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Remembering Manto
Saadat Hasan Manto, perhaps is the greatest story teller in the history of urdu language. We have collected some thoughts about him by people who knew him best
Kamal Ahmed Rizvi
The Progressive Writers Movement never completely owned and recognised Manto in his life. Hasan Askari also mentioned that in his essays on Manto. Apparently, there were some lists issued in literary magazines which stated who belonged to the progressives and who didn’t. “Manto did not need that. He never did and never would. He was not interested. Period. He did wish to be told of his greatness. He simply did not care about the material aspects of his social life. Manto was a qalander in that respect. He was beyond acclaim or applause. He was indifferent to constructed literature and art for a purpose. His passion was to write stories and stories alone.”
Safdar Mir
Manto’s life is an excellent example of what happens when a man of outstanding genius falls among men of little talent. First come the publishers, and in a country with no copyright laws, or where scant respect is shown to them if they exist (inspite of the Writers Guild) a man of letters has no protection against exploitation. His writings are used for the setting up of large publishing establishments whose owners, after his death, shed hypocritical tears and pat themselves on the back at having ‘helped’ and ‘established’ the unknown Manto, or who write critical articles on his work after his death with indecent haste (and indecent purpose), to prove that he was not such a wonderful writer after all. There are other publishers who takes advantage of his weakness for booze and make him dash off stories – some brilliant, others of indifferent merit— for paltry sums of money while themselves sitting their offices. Sole rights for a story by him were determined by these good Samaritans at Rs. 20/-. These stories were first published in their magazines, and then printed in collections for which neither Manto nor his family ever received any royalty…
Ajmal Kamal
He was extremely disturbed by the batwara and the heinous communal riots that accompanied it. “Towards the mayhem — inqalab — that was unleashed as a result of the country’s partition I remained insolent for long, and still am, but later I recognised the dreadful reality, though in such a way that I did now allow pessimism to get to me.”
He was consistently writing against the wholesale repression that came to be the policy of the new state in its initial years — banning of a large number of newspapers and periodicals, jailing of writers and journalists, persecution of political dissent such as the Red Shirt movement in the then NWFP — under the all-purpose Public Safety Act (which he called the “Amrit Dhara Act”) — and the unwarranted space given to religious bigotry, jihadism and intrigue in the new country’s politics through instruments like the Objectives Resolution, war and xenophobia. Twice he had himself been tried — and acquitted — for obscenity in two of his stories related to the partition riots (He was to face one more of such trials — decided against him — before he finally left the world).
In this eloquent preface — which he gave the title Jaib-e kafan — Manto draws upon Ghalib’s masterful line: Hai dagh-e ishq zeenat-e jaib-e kafan hunuz. He writes: “I used to be recognised as a progressive, then all of a sudden I was branded a reactionary, and now the fatwa-givers are thinking again and are willing to acknowledge anew that I’m a progressive. And the government, which gives its own fatwa to overrule all fatwas, believes me to be a progressive, i.e. a surkha — a communist. From time to time it gets angry, accuses me of obscenity and tries me in courts. On the other hand, the same government advertises in its publications that S. H. Manto is a great writer of our country whose pen did not stop even in the past turbulent days. It frightens my sad heart to think that this fickle sarkar may happily pin a medal to my shroud, which will be an insult to my commitment — my dagh-e ishq.”
Moazzam Sheikh
Anyone who has read Manto with any seriousness probably has a favourite. It is true that for historic reasons his stories directly impacted by the partition set him apart from his peers and raise him to a stature where he alone resides. That cannot be achieved by a writer through conscious efforts. Only Time can sculpt such beauties. It is not a stretch to suggest that Manto is to Urdu short story what Miles Davis is to trumpet, Billie Holiday to Jazz singing, Max Beckman to painting, and Chaplin to silent cinema whose City Lights’ final scenes can bring tears to your eyes even after almost a hundred years.
