of how one afternoon in December 1943, a police inspector arrived at her and her filmmaker husband Shaheed Latif's home in Bombay (now Mumbai). She was cooling a bottle of food for her infant daughter. At first, she refused to accept the summons that required her to go to Lahore for the case. Later, when Latif convinced her to accept the summons, she proffered the bottle of baby-feed to the inspector, and refused to go with him to the Mahim police station to post her bail without feeding her daughter.  

The trailer of the film begins with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who plays Manto, standing in a witness box and saying: "My stories are mirrors for the society to see itself... If you can't bear my stories, it's because we live in unbearable times." The times indeed were unbearable — then as now — with Partition and the subsequent bloodshed. Unlike Chughtai who stayed back in Bombay, Manto decided to move to Pakistan. He had already been charged thrice with obscenity in pre-Independence times for his stories; in Pakistan, too, he faced similar charges, even getting fined once. His drinking problem worsened and his mental health, already in a fragile state, suffered. Yet, he stuck to his desire to speak the truth as he saw it, not compromising by seeking epithets or diluting his narratives with the window dressing of aesthetics. Despite social and legal pressure, his words remained as visceral as ever.  

In doing so, he was claiming the position of the parrhesiastes. The word, as French philosopher Michel Foucault explains in his essay Fearless Speech, derives from parrhesia, which means "to speak candidly". First used by the tragedian Euripedes, it was supported by Plato and his mentor Socrates, who defined it to be in opposition to rhetoric, in that it did not use persuasion but dialectic. This was a fundamental component of democracy in ancient Athens. But, in nascent nations trying to speak too freely is likely to invite a rap on one's knuckles. All the obscenity cases against Manto — and Chughtai — were a result of their narrative running contrary to the national narrative.   

At Chughtai's home, the summons brought dark weather. Shahid, horrified by the dishonour that such a case could bring, kept fighting with her, so much so that they even considered divorce. A call from Manto informed them that he, too, had been charged. "He and Safia (Manto's wife) came over immediately. Manto looked so happy, as if he had been awarded the Victoria Cross. My heart was heavy with regret... but Manto's exuberance banished all my fears," writes Chughtai. But, soon enough, they were being trolled by letters filled with abuse. "I was terrified of my mail. I felt as if the envelopes contained snakes, scorpions and pythons," she recollects. At the same time, reassured by friends and well-wishers that she would only be fined at worst, Chughtai started packing up warm clothes for their trip to Lahore. 

The city, still the heart of undivided Punjab, seemed like a bride to Chughtai, with all the apple and apricot trees in full bloom. As they waited trial, they spent their days taking long walks, eating peanuts and roadside food, going to parties, and Shahid and Manto getting drunk and getting into long and convoluted arguments. She also describes a hilarious incident when they decided to eat hot dogs over hamburgers, thinking that the former had pork, which is haram. On learning the truth, they decided that both were unsafe, and they would eat only chicken tikka. There are numerous descriptions of what they ate and drank, with Chughtai praising those who had complained against them.  

The case against them — like most obscenity cases — did not stand. The witnesses for prosecution could not point out what was obscene in either story. One claimed that the word "bosom" in Manto's story was obscene as it was used to refer to a woman's breasts, but the judge did not agree. Another witness claimed that it was obscene that Chughtai's story had mentioned girls collecting lovers. The defence lawyer argued that the story might be about bad girls. The case collapsed. The judge called Chughtai into his room and praised her stories. "But there is a lot of dirt in Manto's writing," the judge said. "The world, too, is filled with a lot of dirt," she replied. The liberty to fling it about, to represent it is parrhesia, or freedom of speech — the cornerstone of democracy.