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Top 10 Interesting Facts about Saadat Hasan Manto

rendition of the actual Order of ExcellenceBy Prez001 – Own work, Public Domain,

Saadat Hasan Manto is considered one of the best short- story writers in the whole of South Asia. His writing career just spanned two decades but he has a rich collection of literary work.

He was born on 11th May 1912 and he died on 18th January 1955. He was a Pakistani writer, playwright, and author born in Ludhiana, who was active in British India.

He has been awarded notable awards like the Order of Excellence in 2012 having genre experience in Drama, nonfiction, satire, screenplays, and personal correspondence.

Let us look at some of Manto’s interesting facts:

1. Saadat Manto is a bestseller author for short stories in the Urdu language

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

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: Manto, directed by Sarmad Khoosat, and the 2018 film Manto, directed by Nandita.

2. Manto belonged to a Kashmiri trading family

He belonged to a Kashmiri trading family that had settled in Amristar 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 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”

3. He found his true talent after failing in school

Muslim Government High School, located at Lakshmi Bazaar in Dhaka By Tanweer Morshed

He received his early education at a Muslim High School in Amristar where he twice failed his matriculation examination. In 1931 he got admitted to the Hindu Sabha College but dropped out after the 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’s The Last Day of a Condemned Man into Urdu which was later published by Urdu Book Stall, Lahore as (A Prisoner’s Story). He then translated Oscar 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). 

4. Other than writing, Saadat translated Russian and French stories to Urdu

With Bari’s encouragement, these Russian stories were then published in Lahore under the title, Rusi Afsany (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 WritersAssociation(IPWA).

5. His first job was at the newspaper Paras (Philosophers store)

Parks in Bahria Town Lahore By MazharHusayn –

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, in Lahore, he published his first collection of original short storiesAtish Paray(Nuggets of Fire).

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

6. Saadat Hasan worked with notable names in All India Radio and wrote radio plays too

News, happenings, advertisement, entertainment, information, art, literature, and so on… Only on AIR Radio broadcaster Altinho, Panjim – Goa Picture courtesy of Shambhavi Karapurkar

Manto joined All India Radio in early 1941 and became acquainted with many writers working there such as Chirag Hasan Ansar Nasiri, Mahmud Nizami, and Meeraji. 

This proved to be his most productive period as in the next eighteen months he published over four collections of radio plays, Aao (Come),  Manto’s Dramas, Funerals and three women. 

7. Manto screenwriting giving films

Manto FilBy VMP2018 m Logo. Photo

Manto returned to Bombay in July 1942 and rejoined as the editor of Musawwir. During this time, he associated with his Aligarh friend Latif and his wife Ismat. In 1932, at Latif’s invitation, he joined the Filmistian studio.

Here he also formed a friendship with Ashok Kumar and entered his best phase in screenwriting giving films like Chal Chal Re Naujawan, and Mirza Ghalib which were finally released in 1954.

He also wrote Shikari. Some of his short stories also came from this phase including Kaali Shalwar (1941), Dhuan (1941), and Bu (1945), which was published in Qaumi Jang (Bombay) in February 1945.

8. Saadat chronicled the chaos that prevailed during and after the Partition of India

Map of the partition of India (1947). Note: Small princely states not acceding to either country upon independence are shown as integral parts of India and Pakistan. By Translated in hi by Nilesh Shukla

Manto chronicled the chaos that prevailed, during and after the Partition of India in 1947. Manto strongly opposed the partition of India, which he saw as an “overwhelming tragedy” and “maddeningly senseless”.

He started his literary career translating the works of Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde, and Russian writers such as Chekhov and Gorky His first story was “Tamasha”, based on the Jallianwala at Amristar.

Though his earlier works, influenced by the progressive writers of his times, showed marked leftist and socialist leanings, his later work progressively became stark in portraying the darkness of the human psyche, as humanist values progressively declined around the Partition.

9. Despite financial struggles, Saadat rose from the ashes

His final works, which grew from the social climate and his own financial struggles, reflected an innate sense of human impotency towards darkness and contained satire that verged on dark comedy, as seen in his final work, Toba Tek Singh.

It not only showed the influence of his own demons but also that of the collective madness that he saw in the ensuing decade of his life. To add to it, his numerous court cases and societal rebukes deepened his cynical view of society, from which he felt isolated.

No part of human existence remained untouched or taboo for him, he sincerely brought out stories of prostitutes and pimps alike, just as he highlighted the subversive sexual slavery of the women of his times.

10. Saadat Manto’s main renowned writing  in Urdu