Dr. Ayesha Jalal
On his 100th birthday, Manto stands taller on the literary horizon than others who wrote about the mass migrations of 1947. Where he needs greater appreciation is in the role he played as a witness to history through his chilling narratives of Partition. In a country where history as a discipline has suffered from calculated neglect in the interests of projecting statist ideology, Manto’s Partition stories are an excellent entry point for enquiring minds eager to understand the past that has made their present fraught with such uncertainty and danger. The ever-percipient Manto had anticipated the problems of treating religion as a weapon rather than a matter of personal faith and ethics, which have over the past three decades surfaced with a vengeance in Muslim Pakistan. His words of warning have a resonance that is louder than when he said: “Our split culture and divided civilization, what has survived of our arts; all that we received from the cut up parts of our own body, and which is buried in the ashes of Western politics, we need to retrieve, dust, clean and restore to freshness in order to recover all that we have lost in the storm.” If there is a birthday present Pakistanis and Indians can jointly give Manto, it is to admit the reality of the problems he spelt out in his writings on Partition. It may then become possible for them to take the requisite steps towards recovering what has been lost by the myopic refusal of their respective nation-states to understand each other’s position, rectify past errors, and strike a mutually beneficial and sustainable historical compromise.
Sarmad Sehbai
Manto is too mercurial to be placed in a timeframe; he is resistant to any categorisation or placement. What shape the society is taking on, the botoxed shape of enlightened moderation or a chequered shape poxed by corruption, intrigue and terror, one is not sure but, like all great artists, Manto remains ever-present and relevant to all times; he is our contemporary. Pick up anything today, modern fiction to new linguistics or art discussions, or journalism to media freedom, he is there.
‘Civil’ society and the state, both are power constructs and Manto is a depowering experience. He never wanted to become an ‘inevitable example’ for the state or the ‘civil’ society. Unlike others he was not into popularity polls or franchised art. Manto was feared by the state and is still feared by ideologues, religious saviours, reformers and the civilised elite. He hated the pulpit culture. He was averse to enshrined reverence, as he said, “I hope my writings are not given the lofty status as that of Iqbal, my soul will be restless. God may save me from the termite.” His Adam was not a crusader or a martyr, the epicure of suffering, fetishising poverty or the epical superman. His Adam was the unaccommodated man, a petty thief, a pimp like Khushia, or a sex worker like Sogandhi. He remains an underground swell and will perhaps never be a part of the state establishment or dominant cultures.
Zia Mohiyuddin
Manto is not going to fade away from our memory. The man who laid bare the festering sores of society will, I am sure, continue to be the subject of many studies. Some bright spark might even consider to examine how badly his art suffered as a result of his migration to Lahore.
Other than Amritsar, a town he speaks of with warmth in all his reminiscences, Bombay was the only city he felt comfortable in. He knew the byways of Bombay intimately and had a large circle of friends and admirers there. He had achieved his fame as towering writer of fiction while he was in Bombay and he was more than well-off in Bombay.
Manto didn’t have any roots in Lahore. In his early youth, he had lived there for two years as a young literary aspirant. In the post-partition Lahore, he felt rejected and abandoned and he must have found it a most dispiriting chore to go begging editors and publishers of flyblown magazines to buy his stories.
In his ‘profile’ of Anwar Kamal Pasha, he recounts that the hotshot producer-director once invited him to his studio and asked him for his help in solving a knotty problem with the script he was filming. Manto immediately saw the problem and not only pointed it out but suggested a new development which could tighten the story and make it more gripping. Pasha was awe-struck. He liked what Manto had suggested but was doubtful as to whether he should accept a solution offered on the spur of moment. Manto could read his mind clearly: “You would have been thrilled,” he said, “if I had taken the script home and brought it back after a week to tell you that having mulled over it for days my suggestions are as follows. No, my friend, I think quickly.”
As he was about to leave, he said flippantly, “And do you know how much my advice would have been worth?” Shamefaced, Pasha offered him a cheque for a measly five hundred rupees. “I should have torn the cheque into bits and thrown it in his face,” he writes, “but my needs…oh my needs. I accepted it and wept bitter tears realising how low I have sunk.”
No wonder he died soon afterwards.
Masud Alam
He wasn’t really a dirty old man. For one, he never grew old: he died before his 43rd birthday. For another, between his obsessive drinking and writing — 22 collections of short stories, one novel, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches, and many scripts for films — everything else must have been crowded out of his life.
As for the charge of obscenity and vulgarity in his writing, every one’s elixir of excitement is not the same. People who consider Manto vulgar may also find erotic pleasure watching a woman nurse her baby in a public place, while others present may ignore it as a private matter between the mother and child.
