Way back in the 20th century, Saadat Hasan Manto wrote numerous stories, which he stated as the truth of our society. However, the majority of the people still do not understand the stories of Manto, for them, manto tu paagal hai or us ke afsanany to adaab ma aty nai han (Manto is insane and his works do not count in the realm of literature). Manto wrote bluntly about the suppressed class, such as the prostitutes and transgenders, and the victims of the partition.
One of his famous works, known as Thanda gosht (cold meat) describes how a man looted a house, killed a young woman, and then raped her dead body. Later, his guilty conscience prompted him to think of what he did: he raped a cadaver of a woman, and it became a source of disgust for him and started horrifying him.
Similar to this, Manto’s other story known as Boo (smell), dragged Manto to the gates of the courts. He was accused of writing stories that dispersed obscenity. In Boo, he tells us about the wedding night of a well-to-do bridegroom and the daughter of a rich family. Though the bride is smothered in gold and expensive French perfumes, but at this moment the bridegroom remembers poor Ghatan, a working-class Marathi woman, whose soiled blouse and the flesh underneath exuded the scent of rain-soaked earth. For Manto, the sexual act was co-mingled with natural elements like water, earth, and the wind. The story exposes how gold and brocades and all the riches we aspire eventually suffocate the beauty and sanctity of desire and union, which is a hard fact.
Manto also talked about corruption in one of his stories Ab Aur Kehne Ki Zarurat Nahi (now, there is no need for anything). In this story, a man goes to jail for saving the illegal business of his boss. But one day the man refuses to go to jail for the dirty work of his boss, so the boss sends his daughter to him for a night.
Furthermore, Manto’s stories also talked about rape and abortion. For instance, in his story, Dr Shriodkar ‘ one-day a beautiful girl comes to the doctor and shares that she is pregnant but she wants to abort the child doctor aborted the child but the girl got weak so the doctor kept her for observation for two months. After discharge from the hospital, the girl once again gets pregnant. The Dr raped his patient which is a truth of society but no one can believe it.
In this 21st century, societies are developing, and the education sectors are developing, but we are losing such creative writers and works. Unfortunately, there are many barriers to producing such critical work. But if we connect the stories of Manto to today’s generation, we can definitely find a number of similarities between the time these stories were written and the socioeconomic and political situation of now. For instance, prostitution, is yet a dark reality of our society, as per Manto, and they are yet not given any rights or security. Indeed, a state’s job is to provide its citizens with their rights, not to disperse the teaching of the morality of who deserves to be given certain kinds of rights and who doesn’t deserve to have any of their rights. If we relate this now to many countries, like Indonesia, Bangladesh (then east Pakistan), Turkiye (Turkey), Germany, Peru, Greece, Hungary, Switzerland, Panama, and many other countries, brothels are legalized. So should not they be legalized in countries where it is being practiced yet considered illegal?
Manto was a great writer but, unfortunately, no one understood his literal works: “Manto is as skilled as the best short story writers of the Russian and western tradition,” says Tanuja, and, sadly, he has been erased from the literary canon.” The world needs such kind of writers to ring the truth in front of the general masses but what if the general masses are still hypocrites?
