Saadat Manto - Why I Write - Essays

But, all praise to Him, now our nation is free of such bothersome questions. People eat, they remember god and they sleep.

And people! I forgot entirely to talk about science. This was the mother of literature. God save us from this “science”. They wanted to reproduce heaven on earth, these scientists. Bastards. They made claims rivalling god’s. They thought of lighting up the world so that there would be no darkness. Of making it rain when it was needed. Of finding a cure for cancer. Such insolence! They were trying to put men on the surface of the moon and make babies in test tubes!

No fear of Allah at all.

Now of course we have been rid of all this devilry. Now there’s peace everywhere. No disturbances, no incidents, no poets, no painters.

Time passes like it doesn’t pass at all. All of it is now saved. From birth to death, a steady flow of pure beings through this nation. The people are in a trance. And, tell me truthfully, don’t you want to be in such a state too?

And… Hey… Where did this newspaper come from? Oh, we were asleep. The government must have sent it. It’s come after a really long time. Let’s have a look. The old days were bad, people, but there was one thing about them. They say the writing and printing of newspapers was very beautiful in those days. But what’s the big deal about beauty, eh?

What’s this…? Wait a minute. My eyes aren’t deceiving me. Yes, it’s quite clear here. A man has been… arrested. Arrested!?

He was wandering about everywhere shouting that he did not want to live in a country where there was god, but no devil.

Allah save us.

They say that when he was brought before the authorities, he began screaming: ‘Bring the devil here at once or I’ll go mad!’ In his defense he had Allama Iqbal’s poetry to back him, which also said that both devil and god were needed.

But this couplet is nowhere to be found in the official book of Iqbal’s poems. And the government of Pakistan has been publishing his works regularly under its own supervision.

It’s absolutely clear, then. This fellow, he’s playing a game. Let’s see what else the report says about this. The charge against him is grave and the government is figuring out how to put this fellow on trial.

But there are no courts. There is no jail. The State is thinking of setting up a court, a lock-up and a jail for him.

Alllah be praised, Pakistan will figure out a way to keep such people out of mischief.

— (Originally published as Allah Ka Bada Fazal Hai in Oopar, Neechay aur Darmiyan , 1954)

* Manto had earlier been prosecuted in Lahore for obscenity, and one of the words alleged to have been obscene was, “breasts”

Courts in British India functioned better than they do now. For us that time is distant, but Manto was troubled by the sudden exit of the British. In the newly-formed Pakistan, he faced a completely different moral code governed by an intolerant State. Although Manto was tried for obscenity several times in British India, it was only after Independence that his legal troubles sent him into despair. The essay which caused him the most trouble — about necrophilia during a riot — was called Thanda Gosht. This is the first of the two essays on the subject of his fifth trial. It was published in the Lahore-based magazine, Naqoosh, in its special issue of February-March 1953. It is interesting because Manto has something to say about Naqoosh’s owner-editor in this piece, and in the next one, which was published a week later.

I’ve been tried four times in court for my writings. A fifth trial has now begun, and I wanted to report to you what happened and how it’s coming along.

The first four short stories that attracted the law’s attention were as follows:

Kali Shalwar (Black leggings)

Dhuan (Smoke)

Bu (The Odour)

Thanda Gosht (Cold Meat)

And an essay: “ Oopar, Neechay aur Darmiyan ” (Above, Below and In-between).

For Kali Shalwar, I had to travel from Delhi to Lahore’s courts three times. Dhuan and Bu troubled me much more, for I had to travel from Bombay to Lahore. But Thanda Gosht trumped them all, even though this trial happened when I was already in Pakistan and didn’t have to travel for it. No sensitive man, and I consider myself one, could have gone through the experience unscarred. A court is a place where every humiliation is inflicted, and where it must be suffered in silence.

I pray that nobody has to go to the place we call a court of law. I’ve seen no place more bizarre. And I also confess to hating the police. They’ve always treated me with the contempt they reserve for the worst sort of offender.

Anyway, it started the other day when a magazine in Karachi, Payam-e-Mashriq (Message of the East), published my essay “ Oopar, Neechay aur Darmiyan’ ”, without my permission. They had lifted it from the Lahore paper, Ehsan and soon after, the Karachi government issued a warrant in my name.

I wasn’t home. Two sub-inspectors and four constables laid siege to the house. My wife told them: ‘Manto isn’t home. If you want, I’ll call him over.’ But they were insistent that I was in fact hiding inside and that she was lying. At the time, I was at the office of Chaudhry Nazir Ahmed, who owns the Savera magazine.

I had just begun working on a story and had written some ten lines or so when Rashid, Chaudhry Nazir’s brother, arrived. After a few moments he asked: ‘What are you writing?’

‘I’ve just begun a story,’ I said, ‘looks like it’s going to be a long one.’

‘I’ve come to give you some bad news,’ he said, ‘the police are at your place, looking for you. They think you’re home and are trying to force their way in.’

My friends, Ahmed Rahi and Hameed Akhtar were with me. They were disturbed and so we all left together in a tonga. Before leaving, we told Chaudhry Rashid to telephone all the newspapers so that whatever happened could be published the next day.

When we reached, the policemen were outside the flat. My nephew, Hamid Jalal and brother-in-law, Zaheeruddin were standing next to their cars. They were telling the police, ‘Look, if you must search the house, please do so. But believe us when we say that Manto isn’t home.’

I also spotted Abdullah Malik chatting with some of the policemen. He was a Communist, but a “fake” one. I learnt that the sub-inspectors had threatened my wife and my sister, saying that they would enter forcibly. Then they saw me enter the compound, and calmed down.

I invited them in.

The two officers were still quite stern. When I asked what they wanted, they said they had a warrant from Karachi to search my house. I was astonished.

I’m not a spy or a smuggler or a drug-pusher. I’m a writer. Why on earth would the police need to search my property? What did they expect to find?

They demanded to know: ‘Where’s your library?’

I said that here in Pakistan my “library” consisted only of a few books, including three dictionaries. The rest was left behind in Bombay. ‘If you’re looking for something in particular, I can give you the address in Bombay,’ I said. The officers ignored this and began their search of my house. It’s true that there were eight or so empty bottles of beer, but these were not remarked upon. There was a little box containing papers. The policemen went through every scrap. There were some newspaper clippings. These they seized.

At this point I asked to be shown the warrant that the Karachi government had issued.

They refused to give it and instead one of the constables held it out from afar saying: ‘Here it is.’