He has a way of looking at things and an expression all his own, and that’s what makes him Manto — a sensitive human being and a brilliant writer whose pen dances between his observation of poverty and misery and the humour and ready wit of his expression.
Filed under: Uncategorized · Tags: Ajmal Kamal, ayesha jalal, Masud Alam, Zia Mohiyuddin
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the progressive writers may never have completely owned him but his best friends were from the progressive writers association. most notably Ismat Chughtai.
Manto created his won niche in that he called a spade a spade. there was no unnecessary romanticism or prolix use of words.
and yet his language was lyrical. Manto used partition as his canvass and painted the story of human nature. needless to say he excelled like few have.
my only regret is that he lived such a short life. had he lived longer who knows what other greatness might have flowed from his pen.
to me, he will always be the greatest Urdu writer of all time.
Having read a lot of article on Manto because of the birth anniversary.
Here are my observations.
1. He was already gambler and drunk in Bombay needed to suppress deep fears.
2. He search for answers to Human Condition because he had troubling childhood.
3. Marriage and Children didn’t really calm the torment.
4. He probably died from Hepatitis C with help of alcohol which damages the liver.
5. He may not have know Lahore but his in-laws are from there?
6. He wasn’t progressive because he wasn’t an intellectual or atheist.
Did he get to see his film Mirza Ghalib (1954).
artist’s torment
he was an intellectual and that is why he was a progressive. the man was way ahead of his times and that is why he was constantly badgered by the establishment.
don’t just read articles about him read HIM and thus pass judgement.
As a Pakistani woman married to a Bengali-Indian gentleman Dr. Ayesha Jalal has no choice but to take a politically neutral position. She uses this 100th. birthday anniversary of her great-uncle to remind Indians & Pakistanis, the two divergent and mutually antagonistic constituencies of Sa’adat Hasan Manto, “to understand each other’s position, rectify past errors, and strike a mutually beneficial and sustainable historical compromise.” Not a bad advise. But for Manto; the man wanted to stay in Bombay where he earned his living. His wife wanted to be in Lahore with her family. Not knowing where he belonged, Manto rapidly drowned himself. What else could be said.
PMA writes:
“…Indians & Pakistanis, the two divergent and mutually antagonistic constituencies…”
So you admit that islam brought/caused and brings/causes war, treachery, quislingism, hatred in the indian subcontinent.
Sadat Hasan Manto was a great short story and cinema script writer.I was very much impressed by him in my age of early twenty.It is immaterial where he lived or not.
“As a Pakistani woman married to a Bengali-Indian gentleman Dr. Ayesha Jalal has no choice but to take a politically neutral position. ”
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So a woman who has the highest degree from such places as Oxford, has the independent streak to voice a radically different opinion, and is courageous enough to take on an entire university, goes back home and assumes a subservient position with respect to her husband! Wow! Such are the gems on which the intellectual caliber of the exalted Islamic republic rests.
Of course, if that’s is true then one must give due credit to her husband as well. One is well aware of the seductive charms of the women from Bengal. But I guess their men folk are similarly gifted.
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Congrats NC.
BM,
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Don’t know about the seductive charms of Bengali men, but Sugata Bose indeed could be a charming learned gentleman. After years of neglect in the Gandhi-Nehru influenced Indian academic discourse, finally it was him who accorded due diligence to the other, unsung, hero of our freedom movement, his grand-uncle Bose. Sugata Bose is also doing admirable work in restoring the past glory of Calcutta’s Presidency University, under somewhat lackadaisical chairmanship of Amartya Sen who is much more invested in Nalanda.
Be that as it may, I believe what Ayesha Jalal has written about Manto or partition is her own position. The way I see it, she is probably the quintessential Pakistani liberal (of the Hoodbhoy, Khaled Ahmed, or our very own RHR variety), torn between the impulsive obligation to Jinnah with whom they may share social values or a vision, and a distaste for breaking up a grand union of cultures based on something as flimsy as political wrangling or religion that Jinnah spearheaded. What you refer as an independent radical position gives her the perfect escape, all that Jinnah was doing post ’37 was a bargaining counter, nothing more, he never really wanted a sovereign independent Pakistan.
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It is not really a radical independent position if you think about it; you or I, under similar situation, probably would’ve taken the same position to “justify” our own national hero. This position is also entirely consistent with Jalal’s writing on Manto.
