Manto: Grey Stories, Histories and Herstories - Mainstreaming the Subaltern

Introduction

This paper attempts a cultural analysis of Saadat Hassan Manto’s (1912-1955) story-
scape and the intriguing multidimensional characters populating it. Manto’s stories
written in the two decades of 1930s to 1950s offer a rich source for understanding
how political compulsions impact the social and economic lives of individuals,
especially in the transitional period of transfer of power when the British were in
the process of winding up their administrative infrastructure after creating the two
separate countries of India and Pakistan. Manto’s writings reflect the complexities
of the period as the boundaries blur between the mainstream and the subaltern and
what emerges is a dense grey zone in terms of ideologies, identities and cultural
spaces. This can be related to the holocaust testimonies which Primo Levi (1986),
an Auschwitz survivor, describes as “the grey zone”, which is poorly defined, and
“possess an incredibly complicated internal structure and contains within itself
enough to confuse our need to judge.”

Nagappan (2005), feels that this grey zone is particularly suitable for the analysis of
communal violence in South Asia. The political and social uncertainties of the
period affect the mainstream and the subaltern both in such profound ways that
very often, there is an overlapping of the social layers and we find parallel tracks
adjoining each other with seamless homogeneity. As these hybrid characters fight
their own confusions between sanity and insanity and empowerment and
disempowerment, fact and fiction join hands to offer compelling accounts of people
uprooted by geography and robbed of history. Though Manto’s characters belong to
the fractured sub-continent, their voices and concerns reflect the issues relevant to
various similar chapters of human history. As Singh and Schmidt (2000), say, “to
think transnationally about literature, history and culture requires the study of the
evolution of hybrid identities with nation states and diasporic identities across
national boundaries.”

This paper takes Manto as one of the voices representing the subaltern and suggests
that unlike the contention of Spivak (1988), the subaltern does not require the
legitimacy accorded to its existence and ability to speak, to post-colonial analysis.
In fact, Manto’s stories seem to raise doubts at our understanding of subaltern and
mainstream as distinct socio-political classes. Spivak’s (1988) entire argument of
the subaltern’s questionable ability to speak for itself rests on her analysis of the sati
system prevalent in medieval India, (which she curiously locates in British India,
Banik (2009)), and her usage of the absence of the voice of a woman representing a
sati, as an indicator of the absence as well as inability of the subaltern to speak on
account of patriarchy as well as colonialism, Nayar (2010). As Banik (2009) argues,
subalterns are not unique to the post-colonial period and nor can they be reduced
to a homogeneous group characterized by only their marginalization. Rebellions
and movements by the oppressed of any class or caste have made themselves visible
in all historical periods; pre-colonial, colonial as well as post-colonial. As Loomba
(1998), points out, the very fact that some women did escape the ritual of Sati and
did speak of their ordeal, shows the possibility as well as the ability of the subaltern
to speak. As Banik (2009) observes, vernacular literature in India abounds in
accounts of subaltern experiences with powerful and critically acclaimed writers
like Prem Chand (1880-1936) taking the lead.

While writers like Prem Chand and Phanishwar Nath Renu(1921-1977) spoke for the
exploited castes and classes from rural India, Manto locates his stories in grey
geographies; rural extending into urban, towns merging into cities and ghettos
adjoining secular neighborhood, and constructs stories about diverse subaltern
experiences where the subaltern status of the characters is as much a function of
feudal power equations as it is of the colonial power structures. Moreover, due to
the rare possibility of transparent well defined class borders, the characters of
Manto enter and exit mainstream as well as subaltern spaces with a laissez-faire
ease which only enhances the grey hue of his ideology as well as constructs.

