Plagiarism Checker X - Report

Originality Assessment

11%
Overall Similarity

Date: Dec 19, 2024 Remarks: Moderate similarity Verify Report:

Matches: 401 / 3714 words detected, consider enhancing Scan this QR Code
Sources: 18 the document if necessary.

v 9.0.2 - WML 4
FILE - COPY OF LITERARY HISTORIES ASSESSMENT.PDF
“Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto. With him lie buried all the arts and mysteries of short story

writing…Under tons of earth he lies, wondering who of the two is the greater short story

writer: God or he” - Saadat Hasan Manto’s Epitaph written by him It is said that every

victory inevitably comes at a cost. Partition was the cost paid by the Indian subcontinent for

their independence from British imperialism. On 15th August, 1947, India attained

independence from British Rule after almost 200 years of struggle. While this

independence was awaited by the people of India, a horror was set ablaze that changed

the historic trajectory. The partition of the Indian subcontinent was announced into 8 a

Hindu majority India and a Muslim majority Pakistan. This brought out the hideous face of

British imperialism. Partition was the impact of the Divide and Rule Policy which they

dictated over British colonial India. The Divide and Rule Policy was the imperialist attempt

to segregate the masses based on their religious identities. While India declared itself

‘Secular’ in its constitution, Pakistan declared 11 itself as an Islamic Republic. Quite a

number of writers persuasively blame the British for the successive erosion of the shared

traditions. The divide of religious identities, made people ask themselves which box they fit

in. Partition is at the focus of the modern identity of many Indians and Pakistanis just like

the Holocaust is to the identity of Jews. The memory is branded in an immediate as well as

generational trauma for the large-scale violence witnessed. The killings of partition are

different from the holocaust as the latter was a horrible systematicity, designed and

instituted by one state while the former is marked by a spontaneous surge of anger and

grudge within communities. In fact, during the partition, the violence was more

personalised as the victimiser often knew the victim very closely and vice versa. At least

16 one million people were killed during the disruption of Partition in the North and

Northwest India and around fifteen million were forced out of their homes in the biggest

mass migration in history. There are no definitive numbers however it is estimated that

around 75,000 to 100,000 women were abducted, raped, or forced into marriage and

conversion. On the morning of 15th August, 1947, Saadat Hasan Manto looked on with

horror as communal violence erupted on the streets of his adopted home city, Bombay
[now Mumbai]. Born in 1912 in Punjab, Manto was one of the most controversial writers of

his age. Many of his best works were inspired by his time in Mumbai between 1936-1948

which he recalled as the happiest of his life. His works during this time portrayed a different

India, with all its ugliness and beauty. Manto masterfully captured the darkness of Bombay,

with his stories often focusing on a taboo and/or marginalised sector like the pimps,

gangsters, saloon madams and prostitutes living in a cramped system. He was unafraid to

write the grim and honest portrayal of the society in his stories, it can be said that he was

far ahead of his time. As a result of this, however, was him facing trial six times, for

obscenity 4 in his short stories. 3 Manto as a progressive South Asian writer was clearly

inspired by French and Russian leftists. In the early 1950s, Manto wrote essays titled

‘letters to Uncle Sam’. In these he rightly predicted the direction that Pakistan was to take

post partition. He was a cosmopolitan and a humanist who rejected narrow minded bigotry.

Post the announcement of partition, violence consumed even cities like Bombay. Manto

was 9 fired from his job as a screenwriter from the Bombay Talkies Studio on account of

being a Muslim. 7 Communal threats were being made with respect to Muslim employees

in the film

industry at Bombay.His short story, ‘Saha’e’, articulated the anxieties felt by Muslim

professionals and others during the bloodbath in Punjab. Additionally, Manto feared the

safety of his family, especially his daughters, at this time when women were extensively

targeted by rioters blinded by revenge and hatred. Hence, he had no option but to leave his

beloved Bombay and move to Lahore. The madness that 13 he witnessed and the trauma

that he experienced in the process of migration to Lahore left a scar on his mind. Manto’s

work post the partition has been born out of experience, a horrifying experience of the

large scale migration and genocide. His stories were based on his experience from the

visits to the refugee camps and what he learnt about the plight of fleeing as he sat in

newspaper offices, coffee houses and smoke-filled bars. Manto was flabbergasted at the

absurdity of the partition experience. For him, it was a communal and a personal disaster.
Hence, he wrote not about the cause but only the consequence of partition. Manto has

done an incredible job in blending the horrors of Partition into the lives of his characters, he

has created a living memory of the event of partition through the details and 9 the voice of

the characters in his story. His stories like ‘Toba Tek Singh’, ‘Open it’ (Khol do!), and ‘Cold