I read somewhere that Manto wrote thrice to Ismat Chugtai to help him relocate to India.
Why couldn’t she help him do that? Does somebody know?
Dr. Jalal & Dr. Bose both are academician & historian. One would hope that their take on history is based on research and not on personal feelings. However from their writings the pair on the subject of Freedom of British India seems to converge. In Pakistan there is a minority group holding the opinion that the 1947 division of the British India was wrong and it should never have happened. This opinion is not limited to the so called ‘liberal-secular’ camp. Indians holding this position, the majority in that country, will find their sympathisers in ‘conservative’ and ‘religious’ Pakistanis as well. Manto like millions of Muslims of certain cultural and political backgrounds was deeply disturbed by the division of the British India. Ayesha Jalal as an intellectual heiress of Manto has taken a similar position. They were with Jinnah because he championed their cause but are upset with Pakistan because it divided their community into two. The case of ‘religious-conservative’ group is simple; it finds its “refuge” in religion. But Ayesha Jalal’s position is also a sort of “refuge.” And that is where she and Manto leave objectivity and enter into the realm of personal feelings. Their dilemma is ‘how to reconcile with history.’ On his 100th. birth anniversary the question to ask is: Was Manto a reactionary?
to PMA
Creating borders and boundaries in the name of an alien imperialist fascist ideology from Arabia was a sin and a crime. Converting human beings in the indian subcontinent to become quislings of an arab imperialist ideology was and is a sin and a crime.
All that will unravel and bring disaster.
It is unravelling now.
About Dadasaheb Torne the wikipedia writes:
“Ram Chandra Gopal “Dadasaheb” Torne रामचंद्र गोपाळ “दादासाहेब” तोरणे (13 April 1890 – 19 January 1960) was the first Indian to make an Indian-language feature film, as established by an advertisement in The Times of India of 25 May 1912.
He is also considered the “Father of Indian cinema”.
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“Ram Chandra Gopal Torne was born on 13 April 1890 Saraswat Brahmin family. in Malwan village, on the Western Indian Konkan coast near Mumbai. Following his father’s death, the young boy and his mother were asked to leave the house by his uncle and they were forced to live in poverty.
At the age of 10 or 11, and with only four years of formal education behind him, Torne dropped out of school and headed to Mumbai. Once there, he was employed by the Cotton Green Electrical Company, where he learned basic electrical installation and instrument repair.He made 17 movies: 3-Hindi, 8-Marathi and remaining 6-Hindi+Marathi. A documentary film, Akshar-Olakh, was produced for the “Saksharata Prasar Mandal”. This film was produced more a social commitment than for entertainment or business. The last movie of Saraswati Cinetone was Aawaj, released on 22 May 1942, starring Maya Banerji, Swarnalata and Waasti.
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Most of these movies and their sole copies were burnt. He had built a studio in Pune, where now Chakan Oil Mill stands. In 1947, when he had gone out of town for some work, his colleague and friend, stole all the Movie-Cameras and other expensive equipment and took it to Pakistan. The religious fanaticism won over the decades old friendship. This shook him badly and had his first heart attack in 1947. But his mother helped him come out of this agony and loss. His career was now over after such a blow from someone he knew and worked with for several decades.”
Mrs. Bose is trying to put her personal spin on Manto to paint a picture of Manto that he was not. Expressing personal account is not writing history. A true historian writes history without bias. She has too many skeletons in her closet.
Good blog about manto.
http://pehlablog-zafaryaab.blogspot.com/2012/05/blog-post_11.html?showComment=1337686725748#c7439506265142166213
NC,
I apologize for my late post. I agree with you that the hagiography of the Gandhi family has drowned everyone else, including Subhash Chandra Bose. Though it is not fair to conclude that he has become an unknown figure. His influence has receded in the background primarily because he died young and as (God willing) our country becomes stronger democratically, and our leaders more and more stupid, Nehru’s stature will grow even more. You have seen how Ambedkar is now spoken of as a Prophet in the league of Mohammed and Jesus!
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Bose is a tragic figure. And most of us in our late teens and early 20s have gone through a period of hero worshiping him and abusing Gandhi and co. I was also one such admirer. But as more and more details about him come to light, we know, as he may have well known, that he made a fatal choice in opting for help from the Nazi Germany. We cannot associate him with fascism since this philosophy was not well understood then. Even Churchill said something to the effect of witnessing a crime that has no name. But Bose’s later writings do reveal a very authoritarian streak. He had admiration for Mussolini and Hitler. In that sense, I feel somewhat relieved that he died young and like a soldier. Who knows what may have happened had he lived.
