My Name Is Radha

Author- Saadat Hasan Manto, Muhammad Umar Memon

Publisher- Penguin, Rs599

This volume of Saadat Hasan Manto’s finest works reiterates a more humanistic vision of the erudite — beyond Partition and prostitution — which was probably not effusively realised until now, writes ANANYA BORGOHAIN

Very few Indian voices strike with as intense a resonance as Manto’s does. His literary finesse and the emotional grasp his stories still hold over modern Indian literature is a sharp reflection of the country’s socio-cultural indentation. Taught widely in academic spaces, Manto’s tales are a repository of cultural and historical prominence, and an essential structure to map people as collaborative agents of cultural and even political signification. Published by Penguin Classics, My Name is Radha, is a collection of his finest writings, both fiction and nonfiction, selected and translated by Muhammad Umar Memon, Professor Emeritus of Urdu literature and Arabic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US.

Born in India, Manto, who migrated to lahore after Partition, started his literary journey by translating Victor Hugo’s The last Days of a Condemned Man into Urdu. Gradually, the influence of other French and Russian realist writers like Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky on him manifested in his own works. Having endured penury in his young days, Manto also had a laidback approach towards life, but his most active years were during World War II. Industrial factories became the conduit to produce arms and Manto wrote a farcical essay on the same, titled Tahdeed-e-Asliha. His engagement with social issues enhanced a perpetual sense of distress that he cultivated towards the country he lived in. In his essay titled Hindi Aur Urdu in Manto ke Mazameen (1954), he wondered, “Why do Hindus waste their time in supporting HindiIJ And why are Muslims anxious to protect UrduIJ languages are not created, they make themselves and no human effort can destroy one already made.” Earlier too, in the 1930s, Manto leaned towards the ideology of the Indian Progressive Writers Association (IPWA), a left-leaning literary movement seeking social and cultural catharsis for the masses through literature. Having said that, although his earlier works were testimonials of socialist leanings, his works post-Partition is characteristic of a decaying sense of humanism. Manto, always an enigmatic figure, was also acknowledged as a turncoat who fell out of favour with the IPWA, the literary authorities of his time. His contemporaries were as riddled by his eccentric method in madness and the alcoholic frenzy that was consistently attributed to him.

Nonetheless, Manto Studies have today become a reflective framework of the paradigm shift in Indian literature. Torn between India and Pakistan, Manto evoked a new reality and his stories manifested the quandary of his time.

With a delightfully colourful book jacket befitting Manto’s dynamic personality, the collection has some of his pertinent works, like Toba Tek Singh, Babu Gopinath, Mozel, The Black Shalwar, Gilgit Khan etc, and also consists enlightening essays and briefs by both Manto, critic Muhammad Hasan Askari, magistrate Mehdi Ali Siddiqi etc who enlightens the readers further about the erudite through his personal experiences with him.

Carefully, and broadly, chosen from his vast expanse, this collection has more than 30 short stories, plays, personal sketches, and so on. It also includes the infamous Upar, Niche Aur Darmiyan (Upper lower Middle), for which he was charged with obscenity; but then Manto faced the ire of court six times on the same charge! His Toba Tek Singh, a deeply moving and psychological turbulent story about the inmates of a prison in lahore, awaiting to be transferred to a new India after independence, continues to be an indispensable work revolving around the theme of Partition that ruptured the subcontinent and created hollows borders and agonising abyss. The strain of displacement, violence — physical, mental, sexual — separation, and blurring the line between madness and civilisation, this story continues to vilify the culture of violence that still breeds in the country. A very different Babu Gopinath, on the other hand, is about an avant-garde persona with a fascination for prostitutes, who strives to rescue them from a doomed, sordid existence, even at the cost of his own belongings.

But not just the men, women in Manto’s works offer complex vignettes of the gender and social dynamics of his time. His women are intelligent, opinionated, and fearless. Radha (aka Neelam), the protagonist of the title story, Mozel, the firebrand Jew, or Sharda in stories named after their characters, have a compelling sense of righteousness and self-esteem. They simulate an inspiring perspicacity that illuminates their inner strength even in the face of multiplying hostility from society. This, Manto manages to do — amidst debates about whether he is a progressive or not — as seen in his scathing social commentary titled Ismat-Faroshi (Prostitution). In the Afterword, he turns nostalgic, remembering his homeland Bombay which he left after Partition. He refers to strikingly personal accounts of betrayal and disillusionment he faced from near ones and the ruthless snub by the Progressives. At the same time, however, stories such as The Dog of Tetwal, Cold Meat, From Tahira to Tahir etc are conspicuous by their absence. Manto’s work reiterates that righteousness is not dependent on both radicalism and religiosity. It should come from within, as a collective conscience for higher social uplift.

This volume laments the reductionist view that Manto’s works today are confined to a discourse on prostitution and Partition, and that it seeks to dislocate this presumed hypothesis. And it does reiterate a more humanistic vision, a vision, which was probably not hitherto effusively realised. But with this volume, there’s more hope now, as Manto had written, “literature cannot be monopolised, now or never”.

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