KARACHI: Writers say Manto has no equal
Presiding over the seminar, noted playwright and author Asad Mohammad Khan said Manto lived in a harsher time than we are in. Extremist elements of his era entangled him in a web of problems. He was dubbed as a pornographer, lawsuits were instituted against him, and the doors of earning a living were slammed shut on him. But despite the heavy odds, he kept writing.
Citing an example of official bias against him, Asad said a university student, who used to frequent him some two decades ago, had told him that his professor had stopped him and other students from doing research on Manto, arguing that he was only a pornographer and there was no use wasting time on him.
He said writing was the craft Manto earned his bread and butter with, and we all know how his publishers manipulated him. “This is a part of our literary history,” he added.
Asad said his predecessor fiction writers did not have velvet and flower wreaths to sit on and write fiction. But Manto particularly travelled through an economically blazing region and created a flower garden with words that would keep its fragrance fresh as along the Urdu language was alive.
Insisting that Krishan Chandar and Bedi were jealous of Manto’s genius, writer Ahmed Hamesh said the fictional characters of the two had died during their own lifetimes. Krishan’s characters died because his writings were composed of 95 per cent ‘progressive requested formulas’ and 5 per cent ‘popular poetical prose’ which did not allow his own style to flourish.
He said Bedi made Muslim characters the subject of his ridicule. “Under the influence of his origin of Hindu-Sikh compound prejudice, he was openly biased against Muslims, which he also used to target Manto.”
On the other hand, Hamesh said, Manto created his characters in the backdrop of the 1947 violence and, without taking into consideration their ethnic and religious division, he addressed their human instinct. That was why the characters of his stories survived him by 20 years, before they begun dying one by one.
Illustrating his point, he cited an example of characters in the story titled ‘Thanda gosht’ (cold flesh). He said the wife of a Sikh slew him because he had turned impotent. “If it were a Hindu, Sikh, Christian or Parsi, girl she would have done the same thing on finding out her husband’s impotence,” he added. He said in the story ‘Khol dau’ (Open it), both groups of men who kidnapped and raped a girl called Sakina and those who recovered her were Muslims. “If Manto had the slightest of prejudice, he could have easily become a Naseem Hijazi in favour of the Muslim volunteers.”
He said the whores and pimps found in Manto’s stories had died soon after his death. However, he referred to Saugandi, a prostitute, and Khushia, a pimp in Manto’s story titled ‘Hatak’.
He said Saugandi’s institution had been transformed over the years and women of her ilk now lived in the upscale housing societies of Karachi, Delhi and Lahore. He said those women had several cars parked in their driveways, invested in stock exchanges, banks and even in the ship-breaking industry.
When Khushia the pimp swapped his place, he could be seen in high government offices, and with sheer sycophancy he scaled the ladder reaching up to chief ministers, governors, prime ministers and presidents.
Firdaus Haider, in her long-drawn speech, reminiscent of a play serial she had written for a TV channel that dragged on for 100 episodes, said Manto’s name would remain at the top of the list of those writers who did not let hypocrisy tarnish their names. She said Manto’s writings were not only for his own era, but would have a meaning for every period.
Writer Parveen Soomro said Manto was a bright passage in the history of Urdu fiction and all writers should be proud of him.
Prof Jamal Naqvi, Irfan Abidi, Anwar Kaif and some other writers also attended the seminar.