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With regard to Jalal’s thesis, I called it radical because in the context of which it was suggested. Let’s not forget that on both the sides of the border, we have been accustomed to different narratives. Pakistanis’ version of their country’s origins and the accompanying myth making is even more stupendous. We have heard of Indus man and Saraswati Man and what not. I have read her book and with exception of some passages of obvious admiration of her hero, it’s a very well argued thesis. We must not forget that in the years before Partition, Jinnah’s demand was understood as a bargaining ploy by a lot of his contemporaries. It’s true that they were also guessing at the end of the day. As a player who kept his cards close to his chest, Jinnah kept his opponents in dark. The truth may never be known. I am sure it lay somewhere in the middle. It’s quite conceivable that even Jinnah’s ideas were forming as he went along with his maximalist position. What a lot of his opponents disagreed with was his use of religion as a tool. He can definitely be criticized as having insufficient knowledge about his flock. He seemed to be astonishingly unaware of the havoc that his constituents were capable of. No one but only a very naive and secluded politician could have expressed surprise when the demand for veiling women and sharia came up in ML meetings. In that sense, Azad knew his constituents very well. He warned precisely of what happened later(We are not talking about the interview but his book).
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Coming back to Nehru who is blamed by a lot of people for the Partition, I think that he should actually be lauded by us. He was not a mean historian and I am sure he would have known that no amount of myth making could hide his role in the Partition. I think it was a fantastic piece of realpolitik and exceptional timing. If the accompanying blood bath hadn’t occurred, Nehru would be considered an even greater leader. Only the most idealistic fool would have dreamed that the arrangement suggested would have worked. More than anyone else, Ambedkar himself had laid down the pitfalls of such a shaky arrangement. But who could have belled the cat? Only the rash, impetuous and arrogant sounding Nehru could have done that.
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“under somewhat lackadaisical chairmanship of Amartya Sen who is much more invested in Nalanda.”
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Well I am sure you would agree that it’s only fair. We need him there.
I am not sure why anyone would term Manto as “reactionary”!!! I think people attach too much importance to self-styled analysts. Manto may have been a writer but he was also a writer par excellence with a perspicacity beyond the reach of mere mortals. One only needs to read his letter to the US president to realize that he was far ahead of his contemporaries in knowing the future.
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The problem is not with Manto but with the Islamic republic of Pakistan. Please note that he is always mentioned as an Urdu writer not a Muslim writer. That is because an undivided India with a mixed cultural milieu was a central prop to his stories and characters. How can you write about the brutality of Sikh gangs when you don’t have them! Of course that he touched upon shocking issues must have made him unpalatable to our pious folks across the borders. I remember reading “Boo” or “The smell” when I was 12-13 and the warm frisson of excitement running across my spine. There was no vulgarity but a pure beautiful sensual feeling. In that sense, he is in the proud league of Banabhatt and Kalidaas. I won’t be surprised, however, that 500 years on, he would be paraded as a Muslim intellectual like Averroes. Who knows even Rushdie may get the same treatment.
In the cauldron of Pakistan everything gets cooked into becoming a stinking goo of religious fascism in the service of the arabs, their god and their bootlickers.
No one foresaw what is going to become of Pakistan. No one could have foreseen it. No one has the ability to see through divine punishments – neither their beginning nor their end.
Pakistan is the divine punishment on mankind by a sadist cynical god – no matter which religion or sect claims this god (who is not/never the one and only god) as its very own.
Human intelligence is kept limited by this god – but humans waste their senses blaming each other or making heroes out of one another.
When Zia ul Hak walked as a young man from east panjab to west panjab – who could have foreseen that this man in this goo-cauldron will be a disaster for mankind?
Hitler’s photos as a child hardly allow us to recognize the face of a killer in them.
