ISLAMABAD, Jan 18: A galaxy of literary figures at a seminar on Tuesday paid homage to Saadat Hasan Manto as a bold and courageous short story writer. The seminar was organized by the Pakistan Academy of Letters here.
Speaking on the occasion, Nusrat Jalal, the daughter of Saadat Hasan Manto, said even after 50 years of her father's death a theatre in Lahore was reluctant to stage his plays and PTV believed that only a handful of his stories could be screened.
Ms Jalal recalled Manto's last hurtful days and said nobody in the family was allowed to talk about them and the family members only knew of them through his short stories that were read and re-read to know more about him.
Pakistan Academy of Letters Chairman Iftikhar Arif told the participants that the PTV gave an un stated sum of royalty to Manto's family for one of his stories. Media expert Aslam Azhar commented that "this must have been the only occasion when Manto's family received royalty, otherwise the market was full of pirated editions of Manto's works".
Iftikhar Arif said the West came to know about Urdu masterpieces only through the short stories of Manto. He said when other book stores in England were mostly barren of South Asian literature and books, English translations of Manto's stories were available at the Hatcher's (book) shops in London.
Mansha Yad said Manto was as relevant today as he was 50 years ago. "We owe him a debt for popularity and development of Urdu short stories," he said. Sajjad Shaikh highlighted the importance of research on Manto that was very sketchy at present.
A number of speakers also tried to establish Saadat Hasan Manto's Pakistani credentials. Prof Fateh Muhammad Malik observed that Manto belonged neither to the college of progressive writers nor the Islamists and no one owned him, while he was alive and both sides owned him after his death.
He quoted from Shorish Kashmiri, who called him a "playful infidel possessing a sound Muslim heart". Agha Gul said no writer had written better short stories than Manto. Very often, the headlines of his short stories read like newspaper flash headlines, he added.
The seminar recommended the publication of a new selection of the best of Manto's works and thanked the Pakistan Post Office for publishing a five year postal stamp to mark Manto's 50th death anniversary.
