WHY I WRITE: ESSAYS BY SAADAT HASAN MANTO (7 page)

Save India from its Leaders

This was Manto’s “Anna Hazare” moment. His shriek of protest against politicians he thought were bringing the nation to ruin. His faith in the people was as strong as that displayed by the protestors led by Hazare in 2012 and his solution was also similar to that of middle-class Indians today — a strong man capable of reining in the State. This piece was evidently written before Independence. Although no context is provided, as best I could make out, the piece was aimed at M A Jinnah and the Muslim League.

We’ve been hearing this for some time now — Save India from this, save it from that. The fact is that India needs to be saved from the people who say it should be saved.

They’re experts in making up this sort of thing, there’s no doubt. The last thing they are, however, is sincere.

After an evening of fiery speeches and righteous denunciation, when they return to their luxuriant bedrooms, their brains are empty of all thoughts of saving us.

They waste not a second on what actually ails India. Their concerns are personal, not national, and so occupied are they with this that there’s actually no space for us.

These people, who can’t even run their homes efficiently, and whose character is lowly, want to straighten out the country and lecture us on what is right.

It would be funny if it weren’t so ridiculous.

These people — “leaders” — see religion and politics as some lame, crippled man. They peddle him around to beg for money. They shoulder his corpse and appeal to those who will believe anything said from high on up. They claim they are bringing the corpse back to life with their effort.

But the fact is that religion is what it used to be and will forever remain that. The principle of religion is intact, solid. It is unalterable, the sort of mountain that waves can never erode.

When these leaders shed tears and wail, “
Mazhab khatre
mein hai”
(Religion is in danger), it is all rubbish. Faith isn’t the sort of thing that can come into danger in the first place. If anything is in danger, it’s these leaders who want to be saved by claiming religion is in peril.

Save India from its leaders, who are poisoning our atmosphere. You may not know this but these leaders go around with scissors. With these they snip your pocket and take all your money. Their life is a long run — towards wealth. Every time they exhale, you can smell the odour of insincerity and greed.

At the head of enormous processions, weighed down by fat garlands, delivering unending speeches full of empty words, they make a path to power for themselves. A path to luxury. They raise and make huge sums of money for themselves as you have seen, but have they told you how unemployment will end? They scream “religion” all the time but when did they last follow the teachings of their faith?

These fellows — who live in houses given to them, who live on the money they raise from others — how can they make us self-sufficient?

India doesn’t need many leaders, each singing a different tune from the other, but those who sing together using the same words. We need only one, as wise as the Caliph Umar and as brave as Ataturk. Someone who will rein in the runaway horse of the State. Who will lead us manfully towards Independence.

Remember — the greedy will never be able to lead us in the right way. Those dressed in silk have nothing to offer those who sleep on stones. Fling such people aside.

They are bed bugs who creep inside the crevices and emerge only to suck our blood.They should be forced out with the heat of our despise.

They rant against the rich for no reason other than that they want to be rich themselves. They are the worst sort of people imaginable. They are the thieves among thieves. Let them know what you think of them.

What’s needed is for our young men, who may be clothed in tatters but are strong and broad-chested, to stand up and toss them aside from the pedestals they’ve occupied without our permission.

They have no right to claim empathy with us, the poor. And remember — there’s no shame in poverty. Those who think there is are themselves shameful.

The man who fends for himself is the superior of the man who lives off the work of others. Be the man who fends for himself. Look coldly at what is in your best interest. Once we take our fate into our hands, these leaders will have nowhere to run.

– (Originally published as
Hindustan Ko
Leaderon Se Bachao
)

The Guilty Men of Bombay

To my mind, Manto was Bombay’s finest chronicler, better than the next best writer about the city, Behram Contractor. Manto wrote what it felt and meant to be part of a great, modern city. Contractor, famous under the name “Busybee”, wrote merely of experiences. In this piece, Manto attacks the rioting that broke out in Bombay after the Muslim League’s Direct Action Day and blames one man, Hafiz Ali Bahadur Khan
*
. Manto hated religious division and didn’t think much of the Muslim League. This piece is raw, and though not particularly penetrative or insightful, it shows his sentiment towards a problem that Indians still live with. It is remarkable how aptly we can apply the situation that Manto describes to the present time. Manto first fled Amritsar’s religious violence, and then, a short time after writing this piece, fled from Bombay at Partition.

(I escaped the filthy lanes and bazaars of Amritsar to land in Bombay. I thought that in this beautiful and broad-minded place, I would be rid of the communal squabbling I had found in Amritsar. I was wrong.