Flesh’ (Thanda Gosht) are testimonies of his art of storytelling. He writes these stories as

though he is a detached witness of events, which he most certainly was, as a victim of

partition. While his stories were originally written in Urdu, translators like Khalid Hasan, 15

Muhammad Umar Memon and C. Christine Fair have made it easy for English readers

around the world to experience the art of Saadat Hasan Manto. Manto wrote one of his

most famous works, ‘Toba Tek Singh’ when his health was deteriorating at a rapid rate.

After emigrating to Lahore and witnessing the madness of partition, Manto slipped into a

cycle of excessive alcohol consumption. Even while he was aware of his excessive

drinking, he was not ready to quit it. Here, his family made the decision to admit him into a

lunatic asylum in Lahore. This asylum was also a rehabilitation center for alcoholics at that

time. It is considered, that the ingenious idea of ‘Toba Tek Singh’ as a story took birth in his

experience here. The central idea of this story is 11 the displacement of millions of people

in the Indian subcontinent. The story focuses on 6 the exchange of mental asylum

inmates between India and Pakistan based on religious identity after the partition. It

highlights how personal identity and one’s identity to a geography and history, experience

a turmoil due to hegemony. The protagonist of this story, Bishan Singh is a man who was

the landlord of a place called Toba Tek Singh. Bishan Singh identifies himself with Toba

Tek Singh only and when he is brought for the exchange he ends up collapsing and dying

in a no man’s land between India and Pakistan. Toba Tek Singh is a brilliant satire in which

Manto conveys how the people in the outside world are equally or more lunatic than people

inside. It was a commentary on the insanity that people drew within their communities and

created an unprecedented havoc. When Bishan Singh speaks the gibberish words or the

incomprehensible sentences [‘Uper the gur gur the annexe the be dhyana mung the dal of

Toba Tek Singh and Pakistan’], Manto satires the decision of partition and mocks the idea
of the two countries The story of ‘Toba Tek Singh’ puts focus on many themes and

concepts essential to understand the impact of partition on the people. Beginning with

Place and Identity and an Ecocritical analysis of it. How human beings are connected to

their geography is excellently portrayed in this short story. Place and identity of a person

become so fused that throughout the narrative of this story Bishan Singh is known 9 as

Toba Tek Singh. The story throughout indicates the mayhem caused due to a

displacement from a settled place. It shows how there is no life beyond the place that one

lives in. People often are born and die in the same place, showing their oneness to it.

Bishan Singh is representative 3 of the local people and the efforts at a personal level. He

is more

concerned about things that are directed to his life like his family and their cattle. He is not

concerned about two different countries that have been created but his own home that is

existing somewhere in these lands. He is symbolic of being against the colonial and the

religious conceptualisation of place and identity. The political forces in this story have taken

the concept or rather the essence of place and home as granted. Manto via the character

3 of Bishan Singh poses a stance of resistance against the political idea of place and

counters the national and international polity. Bishen Singh’s identity to his place is very

significant in the story. Rather than being an individual who is governed by the political or

social affairs of the state, his definition of individuality and self is in correlation with his

place or his home. Hence, he feels like death is a better option rather than being away in

an alienated place. The lunatic group of men in Manto’s story can be interpreted as a

metaphor of silence. They are victims here of the politically powerful imposition that the

state and/or institute brings upon them. People had no choice but to accept the fate of a

decision made by people who were not even going to live in the same country as them.