Grey Zone: Ideology

Manto’s life as well as his literature reflects his natural affinity to grey zones in
terms of ideology, demographies of his stories and the issues he confronts. Thus, he
constructs a fluid intellectual territory where conventional norms of categorization
and value based evaluations fail to be effective. What has confounded purists and
critics further is Manto’s sharp characterization which makes the protagonists in
his writings recognizable, sometimes in our own neighborhoods and sometimes in
the by-lanes of our cities and towns not frequented by us, and yet familiar to us.
Thus, it is not possible to dismiss either his characters or his concerns, as
imaginary. Unlike the assertions of Spivak (1988), Manto’s characters, mainstream
and subaltern, speak; forcefully and fearlessly, sometimes through words and
sometimes through actions. Further, they refuse to accept the boundaries of
mainstream and subaltern and the inherent power equations attached to them.
They question the principles and processes of categorization and almost always
break traditional moulds of expectations from individuals supposedly belonging to
the given class.

Surprisingly, this makes Manto as well his stories closer to life and regular flesh and
blood people living life by normative standards, making ethical as well as unethical
choices, showing tenacity as well as vulnerability in testing times, resisting as well
as succumbing to larger macro forces not of their making. In doing so, the
protagonists and through them Manto, reflects the grey zone we inhabit, leaving us
to use our own means to derive conclusions. As the architect of this construct,
Manto refuses to give us his verdict, adding to the intensity of the grey shade. As
Nagappan (2005), observes, post-independence fictions like Manto’s short stories,
Amitav Ghosh’s (1988) ‘The Shadow Lines’, Rohinton Mistry’s (1995) ‘A Fine
Balance’ and Rushdie’s (1983) ‘Shame’ are ambivalent texts and “fictions in the
guise of history” which give voice to victims of “inhuman violation” and make the
audience sensitive to their own responsibility for social good.
Manto’s discomfort with tight ideological loyalties can be seen from his gradual
distancing away from the All India Progressive Writer’s Association (PWA), known
as the Anjuman Tarraqi Pasand Mussanafin-e-Hind, the organization of writers
writing in the liberal-left politico-cultural framework, Pradhan(1985). The intended
orientation of the organization was spelt out by Munshi Premchand, the first
president of PWA, in his inaugural address where he exhorted writers to give voice
to the ‘downtrodden, oppressed and exploited – individuals or groups – and to
advocate their cause’,( Pradhan (1985), Coppola(1974)). PWA, which had the
support of Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, Mulkraj Anand and Sajjad Zaheer, among others,
adopted a revolutionary manifesto which was political as well as cultural.
‘Progressive’, as defined by PWA, was a body of literature that was supposed to,
“‘deal with the basic social backwardness and political subjection.”
,(Namboodiripad (1986). It was further elaborated that,” All that drags us down to
passivity, inaction and unreason, we reject as reactionary. All that arouses in us the
critical spirit, which examines institutions and customs in the light of reason, which
helps us to act, to organise our selves, to transform, we accept as progressive”,
(Namboodiripad (1986)). The second conference added ‘sexual libertinism’ to the
list of reactionary forces that had to be fought. (Namboodiripad (1986)).

Though Manto was initially welcomed to the fold, the ‘the politics of bodies and
sexuality’ as themes of his stories was vehemently frowned upon (Gopal (2005)).
Nagappan(2005) also notes of the ‘disgust’ felt by the members of PWA over the so
called obscenity present in his works like ‘Khol Do’ and a marked absence of interest
in themes of social uplift, as noted by Flemming(1979). Sajjad Zahir (1905-1973), the
noted Marxist thinker-writer, in fact found his work anti humanistic and not
capable of offering hope for positive change, (Nagappan(2005)). The insistence on
ideological strictness, the narrow definitions of what was ‘progressive’, and
intolerance of themes of sexual behaviour as pornographic and reactionary led to
Manto’s vociferous defence of his writings and his rejection of PWA style of
activism, only to replace it with his own peculiar style of activism where he co-opts
readers as part of the struggle and dares them to face the deflation of their popular
assumptions, (Nagappan(2005)). Manto, therefore belongs to the grey zone
ideologically, pro-left, distinctively following the progressive realism genre, (
Prakash (2009)), but not complete left like Premchand, (Das (1995)) and, certainly
at variance with the accepted left definitions of leftist literature, ((Namboodiripad
(1986)), Coppola (1981)).

