Saadat Hasan Manto & India/Pakistan Partition

[@sheshahayat5117]

Correction ; Pakistan & Indian partition…

[@deeplinabanerjee7932]

Hi Prerna! Not sure why I am not able to write in reply box but hopefully you see my response. I absolutely welcome your critique and I am trying to understand your positionality. I hear your thoughts on the under representation on gender minorities, but I am not sure how far given the parochial social system that we come from would allow them to express themselves the way they would have wanted. Article 377, may have been scrapped but even in 2020 cis-gender people are far from understanding the lived realities of those who identify as a gender minority. In 1947, I am not sure if folx had access to the resources/space to openly defy the binaries of heteronormativity. Coming to Manto, of course he was writing to earn a living, but he did not shy away from capturing the madness that was the partition. He was critical of the state authorities and sympathetic/aware of the plight of those who were moving across the borders. Honestly, I do not share or claim to know about the lived realities of the women who were violated in the process, but Manto’s stories were my first exposure to the human cost of partition and the extent of sexual violence that unfortunately the school history lessons did not cover. You are absolutely welcome to criticize feminist politics/principles but I am not sure I understand how violence against women is not seen from an intersectional lens. Women’s bodies became sites of violence at the very intersection of race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. A woman who was violated was used as a conduit, reduced to a tool to humiliate the other. Women were ripped off their agency. Feminists critique the power structure and the status quo that is complacent in womxn’s dehumanization. I had carefully chosen this topic because, even after 74 years, we do not talk about the price that women paid with their bodies, without consenting to it. Manto was capturing the trauma of partition for people like me to engage and question the mainstream historical narratives that silences women’s voices at the margins. I hope this was helpful! Thank you for listening to us through the end! :)

[@deeplinabanerjee7932]

Also, just to add, why I see Manto as a feminist: Simply because he chose to write about violence on women’s bodies that was a result of the partition in the times when such violence were normalized and encouraged. He highlighted the issues in fiction, where he was making a case for rape being used a weapon of assault long before it gained credibility. Manto was ‘speaking for’ the women because they were not allowed to speak for themselves again due to the lack of access to the resources/privileges/languages that many like us have 74 years after the partition. He wrote about women’s bodies because that’s where the borders were redrawn. Women’s bodies were the biological representation of the state where they belonged. The violence against women was supplemented by constructing them as the ‘other’ who had to be brought to their knees. At the intersection of being a writer and being a first party witness to the trauma Manto did what he could do best at that time, record it for future generations to remember it and to engage with it. And to constantly question the existing power distribution where women and women identifying folks are always at the margins. My understanding is , feminists have been doing that as well. :) And about your questions regarding fetishizing rape. Hmm that’s an interesting take. But the more it is written about, the more important it is to engage with women’s lived experiences. I think most of us expose ourselves to vicarious trauma when we engage with literary depiction of rape, but I think in this context it is more important to understand how women remain vulnerable to sexual violence during the outbreak of riots and how their rights/bodily autonomy is erased. Would I call this fetishizing? Maybe not. Again, that’s me always questioning why are these narratives missing. Why are these stories not mentioned in the mainstream media and discourses. Urvashi Butali started compiling the oral testimonies in “the other side of silence“ long after the partition. Manto, in fact was depicting the ground reality albeit in a fictionalized format to question the ethics behind leaving an entire population out of the decision making.

[@voyagetoart3115]

@@deeplinabanerjee7932 Nice thoughts. Unlike you, I would not consider him as a feminist, you have to be fully aware of the ideologies of Feminism to claim to be the part of it. But, yes feminist angle for sure, the partition was a circus of masculinity and when masculinity arises it preys on the bodies of woman. It's not only about rape, it's more about inflicting pain from various angle to derive the toxic taste of masculinity.

[@deeplinabanerjee7932]

asif mallick Hi Asif! Thanks for your feedback. While I hundred percent agree with you that rape is about inflicting pain on the women, I do wonder do you really need to “know” about the feminist principles /debate to be a feminist? There are many grassroots organizations that do actual feminist work without having the language/access to feminist research. I really find it interesting how you bring in the concept of toxic masculinity and think it is very valuable to the conversation around sexual violence against women and its impact. But, I also think that Manto did not have to read the work of white liberal feminist to make a case for feminism. But that’s me. I absolutely hear and welcome your thoughts.

[@voyagetoart3115]

@@deeplinabanerjee7932 I second you, but I want to take a stab at explaining my views. You may well do a post-structuralist reading of Shakespeare, but it doesn't make him a post-structuralist, just? Similarly, literature is the convergence of various ideas, notions, theories, memories, myths... I am just against sloganeering and putting someone under a singular banner, the story takes the different route if he identifies himself with singularity; take Brecht as a Marxist or Beauvoir as a feminist. Even in Manto lots of ideas like Diaspora, Marxism, Power, Feminism meet, but I don't think Manto ever wants to live under one identity. The reason I always use Feminist angle or Marxist angle, instead of any concrete term.

[@deeplinabanerjee7932]

asif mallick That’s actually very insightful! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!