Their silence marks the oppression during independence due to hegemony. Through the

characters in the story, Manto highlights the rights and concerns of the downtrodden and

the poor who were displaced. The men inside the asylum did not engage in any violent
behaviour however, it was the ‘sane’ people outside the asylum that were involved in

killing, raping and butchering the very idea of humanity. 3 Pakistan also represents the

dismembering of the place, India, where everyone belonged. While Pakistan was created

for harmony and peace, its birth was in a state of violence. While talking about partition in

Toba Tek Singh, one can also discuss militarization. In a more a more comprehensive

sense, militarization entails the effects of militaristic thinking on society. This possibly

happens when the entire society is permeated by violent imagery, thoughts, emotions and

cognitions to a point that it becomes difficult to solve any conflict without resorting to the

force of arms. This militarization in turn contributes to trauma. Violence in any form creates

terror,which in turn gives birth to trauma.In this context, Bishan Singh becomes a symbol of

suffering of an entire population. He is a metaphor of the masses who are robbed of this

final possession and freedom including their sense of identity. Traumatic memories such

as these, reshuffle an individual’s mind beyond the point of recognition. 17 The story also

fascinatingly involves the postcolonial uncanny. Even while the patients have been in the

same location, the news of them being in a 8 new state of Pakistan, confuses them and

they fail to understand that the place they have lived in has a new name. The patients here

5 are reacting to the uncanniness of a new state. It is meant to be familiar as they have

lived here and yet it becomes unfamiliar because they cannot comprehend what it means.

Manto’s own experience of partition and his attempts to grasp the new reality also

represent the uncanny. Perhaps, 6 the character of Bishan Singh is also a reflection of

Manto’s experiences and sufferings, his nostalgia for home and life prior to partition. ‘Open

it!’ (Khol Do), is another short story by Manto that leaves the audience numb. This story is

about a father who is searching for his lost daughter in the refugee camp. He discovers her

in the hospital where she lay in a traumatised state as she was raped by her abductors as

well as rescuers. The ending of the violence makes a reader question the barbarity of men

during 1947. Manto has presented the horrifying image of a half dead girl whose father is

happy to finally have found his daughter but is also perplexed looking at her state. This

confusion and shock represents the predominant emotion of people during the partition.
Sakina, the victim in this story is representative of all the women who were victims of

sexual violence and who could not voice out their anguish. It's also representative of the

tired and defeated state of mind women

were in during the migration. 14 The tropes that Manto has presented in this story

represent allusions available to the socio-culturally aware readers regardless of the

language they read the play in. Primarily, in the beginning of this story, the readers notice

how memory is affected during trauma and violence or big scale migrations such as the

one witnessed in 1947. While Sirajuddin was trying to recollect where he saw his daughter

Sakina the last, all he can retrieve in his memory is the image of his dying wife“Finally

Sirajuddin gave up and plopped down off to one side from sheer exhaustion, straining his

12 memory to retrieve the moment when Sakina had become separated from him. 1

However, each effort to recall ended with his mind jammed at the sight of his wife’s

mutilated body, her guts spilling out, and he couldn't go any further.” This shows the severe

effect of post traumatic stress disorder which many people faced during the tumult of 1947.

When memory got clogged by the horrific and startling images of death and displacement

which used to be their own. In this story, the readers also see the dissociative mind of

Sakina. A dissociation which is a result of continuous violence, assault and barrier from the

identity of oneself. Moreover, this dissociation is furthermore prevalent through language.

As the doctor’s request to ‘Open’’ the windows, Sakina translates it to undressing. She

numbly unties her salwar and the brutality of this scene chills the readers to the bone. “The

1 doctor glanced at the body lying on the stretcher. He felt the pulse and, pointing at the

window, told Sirajuddin,ì Open it!î Sakinaís body stirred ever so faintly on the stretcher.

With lifeless hands she slowly undid the knot of her waistband and lowered her shalwar.