A few months after my coming, Hindus and Muslims began fighting, and kept fighting.

The cause was the same as it always is — mandir, masjid... you know it well. Many human beings were sacrificed for this. I saw much of this savagery myself but kept my feelings and anguish within.

Then I picked up my pen. I wrote this appeal to the lovely people of Bombay. This resulted in our honourable Muslims coming to sort me out. How I escaped a thrashing at their hands, now that’s another story.)

In the end, what was feared, happened. The gathering at the sabha mandap produced vitriol and the air over Bombay soured.

And then our eyes were forced to see such horrific, in fact demonic visions...

Knives were thrust, stones flung, masculine skill with rods displayed. Homes and neighbourhoods were raided. Soon the streets and corners of my Bombay were spattered with blood.

India was taken, when it was at the point of Independence, and dragged into this dark and enormous pit.

Those who value freedom and are aware of the happenings and the history of this age know that this fighting over religion is destructive as few things can be. Their depression at this cusp of freedom is understandable.

No man wishes to see blood and other men slaughtered, save those who deliberately nurture the most base and terrifyingly cruel sentiment.

Which man delights in seeing red streams flow out of the neck of his brother, across which he has just drawn a blade? Who could possibly wish to dance on the mounds of the dead?

Then why is it that the skies over Bombay witnessed this continued massacre? We must force ourselves to examine the events if we are to resolve the question: who was responsible for these killings?

The world is filled with good people. But it also contains some whose time is spent in sharpening their swords and daggers. They await the opportunities to distribute these blades so that from the carnage thus spread, they might profit.

These are people who want to take India to a state of barbarism. They want to spread insecurity through fear and carnage, so that their interests remain secure. They are happy to see in markets the sale of human flesh as meat.

They don’t want India to be independent. They are traitors, and their time is spent in betraying not just their nation, but humanity. They aspirate the fires of hell from their very breath.

They are our leaders. Our representatives.

They are like a cat’s claws. Soft and furry if seen from the top. Sharp and vicious if seen from below. If you heard them speak, it would sound like they feel the world’s pain in their breast. But this pretense is not hidden for long.

Their compassion, their religiosity, their humanity is all a sham. It is frightening to consider that we share this planet with such wickedness.

The violence in Bombay could have been prevented. Over the bitterness, the sourness that Hindus and Muslims feel for one another, the balm of words could have been applied. A little patience and restraint should have been preached.

Had they not succumbed to the mob’s passion and applied cold reason to problems, peace would not have been difficult to find.

A few men did make such attempts, but unfortunately the hissing of some snakes — I am referring to Hafiz Ali Bahadur Khan — ruined what could have been an end to this needless violence.

Those leaders who used religion to rouse hatred, and whom I hold responsible, should know that there are many in India who understand what they are doing. They should know that they are viewed with disgust and contempt.

The palace of independent India cannot be built by those who play mischief with religious propaganda. They are not only enemies of our independence but of the human race.

They must be named and shamed.

Else their every action will continue for long to throttle the neck of this nation’s youth, soon to be independent.

– (Originally published as
Ek Ashk Aalood Appeal
)

Bombay in the Riots

Manto was probably the best observer of communal violence in Bombay. It is remarkable that his writing of this period has not been translated till now, seventy years after it was written. In this piece, he writes of the mayhem that visited the city during the Quit India movement. The thing about Manto is, as we shall see in this essay, that he is essentially detached from his material. Not in the sense that he doesn’t care about what’s going on — in fact he’s terrified, confused, angered and appalled by it. But in the sense that he doesn’t bring his religious identity, in so far as he has one, to his writing. That makes him unusual and interesting.

I returned to Bombay hoping to spend some time with friends and give my battered mind some rest.

Instead, on reaching here, I was so jolted that far from rest and recreation, I even lost what little sleep I had.

Now, I’ve never had any interest in politics. I put politicians in the same bracket as I do soothsayers. I’m exactly as much interested in politics, as Gandhiji is
in cinema.

Gandhiji doesn’t watch movies, and I don’t read newspapers. Both of us are wrong in doing so. Gandhiji would do well to be acquainted with our movies, and I should certainly be reading the papers.

Anyway, I reached Bombay. The same streets whose cobbled stones I had worn down with my walking for five years. The same Bombay where I’d seen two riots unfold. It was the same beautiful city in which I had seen the blood of not a few innocent Muslims and Hindus spattered.