Grey Zone: Constructs

Manto’s writings, both in thematic terms and as manifest characters give expression
to his grey ideology where the polarities of right and wrong, ethical and unethical,
communal and secular diffuse in disturbing collages and challenge the reader to
retain his/her hitherto unchallenged construction of morality. Here, we find a
definitive departure from others writings highlighting regional voices and
subaltern concerns of rural India. For instance, Manto does not take a clear stand
on any ideological issue like Premchand, in the sense that there is no unambiguous
condemnation of capitalism one finds in Premchand’s writings like Kafan, Godan,
Mahajani Sabhyata and the unfinished Mangal Sutra (Das (1995)). Manto’s
characters, be it the tonga driver Mangu of ‘Naya Kanoon’, or Mustaqim, the
powerless, passive and guilty narrator of ‘Mahmuda’, Manto doesnot jump either to
defend or condemn either the characters or the social environments they emerge
from. The reader has to decide whether to sympathise with the restless Mangu for
his imperfect legal interpretattions or with the self-imposed inaction of Mustaqim,
in contrast to Ghisu and Budhiya of Premchand’s ‘Kafan’ where the subaltern is
clearly a subaltern even though layers of relativity make Budhiya, the dead wife,
much more disempowered compared to Ghisu, her husband who shamelessly
exploits her death as a pretext to collect money for her shroud, only to ends up
feasting with the money (Banik (2009)) . Ghisu and Budhia are both subalterns
mercilessly exploited by the feudalistic rural economy. The reader ends up with
clear conclusions regarding the victims and the exploitative system. This clarity
becomes an elusive ingredient in Manto’s writings.

When we contrast Premchand’s Kafan, with Manto’s ‘Thanda Gosht’, or ‘Khol Do’,
we end up unclear of the status of the characters. The horror of the central
protagonist, Isher Singh, in ‘Thanda Gosht’, on discovering that the girl he was
about to rape is a dead body, and the subsequent struggle with his inner self leaves
us wondering about who has suffered more; the victim or the victimiser, or the
reader. The pattern is repeated with more ferocity in ‘Khol Do’ when the almost
dead Sakina readies herself mechanically for another sexual assault and fact is
totally lost on her equally hapless father who is overjoyed by the fact that she is alive.
The shock of the doctor witnessing Sakina uncover herself when all he had asked for
was the window to be opened, is actually the shock of the reader and that too at many
levels.

Sakina and her father, Sirajjuddin, are clearly representatives of the new subaltern
created by the country’s partition. But which place are they subalterns in? Are they
subalterns in India where they flee from or in Pakistan where they turn to, to pre-
empt their marginality in India? If they are part of mainstream in Pakistan, what
explains Sakina’s brutalisation? The realisation that Sakina is a victim of torture
perpetrated on her by men from her own community hits the reader hard, forcing a
stand from the reader about the blurring of boundaries between the convenient ‘us
and them’ categories. Manto’s mastery lies in the shocking endings of both ‘Thanda
Gosht’ and ‘Khol Do’ where he uses gender as an effective tool to explain the
heightened disability experienced by the women within a subaltern space. The dead
girl in ‘Thanda Gosht’ and Sakina in ‘Khol Do’, do not use words and yet testify to
two of the most forceful portrayals of subaltern marginality. The dead girl of
‘Thanda Gosht’ is not murdered along with her family and yet, her death due to the
shock of the collective killings of her family and her impending brutalisation make
her a bigger victim than her killed relatives. The reader is forced to acknowledge the
Isher Singh lurking in each one of us, manifesting itself in times of social turmoil
and stamping us in irrevocable ways. Our sympathies lie with both the dead girl and
Isher Singh, reduced to a dead life, dehumanised beyond redemption. Nagappan
(2005) thus reaches the disturbing conclusion that through the degradation of
victims and aggressors like, it seems that partition is the event from which South
Asia cannot recover.

