Saadat Hasan Manto

Saadat Hasan Manto
Saadat Hasan ‘Manto’ is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest short story writers in the
world. He died at the age of forty three from complications of alcoholism. All of his life, he
suffered from symptoms of anxiety and depression and his alcohol abuse was intimately linked
both to his mental distress as well as his creative genius.
Early Life and Development: Amongst artists of recent times Manto is definitely the most
suitable for a psychological analysis. Even a superficial study of his life indicates that he spent
his entire life battling inner demons. In the last years of his life, he even spent time in psychiatric
hospitals (or ‘insane asylums’) for treatment of his alcohol addiction (and while in one such
place, crafted his masterpiece, ‘Toba Tek Singh’).
Manto was born in 1912 at Samrala, near Ludhiana. His father, Maulvi Ghulam Hussain,
married twice. Manto’s mother was his second wife. Ghulam Hussain’s family was not happy
with his second marriage; he constantly belittled Manto and this was the first source of bitterness
and anger in the young Saadat’s life. Manto’s relationship to his father was based on respect and
fear. Manto’s biographers say that this lack of fatherly affection was compensated for by his
mother, Bibi Jaan. Saadat’s relationship with his father is important According to Freud, the
mutual love between the father and mother evokes feelings of anger and jealousy which are
repressed for the satisfaction of his parents. These emotions provide the basis of his unconscious.
Examining Manto’s stories from this perspective, the reader repeatedly finds that the male
characters in Manto’s celebrated short stories are often of secondary importance. Manto’s
woman, whether a prostitute or a homemaker, possess more courage and perseverance than his
male characters. Where male characters are prominent in his stories, it is primarily for their
barbarity and cruelty – perhaps a reflection of Manto’s fear of his father. Not that Manto’s
women are models of affection and purity, but in his best short stories, Manto presents his female
characters with great sympathy and love. From a psychological point of view we can say that this
is a reflection of his feelings of love and admiration for his mother. Manto was plagued by
a constant restlessness and unease in life, which may very well be consistent
with a clinical diagnosis of anxiety and depression. As one would expect from the self-
medication hypothesis Manto sought refuge in substance abuse to ease his psychological pain. In
his case, the drug of choice was alcohol.
The Origins of Manto’s Distress:
Where did this restlessness in Manto come from? In the surroundings of 20th century existential
philosophy, Manto’s writing also reveal the existential conflict which flows from the individual’s
confrontation with the “givens of existence”. These are ultimate human concerns, such as the
awareness of the inevitability of death, our “terrifying freedom to choose”, our existential
isolation and the apparent meaninglessness of the world. Manto as a sensitive soul was acutely
aware of these concerns and this awareness took a toll on his psyche. In his writings though,
there is no hint of Manto’s mental and spiritual agitation. Manto’s literary eye was like a camera
which observed the events happening to his characters without blinking and recorded them as
they were. Consider this small excerpt, for instance:“At fifteen past seven, the police took
away the dead body. Ice and blood remained behind on the road. A tonga passed by. The child
saw the shiny clot of frozen blood on the road. His mouth watered. He tugged his mother’s arm
and pointed at it. ‘Look, mummy, jelly.
Manto was deeply affected by the horrible events he witnessed during the partition of the
Subcontinent. He expressed his agitation several times in his works: “If you are unaware of the
times through which we are passing, read my short stories. If you cannot tolerate them, it means
this age is intolerable. There is no fault in my writing. The fault which is attributed to my name
is actually the fault of the current system. I do not want to agitate people’s thoughts and
emotions. How can I disrobe civilization, culture and society when it is in fact already naked?”
Although Manto’s life in Bombay was relatively prosperous, that inner restlessness and
Bombay’s particular social environment (in which his relationship with the Bombay film
industry is prominent) led to indiscriminate drinking. He was slowly becoming an alcoholic and
the coming years were only to aggravate it. In 1947 Manto decided to migrate to Pakistan.
Moving to Lahore was not a fortunate development. Pakistan’s film industry was deserted due to
the migration of non-Muslim artists. No studio was functional. Manto had no way to earn a
living in Lahore. In his last years his financial troubles escalated along with his
restlessness and distress. Often he would go to a newspaper office, write a short story while
sitting there, and buy a bottle of alcohol with the money received. The newspaper staff knew of
this habit, so they would sometimes hand him a cheap bottle of alcohol instead of money. He
was admitted to hospital several times. Furthermore, Manto faced several trials on
charges of obscenity. Even though he was honorably released from all these trials, the legal
proceedings would have been trying for a man with no employment and economic hardship.
His drinking escalated. Signs of madness began to appear. He hallucinated, saw ghostly faces
and talked nonsense. Alcohol induced psychosis is a recognized clinical entity and is
associated with poor outcomes. His wife Safia tried to get him treated several times and even got
him admitted to a mental hospital (after which he wrote his great story, ‘TobaTek Singh’), but all
in vain. He died from inflammation of the liver related to his drinking soon after. He wrote,
in a letter to Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, in January 1939:‘Whatever happens, I can find no
satisfaction. I am not satisfied with anything. I am not even satisfied with myself. I feel as if
who I am, what is inside me, should not be so. It should have been different.’
Despite all these problems, in his seven years in Lahore, Manto wrote 127 short stories as well
as two collections of essays, two collections of sketches, a collection of the account of his trials,
and a novelette, Beghair Unwaan Kay (Untitled). This shows that despite growing mental and
physical weakness, Manto’s creative faculties remained intact till his last breath, though some
of his last stories (for instance, ‘Phundnay’ /Tassels) give the impression of being the work of a
madman.

Saadat Hasan Manto

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