The very place where Congress had now passed a law on prohibition, banning all alcohol. In doing this, they had removed from employment thousands who tapped toddy and brewed liquor.

It was the same Bombay whose dhobis I had seen standing twelve hours in water, toiling away, and were now drinking a vile and poisonous spirit to relieve their pain.

The city where in the canyons between magnificent skyscrapers, thousands slept on the footpath.

I’ve seen, as I said, two riots in this city. The reasons were the same — mandir and masjid, cow and pig.

Mandir and masjid — to me only stone.

Cow and pig — to me only flesh.

This time, in Bombay, I saw new things. Not the usual riot between Hindus and Muslims, not a fight over temple and mosque, not fury over cow and pig.

An entirely new sort of chaos and a new storm raging through this new Bombay.

One day I got a phone call informing me that the entire Congress leadership had been jailed, including Gandhiji who wasn’t even in the Congress.

I said: ‘That’s fine, these people keep getting into and out of jail all the time.’ The news didn’t surprise me. But then immediately after, another friend phoned me to say that Bombay was incensed by the news. The police had lathi-charged the mobs, even fired at them. The army had been called in and apparently there were even tanks on the streets.

I couldn’t leave home for three days. And so I began reading the newspapers and heard terrifying stories from people.

The Muslim League is a mosque. The Congress is a temple. This is what I gathered from the papers. The Congress seeks Independence and so does the Muslim League, but their paths aren’t the same. For some reason, they can’t work together. Perhaps this is because a mosque and a temple cannot be in the same place.

I thought that the Hindus and Muslims would busy themselves in this war and their blood, which did not mix in mosque and temple, would finally mingle in Bombay’s drains and gutters. I was surprised to learn that even this thought was totally wrong. The city was divided.

There’s a long road that leads to Mahim. At the end of the road is a famous Muslim shrine. When the rioting began and reached this part of the city, the youngsters uprooted trees from the road and carried them into the bazaar as barricades.

Then something interesting happened. Some Hindu boys were dragging a big piece of metal on the road towards the shrine. A few Muslims walked towards them. One said politely to the Hindus: ‘
Dekho, bhai
(look, brother), this is where Pakistan begins.’ A line was drawn on the road.

So those boys, intent on rioting, quietly took their pole and carried it over to the other side. It was said that after this, no “kafir” dared to come into “Pakistan”.

Bhendi Bazaar is Bombay’s Muslim heart. There was no rioting here this time. Its Muslims — who earlier took the lead in violence against Hindus — now sat in hotels sipping cups of tea and sighing.

I heard a Muslim tell my friend: ‘We’re only waiting for Jinnah saheb’s order.’

Listen to another story from this same riot.

An Englishman was passing in his car. A mob stopped him. He was terrified, unsure of what terrible fate awaited him. He was surprised when one of the young men said to him: ‘Let your chauffeur sit in the back now and you drive him. You be the servant and him your master.’

The Englishman immediately took the wheel and the driver sheepishly sat in the back. The Englishman felt relief at being let off so easily. The rioters were absolutely delighted at their triumph.

In another place, the editor of one of Bombay’s Urdu film magazines was walking down the road. He was out on work to collect advertising dues and so had worn his suit.

He had knotted a tie and also had a hat on. The rioters stopped him.

‘Hand over the hat and tie,’ they demanded. Frightened out of his wits, the editor handed them over. The mob tossed the offending articles into a fire.

Then a young man said: ‘What about the suit? Even that’s a sign of a colonialist.’ The editor now threw himself at their mercy.

‘I only have this one suit. It’s what I have to wear to the offices of film companies and recover advertising dues from their owners,’ he said, ‘if you burn it, I’ll be ruined and lose my earnings.’

When the rioters saw his tears, they let him off with his suit intact.

The place where I live has mainly Christian homes. Christians of every shade — dark, wheatish and white. They consider themselves a part of the colonial race, the English. That’s why these riots affected the Christians badly. Their legs, dressed in trousers and skirts, trembled.

When news came of the violence getting closer, the men stopped wearing their hats. The women stopped wearing skirts and dresses and now wore saris instead.

In earlier riots, when we left home we would carry two caps. A Hindu topi and a Rumi topi. When passing through a Muslim mohalla, we would put on the Rumi topi and when walking through a Hindu mohalla, the Hindu topi. In this riot, we also bought Gandhi topis. These we kept in our pockets to be pulled out wherever needed. Religion used to be felt in the heart, but now, in the new Bombay, it must be worn on the head.

– (Originally published as
Batein,
in
Manto Ke Mazameen,
1954)