Sheís alive! My daughter is alive!î Old Sirajuddin screamed with un- bounded joy. The

doctor broke into a cold sweat.” The psychic state of dissociation is the price paid by an

innocent victim of partition and violence. 10 Manto saw women as individuals with an

agency. He viewed them as historical subjects whose position is very important in the
narration of his stories. He recognises them, gives them an identical belonging unlike their

hidden or faded identical belonging in reality. Manto brought his characters from a marginal

sect of the society. He would have the ‘Subaltern other women’ as his characters. It is

through these characters in Manto’s stories, that the readers are introduced to a new world

of understanding reality. Manto would write intensely on the issues of “abducted” women

and their rehabilitation. He found it disturbing that defenceless individuals were made the

victims of a heinous crime. The disheartening condition of women in partition and their

depiction in Manto’s stories makes one want to deconstruct the reason for this condition. It

is popularly known that the nation is perceived and narrated in the body of a woman. A

nation is often referred to as ‘mother’, which makes women an emotional symbolism for the

nation. Since a nation is now perceived as a woman’s body, any emotions or sentiments

get transferred on to females as a direct representative of the nation. Hence, the

communal violence, the conflict and the brutality is played out on a woman’s body as a

sign of disrespect and opposition. Hence, women became

an arena of violence as they were humiliated and tortured in this process of being identified

with the nation. The father, Sirajuddin, is also significant in representing the displaced

families who made every attempt to find their loved ones who were separated away from

them during the catastrophe. It is also significant as these people strived to find normalcy

and attain a life that is free from the memories of partition, however, that was impossible.

Manto’s story ‘Cold Flesh’ (Thanda Gosht) was first published in 1950 in a Pakistani literary

magazine.This story is what cost him a trial for obscenity when it was published. The story

illustrated an incident around 18 a Sikh man named Ishwar Singh who abducts and rapes

a muslim girl after looting her house and killing her family. It is only later, when he realises

that the girl had been dead all along. His partner Kulwant Kaur is suspicious of him as he is

unable to perform in bed with her. The story follows Ishwar’s confession to Kulwant of what

made him impotent as 4 she stabs him in the throat with his own kirpan (sikh ritual

dagger). It is the dead girl who Ishwar refers to as ‘just Cold Flesh’“She…. She had already
died...She was already a corpse... Just cold flesh…...My dear, give me your hand.”

Kulwant Kaur placed her hand on that of Ishar Singh which had become even colder than

ice” The story fascinatingly delves into how a perpetrator becomes a victim of one’s own

crime. The inner anxiety and guilt of Ishwar who was the victimiser turns him into a 10

victim of his own heinous doing. The atrocity of what he does, does not go unpunished as

he is the one who meets his own death by his own lover in guilt and astonishment of what

he has done. As discussed before, the gendered nationalism, where conquests and

exploits are viewed as more masculine and the nation or land is regarded as feminine, it is

this masculine pursuit to exploit and conquer a feminine notion that is the baseline of ‘Cold

Flesh’ as well. Ishwar Singh robs, kills, and rapes the unnamed girl’s family, because of

their religious identity, and because the religious identity was now a part of a bigger picture

of a newly formed state, a new name to an old land. In this manner, readers notice how the

rape of the female body is turned into a allegory for the rape of the nation. The victim’s

individuality is fused with the collective identity of the nation. The crime of rape during

partition was not limited to the humiliation and degradation of an individual, it was an

attempt to degrade the honour of the individual’s community. During the partition, any

crime inflicted upon a woman was not perceived as a violation of her rights and consent

but as a conflict or harm inflicted upon the nation. Manto in this story skilfully binds the

religious identity of the persecutors and victims to help understand the gravity of the

partition. This short story also explores the idea of ‘male gaze’. The reference to the dead

girl’s body as a ‘Cold Flesh’ is the reference of a woman to mere flesh. The notion of

objectifying a woman to something that is inanimate is living through the story. This

objectification in turn speaks of the idea of sexual consumption of women’s bodies,

something that gained an unnecessary and horrific momentum during the communal

violence. The unnamed muslim girl further symbolises two very important ideas. Firstly, the

unnamed girl speaks of the thousands of unnamed victims of the partition who have faced

atrocities and have not been rightfully recognised as humans but mere weapons of

destruction against each other.

Secondly, the unnamed girl had no rights and no consents to her identity, just like the

thousands of people had no rights to voice against the partition. The character of Ishwar

Singh here symbolises the masculine political figures who orchestrated the partition.

