By Intizar Husain 

“The progressives had an ideology. Manto had a world view”. This is how Rakhshanda Jalil explains the difference between Manto’s thinking and that of the progressives. The article in which she elaborately discusses the changing relationship between the Progressives and Manto was read at a Manto seminar in Delhi. The seminar was organised by Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust and NehruMemorialMuseum and Library and Urdu, Hindi and English writers from different corners of India as well as Pakistan attended to discuss Manto’s work. One of the participants from Pakistan, I was joined by Ali Madeeh Hashmi and Raza Rumi.

This seminar can be seen as a continuation in the series of seminars held in Pakistan and India during the current year in celebration of Manto’s birth centenary. Manto has perhaps been the most controversial writer in the history of modern Urdu literature and this was well-reflected in the heated discussions in different sessions over two days. Rakhshanda rightly points out the root cause of the controversies which Manto’s stories brought in their wake. “Manto”, she says, “was always too individualistic, too idiosyncratic, too irreverent to adhere to any laid-down policy or guideline”.

But Manto was writing at a time when the Progressive Writers’ Movement, armed with Marxist ideology, dominated the literary scene. And it had a guideline which it zealously recommended to writers, expecting from them unconditional submission to the line dictated to them. So Manto’s alliance with the Progressives was an uneasy one. It could not, and did not, last long. Differences cropped up, particularly during the post-Partition years after he migrated to Pakistan. Here he found two distinguished critics, Mohammad Hasan Askari and Mumtaz Shirin, ready to defend his stand in opposition to the Progressive movement. It soon led to a big controversy.

As Rakhshanda is working on a study of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, she is in a good position to trace the changing relationship between Manto and the Progressives. Manto, she asserts, was undoubtedly a progressive. However, the question is “whether he was a progressive in the way a progressive was supposed to be”. Definitely not, she thinks. However, in the early years the Progressives, according to her, were willing to ignore Manto’s lack of ideology. They were happy to see his early collections, Aatish Parey (1936) and Manto Kai Afsanay (1940) comprise stories which had a political stance. The inclusion of “Naya Qanoon” in the latter collection was applauded by the Progressives in general.

Trouble started with the publication of the third collection, Dhuan (1942). The story “Boo” in particular was condemned by the Progressives. Sajjad Zaheer thought fit to condemn Manto publicly for so-called obscene writing. Rakhshanda questions why Manto alone was singled out for the charge of obscenity.

“The Progressives”, she says, “never rebuked someone like Rashid Jehan, whose stories and plays dealt with extremely bold subjects”. And Manto, she points out, while writing the introduction to Chughad, wondered why Sardar Jafri and other Progressives, who had heaped praises on his “Babu Gopi Nath” later turned against it. “Now all the Progressives of India and Pakistan openly consider this story as reactionary, immoral, wounded and depraved”.

However, while defending Manto against the Progressives, Rakhshanda seems to some reservations regarding some stories such as “Thanda Gosht”, “Khol Dau” and “Kali Shalwar”. They are, she says “by no means representative of Manto’s writings”. “These are dark stories”, she adds. “Manto was not blind to light. He cherished goodness whenever he stumbled upon it”.

She ends by saying: “More importantly, in Manto’s  diagnosis of a sick and ailing society lay his prognosis. For only when we see ourselves for what we are and what we have become can we set about bringing a change for the better. Manto could hold a mirror up to society more faithfully and more brutally than many of his contemporaries. It is this — more than any ideology or the lack of it — that made him a progressive”.