An Imprint of Insanity manto ppt. COMpptx

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1. An Imprint of Insanity: M anto’s Partition

2. After three hundred years in India, the British finally left India i n August 1947, dividing the subcontinent into two separate Nation states – the Hindu-majority India and the Muslim majority Pakistan. The partition saw incomprehensible levels of violence a nd is thus seen as one of the darkest and the most traumatic p eriods of Indian history .

3. “ I feel like I am always the one tearing everything up and forever sewing it back together.” SAADAT HASAN MANTO 1912-1955

4. Ayesha Jalal says in The Pity of Partition – Manto’s Life, Times and Work across India-Pakistan Divide , “His most memorable characters are products of the illicit social exchanges that take place in these filthy and ill-famed urban neighborhoods. Whether he was writing about prostitutes, pimps, or criminals, Manto wanted to impress on his readers that these disreputable people were also human, much more so than those who cloaked their failings in a thick veil of hypocrisy .” Book Cover of Manto’s “ Thanda gosht”

5. Trapped between the clashing egos of the two countries, women and children of different communities became the biggest sufferers. During this process, thousands of women were abducted, sexually violated and even raped.

6. He says, “Don’t say that one lakh Hindus and one lakh Muslims died; say that two lakh human beings were slaughtered. That two lakh human beings died is not such a great tragedy after all; the tragedy, in truth, is that the dead have been killed for nothing.” Partition through the eyes of Manto

7. The no man’s land of hysteria: With the introduction of this binary, mass confusion ensued as many grappled with the question of whether they were now 'Hindustani' or 'Pakistani' , leading to a constant existence in the no-man's-land of trepidation, hysteria, and chaos - a place where reason merges with - a place ruled by madness .

8. Most of Manto’s Partition stories uses madness as a metaphor. Nowhere is this metaphor as clearly and effectively used as in Toba Tek Singh (1955), his best-known short story. The story dates to the post-Partition period, where India and Pakistan have decided to exchange asylum patients on the basis of their religious Identity . The protagonist is Bishan Singh , a Sikh, who has been inmate of an asylum in Lahore for the past fifteen years. Singh comes from a village named Toba Tek Singh which is in Pakistan. During the period leading up to the partition, absolute mayhem has ensued in the asylum, with inmates confused as to which country they will be assigned to. TOBA TEK SINGH

9. The story ends with characteristically enigmatic lines – “On one side behind him stood the lunatics of Hindustan and on the other side across the road, lunatics of Pakistan. Between them on the no-man’s land Toba Tek Singh lay stretched.” (163)

10. “All they knew was this man Muhammad Ali Jinnah whom everyone calls Quaid-e Azam . He had made a separate country for Muslims called Pakistan. but they knew nothing about where it was located. So, these inmates, whose minds hadn't fused entirely, were continually in a fix about whether they were in Pakistan or Hindustan. If they were in Hindustan, then where was Pakistan?” (Manto 158)

11. GRAVE OF MANTO

12. YOURS TRULY , MANTO