Saadat Hasan Manto

Saadat Hasan Manto (Punjabi,, ; 11 May 1912 – 18 January 1955) was a Pakistani writer, playwright and author born in Ludhiana, who was active in British India and later, after the 1947 partition of India, in Pakistan.

Writing mainly in Urdu, he produced 22 collections of short stories, a novel, five series of radio plays, three collections of essays and two collections of personal sketches.

His best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics.

Saadat Hassan Manto was born in Paproudi village of Samrala, in the Ludhiana district of the Punjab, India in a Muslim family of barristers on 11 May 1912.

He belonged to a Kashmiri trading family that had settled in Amritsar in the early nineteenth century and taken up the legal profession.

His father, Khwaja Ghulam Hasan, was a session judge of a local court.

His mother, Sardar Begum had a Pathan ancestry and was the second wife of his father.

Ethnically a Kashmiri he was proud of his roots.

In a letter to Pandit Nehru he suggested that being 'beautiful' was the second meaning of being 'Kashmiri'.

He received his early education at a Muslim High School at Amritsar where he twice failed his matriculation examination.

In 1931 he took admission at the Hindu Sabha College but dropped out after first year due to poor results.

The big turning point in his life came in 1933, at age 21, when he met Abdul Bari Alig, a scholar and polemic writer who encouraged him to find his true talents and read Russian and French authors.

Bari also encouraged Manto to translate Victor Hugo's The Last Day of a Condemned Man into Urdu which was later published by Urdu Book Stall, Lahore as Sarguzasht-e-Aseer (A Prisoner's Story).

He then translated Oscar Wilde’s Vera into Urdu in 1934.

He published his first original story in Urdu, Tamasha (Spectacle) under a pseudonym in Abdul Bari Alig’s Urdu newspaper Khalq (Creation).

It was based on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

During this period he contributed to the daily newspaper Musawat, (Equality) and Ehsan (Kindness), both published from Amritsar.

He also edited and translated Russian and French stories for the journals Alamgir and Humayun.

On Bari’s encouragement these Russian stories were then published in Lahore under the title, Rusi Afsanay (Russian Stories).

The collection included stories from Tolstoy, Gorky and Chekhov and two of Manto’s original stories, Tamasha (Spectacle) and Mahigir (Fisherman).

This heightened enthusiasm pushed Manto to pursue graduation at Aligarh Muslim University, which he joined in July 1934, and soon got associated with the literary circle who would later become members of the Indian Progressive Writers' Association (IPWA).

It was here that he met writer Ali Sardar Jafri and found a new spurt in his writing.

His second story, "Inqlaab Pasand", was published in Aligarh magazine in March 1935.

His education at Aligarh was cut short when nine months into joining the university he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

He spent the next three months at a sanatorium at Batote in Kashmir to regain his health and then returned home to Amritsar.

After a brief stay in Amritsar, Manto moved to Lahore in search of employment and joined the newspaper Paras (Philosopher’s Stone).

In 1936, at Lahore, he published his first collection of original short stories Atish Paray (Nuggets of Fire).

In late 1936, he moved to Bombay when he received an invitation to edit the weekly Mussawir (Painter).

In Bombay, Manto started his work as an editor of Mussawir along with Nazir Ludhianvi and the magazine Samaj (Society).

He also started to write dialogues and scripts for the Hindi film industry, working first for the Imperial Film Company and then for Saroj Movietone.

His films during this period include the 1940 film Apni Nagariya.

He wrote many radio plays including Ao Radio Sunen (Come, Let's Listen to Radio) and Qalopatrah ki maut (Cleopatra's Death).

In Bombay, he also came in contact with Progressive Writers' Association and became friendly with progressive writers like Krishan Chander, Rajinder Singh Bedi and Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi.

In 1940 he published his second collection of short stories Manto Ke Afsanay (Stories of Manto) from Lahore.

In August 1940 he was dismissed from the editorship of Musawwir and started working for another magazine called Karwan (Caravan) at a lower salary.

Dissatisfied in his work, he applied to Krishan Chander for a job with All India Radio in Delhi.

He is best known for his stories about the partition of India, which he opposed, immediately following independence in 1947.

Manto's most notable work has been archived by Rekhta.

Manto was tried for obscenity six times; thrice before 1947 in British India, and thrice after independence in 1947 in Pakistan, but was never convicted.

He is acknowledged as one of the finest 20th century Urdu writers and is the subject of two biographical films: the 2015 film Manto, directed by Sarmad Khoosat and the 2018 film Manto, directed by Nandita Das.