If ‘Thanda Gosht’ and ‘Khol Do’ leave us benumbed, ‘Sorry’, leaves us wincing at the
‘casual murder and the equally casual apology for having killed the wrong man’,
(Bhalla (1997). The nameless assassin and the nameless victim plunge the reader in
the grey zone where identities become secondary and equally descriptive of the two
warring groups, in the sense that members of either community could be assassins
killing the innocent of their community, mistaking them as members of the other
community. Despite the attempt of translators like Khalid Hasan(1997) to
underplay the subtle yet unassailable applicability of stories like this to Hindus as
wells as Muslims, Manto’s voice remains harsh and loud in its indictment of
“Partition as a political act which trifled with the life, religion and culture of a
people.”, (Bhalla (1997)).

‘Babu Gopinath’ is yet another story where the reader is left to grapple with the
ambiguity surrounding the marriage of the prostitute Zeenat (Chatterjee and
Jegannathan (2000)). The reader is still grappling with the problem of
understanding Babu Gopinath’s ambivalent attitude towards Zeenat when the new
problem arises of placing Zeenat; for, the married Zeenat is as main stream as
Manto, who also happens as a character in the story, and is disgusted at Zeenat’s coy
avatar as a traditional bride. Clearly, like his ideology, Manto’s stories and
characters are grey.

This grey craft throws up a fine specimen in the form of Bhishan Singh of Manto’s
famous story ‘Toba Tek Singh’. Here what the reader faces is subversion of order
and complete chaos regarding the mainstream- subaltern boundaries. Manto
constructs a powerful story of the impact of India’s partition by taking us through
the supposedly insane world of lunatics in an asylum in the current Pakistan and
original India. As Bhishan Singh and other inmates question the logic of partition
and experience their alienation, despite their mental disability, the reader is forced
to acknowledge the sanity of their arguments. What emerges is perhaps the sharpest
sketch of subaltern characterisation where the dispossessed and disenfranchised
mentally disabled Bhishan Singh rejects the division of the country and the
subsequent loss of roots. His insistent question of the location of his native village
Toba Tek Singh and his unwillingness to accept apologetic answers along with his
nonsense utterings make it impossible to classify or judge him as sane or insane,
mainstream or subaltern. His construction of Toba Tek Singh in no-man’s land
between the borders of India and Pakistan and choice of death over compromised
life represents the depth to which Partition had affected the lives of people. The
continued popularity of this story is a pointer to the extent to which the reader
identifies with the protagonist and shares his anguish of victimhood. As
Pandey(1994) observes, the experience of Bhishan Singh is so close to social realism
that it can be regarded as historical writing.

Coming to the women characters created by Manto, the pride of place, as his most
memorable protagonists, belongs to women negotiating with remarkable dignity,
the subaltern niches they are pushed into, women who inhabit, what Kumar (1996)
terms as ,”the infernal under world invisible to the respectable society which
pretends ignorance of its existence.” Saugandhi of ‘Hatak’, Mahmuda of the story
with the same name, and Sultana of ‘Kali Shalwar’ are women in the flesh trade
devoid of the cultural elitism of Ruswa’s (1899) ‘tawaif’’1, ‘Umaro Jan Ada’. This is
in sharp contrast to what Shetty (1995) terms as “Indian nationalist discourse’s
production of woman: the allegorical figuration of the nation as a mother”. Manto’s
poor prostitutes are too caught up eking a living to nurture ambitions of the
warrior-mother figure of Bankim Chandra’s (1882) ‘Anandmath’. Even when Manto
bestows the softer glow of maternity on his women, it does not resemble Mehboob’s
(1957) Mother India2, but morphs into Stella Jackson, a widow running a brothel,
who becomes the moral compass and protector of not only the girls working for her,
but also the patrons visiting them. She is ‘mummy’ in her world and yields
enormous power over her so called children. Curiously, the ethics adopted by Stella
Jackson in this loose, dysfunctional subaltern family merit comparison with those
of Mehboob’s Mother India in terms of the upright mother refusing to submit to the
demands of an exploiting system, punishing erring children and upholding the
accepted moral code even at extreme personal cost.