It is not hard to understand why Manto wrote what he wrote in his post-1947 years. The 1947 division of the British India had dismantled his “world”. He was not a politician or a leader. He had no solution or vision for the political and economic future of the Muslims of the post-colonial British India. Nor it should be expected of him. His pre-independence work is remarkably different and freshening as compared to his post-independence work. Being a sensitive, rather a fragile person and a writer, he was shocked by the horror of the 1947 killings carried out by the Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims of British India. He reacted to the 1947 events and wrote stories to express his dismay. He was a writer par excellence but there is no need to make him a prophet or a god. He was an Urdu writer and is known as such. In Pakistan it would be nonsensical to call him as ‘Muslim writer’. Are Faiz, Faraz, Qasmi, Kazmi, Zaidi, Shafai of Pakistan “Muslim writers”. The problem is not with Manto. Manto is Manto and nothing else. The problem is with those who have “used” him and continue to use him to support their personal anti-Pakistan position and biases. The fact he wrote about the “partition” makes him a perfect tool for the anti-partition crowd. How sad that a non-political writer such as him is being used for the political propaganda.
BM
so you think that Manto was not reactionary? cant agree with that. he was extraordinarily reactionary. it was the one thing that defined him. but i am not sure if that should ever be considered a criticism. he wrote even his fiction related to the happenings around him. there was an urgent immediacy in the plot, scenario and the characters he used. i cant remember a single story that was not based loosely in his troubled times, even ones like boo, that had nothing to do with partition, were not stories of a bygone era. ‘Boo’ was a reaction to his own sexuality and in that sense his writings about sex are a personal reaction. his ‘reactions’ to partition are priceless even today as a prism through which we can understand the times.
but perhaps the climax of his reaction came some time in 1948 when, as a result of what Shyam, his best friend said to him( Shyam and Manto heard a story of gore perpetrated by Muslims narrated by a Sikh family. Shyam was enraged. later Manto asked him,” so you feel like killing me?” and Shyam said ,” not now. but i might have then.” after hearing this Manto decided that if his best friend could kill him, then India is not the place for him. it was a reaction so sudden that his friends were shocked. he left for Karachi by a steamer the day after that. nothing anyone said could change his mind. then when he went to Pakistan he realized he made a blunder. he wrote to Ismat Chughtai asking her to arrange for his transport back to India.
everything Manto did was a spontaneous reaction to his surroundings and therefore his writings were too.
even in the letters i did not spot any statement of remarkable prescience. rather, they wore a look of a bitter crone complaining about her lot to a figment of her imagination. there was a sardonic humour laced with hopeless pathos about them that was chilling, but i thought that they too were more in the nature of reactions rather than in depth analyses.
Manto reacted. but he reacted in a manner with which few can. not through just rage or just sorrow, but through a brilliant short story.
Fingolfin,
Look up the meaning of “reactionary”. It would have saved you a lot of time..
BM
hahaha! yup my bad. so i’ve been living under a misconception for quite some time now. one of those words where you think you know the meaning because you could figure it out so you never bothered to check. haha thanks anyway.
BM
ok now that post is just plain embarrassing. good thing we are doing nom-de-plumes here…
BM
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This is a post on Manto and my reference to Bose was only in connection with Sugata Bose’s book. But since you mention Bose somewhat at length, especially the “authoritarian streak” in his writings, let me just add the following lines to the discussion.
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It’s true that while in Europe Bose developed a liking for the administrative efficiency in Germany and Italy. But he was not a racist and the ideas on the purity of blood etc made him call Hitler “stark mad” in private conversations. Bose’s jewish friend Kitty Kurti, whom he presciently advised to flee to America rather than to Prague, later recollected his “deep contempt for the Nazis”.
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His admiration for one-party rule as in Germany, Italy, or Soviet Russia was keeping in mind India’s massive problems; huge problems such as caste discrimination, class injustice, the need for economic modernization, etc. – would not be efficiently solved without intervention of the state ruled by a single party for some length of time. This is exactly what Nehru did, ruled India with authoritarian streak, the single party being the Congress Party.
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I said Gandhi-Nehru-dominated academic and political discourse in India has shunted Bose out and this is true. Gandhi himself launched his own little inner party non-cooperation when Bose defeated Sitaramaya in ’39. Bose, the elected President of INC wrote Nehru, the fellow socialist, a long letter asking support to run the party and was royally ignored with a cursory acknowledgment. In the power politics of the Congress Party then (as now) he was above the muck and resigned. Since then, in the history of India’s independence with Gandhi, Nehru, and the “bad boy” Jinnah, the specter of Bose has been hanging like an embarrassment.
