September 21, 2012
THE SEER OF PAKISTAN
Ali Sethi in The New Yorker:
In the south of Pakistan, where Hindus have lately been kidnapped for ransom and their daughters forcibly converted to Islam, Hindu families have started fleeing to India in trains. As they waved to their relatives from train windows, possibly for the last time, many Hindu girls contorted their faces and wept. To the north, near an industrial city, policemen poured paint over Koranic verses inscribed on Ahmadi graves. This is because Ahmadis have no right to Koranic verses in Pakistan: the law classifies them as non-Muslims and the media regularly portrays them as treacherous deviants from the faith. Still higher up, in a scenic mountain valley, Shias were pulled out of buses, lined up and shot dead by gunmen who may or may not belong to one of Pakistan’s many banned sectarian outfits. And just two weeks ago, not far from the pristine capital, a mob of a hundred and fifty Muslims ran after a mentally handicapped, low-caste Christian girl, wanting to burn her alive for having held in her hand—this was the rumor in her neighborhood—a singed Islamic manual.
In the rest of the country, the end of Ramadan was celebrated with the usual fanfare, show of color, and generosity of spirit.
The hysterical synchronicity of these happenings is typical of the Pakistan encountered nowadays in the news. It is also Manto-esque, which is to say that it feels like it could have been imagined, in exactly these tones, with just such a flatly ironic counterpoint for an ending, more than fifty years ago by a man called Saadat Hassan Manto, the writer whose centennial is being marked this year in Lahore amid an unshakeable and vaguely shaming sense of déjà vu.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 05:50 AM | Permalink
Comments
Wondered why it took this long for the article to be posted here.
Manto's opportunistic move to Pakistan, unlike the wonderful Chugtai, tarnished his reputation and led to his self-destructive death spiral after being cut-off from the rich literary milieu that he had left behind.
Posted by: Sam | Sep 21, 2012 11:26:34 AM
Sam, I don't know that in 1947 any Hindu or Muslim crossing over to the other side could be termed entirely opportunistic. Perhaps there was some of that but for most, the reigning sentiments must have been fear, uncertainty and a sense of betrayal. My grandparents on both sides decided to remain in Dhaka after 1947. My husband's in Sialkot chose to flee. It is very difficult to judge them from a distance of 65 years. Also, I have noticed that Indians who were not directly affected by the partition (in the south and west) tend to think of the event in purely academic / political terms. They don't always appreciate the human angle.
Manto was a complicated man, a man of a very sharp sense of his own literary worth. He was also brilliant. He did face discrimination as a Muslim at the Bombay film studio where he was employed at the time. His relatives including his wife were scared of the newly changed circumstances. So who knows what else other than opportunism motivated him to move to Pakistan. That he was supremely unhappy afterwards is undeniable and Manto himself made no secret of that sorrow.
Posted by: Ruchira | Sep 21, 2012 5:09:58 PM
Manto's reputation was "tarnished"? Today, he is considered one of Pakistan's greatest writers. Any course on the Urdu short story or "afsana" includes several Manto stories.
"Toba Tek Singh" is still read in every single class on Partition Literature.
Adding to what Ruchira said, one of the Professors here at LUMS who has made a career out studying the stories of Partition survivors (not "victims") noted that in his research, 8 out of 10 families who fled East Punjab for West Punjab did so unwillingly.... It must have been similar on the other side.
In the areas of India less effected by rioting--UP or Hyderabad Deccan-- people may have migrated primarily for economic or ideological (or even, as sam says "opportunistic" reasons). But this was absolutely not the case in Punjab and Bengal
Posted by: Kabir | Sep 21, 2012 11:32:16 PM
Manto decamped from Bombay, not from Punjab or Bengal. There were three main reasons for migrating; a religious belief in an Islamic state for/by/of Muslims, fear for one's life (certainly the case for the majority of Hindus and Sikhs fleeing the newly created Islamic state), or seizing the opportunity to take over the property or positions being vacated in a hurry. I think that we can rule out the first two instances in Manto's case. His friend, Chughtai, thought that he was being opportunistic and she recounted Manto's interest in a large house that would be conveniently empty; no questions asked.
Werner Heisenberg was a great physicist, but his reputation as a human being was forever tarnished by his opportunistic actions during the Third Reich. Incidentally, there is a fascinating story in the NYT about a Stradivarius violin presented to a young Japanese prodigy by Goebbels. She treasured the precious gift and hung on to it during all of the confusion during the war. But neither she nor her heir wants to know anything about the Strad's history or how Goebbels happened to possess it. Manto, himself, could have written a wry and pointed short story based on this all-too human weakness that he would recognize, no?
Posted by: Sam | Sep 22, 2012 1:43:21 AM
Coincidentally, I read another story of migration from Bombay, that of Noor Jehan, in the comment by Arunkumar Deshmukh in
http://cineplot.com/music/noor-jehan/
Posted by: Gaddeswarup | Sep 22, 2012 2:36:12 AM
Sam,
I believe that Manto's wife was from the area that became Pakistan and she wanted to go live there.... so maybe Manto had to be a good husband in that instance and move.....
No one can read "Toba Tek Singh" and then argue that Manto believed in the TNT.... the story is pretty explicit (without saying so in so many words) that the whole Subcontinent is a madhouse and the "mad" are the only one's that are sane. Please read the story if you haven't done so.
Posted by: Kabir | Sep 22, 2012 3:16:50 AM
Just remembered that Manto described exactly when he decided to leave for Pakistan towards the end of his write up on Ashoka Kumar
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/arts-letters/ashok-kumar-the-evergreen-hero
Posted by: Gaddeswarup | Sep 23, 2012 11:31:14 PM
Nice metaphorical rationalization for why he chose the other path; slightly diminished by the fact that it was a dangerous Muslim mob that they had encountered in Bombay. But those were momentous times, and people made certain decisions in their lives that they later found were irreversible.
Posted by: Sam | Sep 24, 2012 12:29:56 PM
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