Through these stories Manto challenges the foundation of family as an institution

founded on marriage and bloodlines. Saugandhi’s conversations with Madho, in
‘Hatak’ resemble a regular banter between spouses and the brothel becomes
another type of home. Zeenat of ‘Babu Gopinath’ sings Mirza Ghalib’s gazals with
the finesse of a courtesan and blushes like a virginal bride with equal ease. Sultana’s
encounter with Shanker in ‘Kali Shalwar’ and the reversal of roles whereby Shanker
demands to be paid by Sultana for she solicits his services, and the simultaneous
exhibition of cheating and loyalty at the end of the story stand out as exquisite
examples of Manto’s grey brand of ethics. The brothel-home-nation inhabited by
pimp-patron-lover-parent-spouse-child story-scapes of Manto clearly establish him
as a successful architect of grey zone, which neither subsumes nor excludes the
external world, but mirrors its complexities even as it subverts its accepted code of
ethics and subaltern and mainstream as categories do not become substitutes but
effortlessly overlap. Reading accounts of the numerous debates and court cases
surrounding Manto’s stories and his spirited and sarcastic defence of the themes
and vocabulary, (Gyan Prakash (2010)), show his deliberate efforts and deep
satisfaction at forcing into the mainstream consciousness, topics of patriarchal
propensity to exploit the women in particular and the weak in general, especially in
turbulent times.

Grey Conclusion
Manto’s appeal lies in his ability to force the readers out of their comfort zones and
question their own ethical standards. Thus Manto’s women reject the traditional
moulds of Ruswa’s ‘tavaif’, the courtesan cultivated in arts, Bankim Chandra’s
ascetic warrior women and also the vulnerable domesticity of the wife-mother in
stories of Premchand, Renu and similar writers. Manto’s women live unapologetic
lives negotiating patriarchy, colonialism and the subsequent marginality without
compromising on some core values they hold dear. Similarly, Manto’s men are not
one-dimensional villains or heroes but bundles of contradictions bearing the weight
of their ethical ambiguities and shaking the readers out of their stupor. What hits
the readers forcefully and had infuriated the purists and the left-liberals alike was
the clinical precision with which Manto presented his stories, almost like a surgeon
performing an autopsy, devoid of the disgust or discomfort felt by the observer-
reader. Curiously, this trait has also become the reason for his continued relevance
in our grey world. Manto compels us to recognise the subaltern existence and ethics
as very much mainstream and integral to our own lives. Even if the reader refuses
to own this, it becomes impossible not to acknowledge the existence of this grey
ethics as ethics, at variance with the widely accepted models, but ethics,
nonetheless. As Primo Levi (1986) says, the grey zone demands an examination of
our ‘Manichean tendency which shuns half-tints and complexities’.

Notes:
1 Tawaifs were courtesans,, professional entertainers , well trained in dance,

especially kathak; Hindustani classical music, particularly the genres of thumri,

dadra and gazal; poetry and the etiquettes and social grace of fine living. They were
patronised by the royals and the rich, as well as poets, musicians and artists, and
were comparable to the Geishas of Japan in terms of the elite status they enjoyed.
The tradition enjoyed popularity in the 18th and early 19th century and declined
thereafter due to the deliberate attempts of the British. Begum Samru, Moran
Sarkar and Umrao Jan Ada are some of the legendary names in this tradition.
2 Mother India is a classic 1957 Hindi film written and directed by Mehboob Khan,

with actress Nargis in the title role exemplifying a Goddess like icon of Indian
womanhood which itself stands for the struggles of the newly independent India.

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