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You have probably given a little too much credit to Nehru for the “fantastic piece of realpolitik” in rejecting the Cabinet Mission Plan with “exceptional timing”. The fact is, he was by nature indecisive and used to make up his mind only at the last moment. (He was once chided by Bose for this, “When a crisis comes you often do not succeed in making up your mind one way or the other – with the result that to the public you appear as if you are riding two horses”). Had it not been his life-long loyalty to Gandhi for political survival (despite his own instincts being closer to Bose), Nehru would have been another also-ran in the history of INC. He was also full of empty idealism, somewhat vacuous, which proved disastrous to his foreign policy especially to China. This too was seen early by Bose and he minced no words in another letter, “Frothy sentiments and pious platitudes do not make foreign policy”. Interestingly, despite ideological differences Bose never quite cut ties with Gandhi but he never forgave Nehru for deserting him in his times of crisis.
to PMA
You write: “How sad that a non-political writer such as him is being used for the political propaganda.”
So you want to use him for your pro-pakistan, islamofascist, islamic imperialist-arrogant, separatist-superiorist politics.
The love-cum-glorification of killing is ingrained in islam. Even your Mohammad said that somehow. Did Manto not know that? He did. What surpised him was that the hindus were now retaliating (although not successfully enough).
Fingolfin,
Just kidding.
It’s ok man. It happens. I cannot recall how many such faux pas I have committed over the years. As for “reactionary”, if it’s any consolation, a more illustrious commentator, a veritable primer on the Persian, Moghul, and Pakistani etiquette has fallen for the same error. So you are in an august company.
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“even in the letters i did not spot any statement of remarkable prescience.”
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Manto’s “letters to Uncle Sam” are quite extraordinary. You are young and so have no excuse for such laziness.
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“‘Boo’ was a reaction to his own sexuality and in that sense his writings about sex are a personal reaction.”
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That is only scratching the surface. If you can enjoy sensuality as an aesthetic experience, you would understand what he is trying to say. For example: when we go to Khajuraho or the Temples at Puri, I highly doubt anyone of us has the urge to masturbate or try out one of those positions there and then. It’s a sketch of an artist luxuriating in his own experience, but not as a means to get by a lazy afternoon but a recollection of an aesthetic experience. It may well have been just a figment of imagination. It’d be just the same.
NC,
Your points about the conflict between Bose and Gandhi are pretty well known and universally acknowledged as a not-so-shining-hour of Gandhi even by the die-hard Gandhi enthusiasts.
I don’t think anyone has ever accused Bose of being a racist or being in cahoots with Hitler’s pogrom of the Jews. But it’d be hard to believe that he had no idea of what Hitler was doing, especially when even in India, knowledgeable people knew what was going on. I don’t know if you have read his writings of that period but I was not impressed by his ideas about the one-party government that you are talking about. I didn’t come back with the feeling that his version of one party rule coincided with Nehru’s vision. Maybe in technicality but the similarity ends there. It seemed militarily nationalistic.
I agree with you that the Gandhi-Nehru version has drowned everything else. But that has happened with so many others. Shastri hardly gets any due. Had ’75 not happened, JP would have died in oblivion. It’s just the way history works. Bose fell on the wrong side. That is a fact. We can admire his sincerity, his ambition, his charisma, his intellectual breadth, but on that one score, I think Nehru outpaced him. Maybe it was loyalty towards Gandhi that kept him back but even from his writings of that time, he makes it pretty clear that he had nothing but disgust for the Nazis. The bottom line is that as a shrewd politician you have to know your ground. The treatment of Bose after his victory as the congress president was shameful but I thought he should have expected that. He saw numerous examples before him. I wasn’t particularly impressed by his act of bringing it to such a pass. That’s not decisiveness. What’s the point of a victory when you cannot convince the strongest cabal to back you? Jinnah, Ambedkar, etc. had been shunted out. Why would his treatment be any different? Congress was a ruthless machine then. It is a ruthless machine now. It’s in Congress’ DNA.
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Nehru’s blunders with respect to China are well known. But on the whole, for the indecisive man that you paint him to be, he was remarkably decisive when it came to dealing with Pakistan and others. I just think as a new country he didn’t want India to get embroiled with China so soon.