Ishwar Singh is representative of all the perpetrators of violence and assault and the

political hands of leaders who did not foresee the consequences of something as

significant as partition. Hence the reference to Ishwar’s hand being ‘Colder than ice’ in the

end 6 is symbolic of the death and defeat of the perpetrators and the political figures.

Manto in his famous essay, ‘Letters to Uncle Sam’ wrote the following about the partition“In

2 this land, once called India, such rivers of blood have flowed over the past few months

that even the heavens are bewildered. . . . Blood and steel, war and musket, are not new to

human history. Adam’s children have always taken an interest in these games. But there is

no example anywhere in the colorful stories of mankind of the game that was played out

recently.” It is clear through his short stories that he was greatly affected by the partition

and he wrote obsessively about it. Manto himself is an example of the impact of partition, a

writer meant to live a long life, leaves the world early and keeps some masterpieces

behind, masterpieces that are 11 a reminder of the horror of partition. Manto’s work is

important even today, because partition left an everlasting consequence and contributed to

generational trauma. While families might have settled in their new houses and made a life

for themselves in the new India and Pakistan, they left behind homes, memories, and a

wealth of ancestry and tradition. It is through Manto’s stories, that the narrative lives on and

the self reflection of the partition continues. Through Manto’s stories readers see how the

‘ahimsa’ or non violence policy of Gandhiji met its end. Manto’s stories are a testimony of

the social and material deterioration of partition violence including the aftermath of it.

Manto has focused on the worst of humanity in his stories, he has written without many

blurry lines for the readers to grapple with 10 the reality of the situation. He has written

these stories as a witness who is narrating the grims of an inhumane majority. Before

partition, Manto was simply a screenwriter, a journalist, an artist with a blessed vision. It
was his works post partition that made him a master of short stories who can be compared

to worldwide known authors like Chekov. It must be mentioned that it is the credit of

translators such as Khalid Hasan, Muhammed Umar Memon, C.Christine Fair and Aatish

Taseer that Manto’s work is available to read and learn.

Sources
https://scroll.in/article/676423/all-he-could-see-was-the-same-stretcher-with-a-corpse-lying-
1 on-it-mantos-open-it
INTERNET
2%
https://www.nation.com.pk/29-Dec-2014/the-forgotten-massacre
2 INTERNET
2%
https://www.academia.edu/Ecocritical_Analysis_of_Manto_s_Toba...
3 INTERNET
1%
https://thepunchmagazine.com/the-byword/fiction/cold-flesh-a-translation-of-saadat-hasan-
4 manto-amp-rsquo-s-thanda-ghosht-by-c-christine-fair
INTERNET
1%
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-journal-of-postcolonial-literary-
inquiry/article/postcolonial-uncanny-in-toba-tek-
5 singh/EE808C2A02B738F594ECD9825331087C
INTERNET
1%
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8901496/
6 INTERNET
1%
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23338870.pdf?ab_segments=0/basic_search_gsv2/control&i
7 nitiator=search-results
INTERNET
1%
https://www.bbc.com/history/british/modern/partition1947_01.shtml
8 INTERNET
<1%
https://www.inkl.com/news/manto-the-writer-who-felt-the-pain-of-india-s-partition
9 INTERNET
<1%
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Literary representations of women during and after the
10 partition of...-a0397455366
INTERNET
<1%
https://www.clearias.com/indian-independence-act/
11 INTERNET
<1%
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/specia
12 l/newlits/manto_kholdo.pdf
INTERNET
<1%
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/the-great-divide-books...
13 INTERNET
<1%
 https://www.academia.edu/Testimony_and_the_Urdu_Troposphere...
14 INTERNET
<1%
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full
15 INTERNET
<1%
https://www.researchgate.net/publication
16 INTERNET
<1%
bing.com/videos
17 INTERNET
<1%
https://reclamationmagazine.com/2020/03/19/saadat-hasan-manto-the-writer-who-is-not-to-
18 be-read/comment-page-1/
INTERNET
<1%

EXCLUDE CUSTOM MATCHES OFF

EXCLUDE QUOTES ON

EXCLUDE BIBLIOGRAPHY ON