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There is another subtle reason why with time, Bose may actually suffer less importance. This year, for example, the rascals didn’t even mark his birthday. And this has nothing to do with him. It has to do with his flock that has totally appropriated him. Like it or not, he suffers from coming from Bengal. That has made any sort of critical study about him next to impossible. I remember a few years ago, someone wrote that Bose was not married when he had his daughter. Of course, that idiot didn’t know what he/she was getting into. Promptly half of Calcutta went into apoplectic rage. Frothing at mouth politicians, poets, and what not came out denouncing that hapless guy. When something like that happens, people automatically start losing interest in that subject. It’s just not worth the trouble. You don’t hear baniyas going into an overdrive when something about Gandhi comes out or the Pandits burning buses when someone insinuates something about Nehru. Ideally, someone like Bose should be a national treasure but then he should be open to critical study by everyone. The intense navel gazing public of Bengal has made it next to impossible. I know you may not like hearing it but it may explain some of the reasons behind his declining importance.
Talk of present and future.
Past is passed.
What problems in year 2012 and what solutions?
Islam, new forms of fascism (islam is both old and new in this fascism context), overpopulation, ecological degradation, slow breakdown of the court system, low quality education, middle class in squeeze etc.
Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah, Bose – all dead and gone.
BM
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One can write long on any of these issue but it will be a waste of time. Speculations about Bose are everywhere, most of them not serious. This is why I said Sugata Bose’s work is significant. You are right though he was military nationalistic (Bhagat Singh, for instance, was close to him) but also a brilliant organizer. The year he was Congress President for one full term he ran a practical parallel government, with policies and committees for most aspects that Gandhi gave little thought to. Unlike Nehru, he gave utmost importance to planning and attention to detail, qualities that could have saved us much of the partition bloodbath.
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Anyway, this is a post on Manto so let’s not digress. One final comment though, Bengal is the last Indian state where having a daughter before marriage (especially if you are married to the mother anyway) would be a grave cause for controversy. Even some of Tagore’s relationships are discussed, people have written books about them. There was recently a film based on Ray’s extramarital relationship with a well-known (living) actress. On social issues Calcutta feels different compared to rest of the country. I don’t know which controversy you are talking about, but I never heard about it.
BM
ok i’m dying to know who this the faux pas man was. please tell, then it really will be some cosolation!
as far as the letters are concerned, since you think they were that good, i sure will give them another read
NC,
What you have written about Bose is 100% true. And that is why his leaving Congress was such a tragedy and short sighted. Just imagine what would have happened had he not left. In some ways, the decline of influence of Bengal in national politics began at that point. He could have added a significant centrifugal counterweight to the Nehru doctrine. Who knows we might have been spared this day when the entire congress is singing hosannas of Rahul baba and Sonia ji.
Fingofiln,
You can check for the other person who had asked the same question about “reactionary”. I bet he has fallen for the same trap.
The “reactionary” controversy. This is when one is reminded that English is indeed a foreign language for Indians and Pakistanis. In Indo-Pak English, however both Fingofiln and PMA understood each other very well. Some solace.
Tilsim Mian Sahab (June 1, 2012 at 1:22 am) has fallen into the same pit others have fallen before him. As Fingolfin has said in his (May 16, 2012 at 9:05 am) opening statement, “the progressive writers may never have completely owned him but ….”
In the fifties Lahore was a hotbed of the Progressive Writers Movement. Mian Iftekhar-ud-din of The Pakistan Times and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Dr. M.D. Tasir, Saif-ud-din Saif, Imtiaz Ali Taj, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi just to name few were the flagbearers of the Movement at that time. Their literary styles and the subject matters were considered Progressive. Overthrow of the colonial yoke and promise of a new Dawn. Free Verse and Abstractionism. Manto on the other hand, even though a literary ‘shock jock’ of his time was never considered a Progressive Writer by his peers. His story-telling literary style, his continuous lament about the loss of the ‘Ganga-Jamni Tehzibe’ kept him out of the Progressive Movement and even in his lifetime he was labelled as a Reactionary Writer. If writing about the dark side of the society makes one a Liberal Writer then perhaps he was one. But the Progressivism and the Liberalism, in the literary sense are not one and the same. Therefore it is only befitting on his 100th Birthday Anniversary to ask the question again: Was Manto a Reactionary Writer?