Manto: Uncovering Pakistan

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sa’adat Hassan Manto was a writer who confronted social taboos in Indio-Pakistani society. Even though he died in 1955, an alcoholic and penniless, his work still speaks to 21st Century Pakistan. As a film and radio script writer, a journalist and most significantly as short story writer in Urdu, Manto chronicled the chaos that prevailed in the run up to, during and after the Partition of India in 1947.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC World Service with me saffras Manzor with Manto uncovering Pakistan. Pakistan, G.B. G. B. G. B. G. B. G. B.
0:16.2	My great regret, it has been impossible to obtain agreement, therefore preserve the unity of India.
0:22.2	And the only alternative is partition.
0:25.0	At the stroke of the midnight hour,
0:28.0	when the world sleeps,
0:30.0	India will awake to life and freedom.
0:33.0	August 15th is the birthday of the independent and sovereign state of Pakistan.
0:42.0	Between June 1947 when the and southern state of Pakistan.
0:43.0	Between June 1947 when the Viceroy of India Lord Mount
0:46.6	Baton announced a plan for partition and August the 15th
0:50.6	when India and Pakistan both became independent from Britain and from each other,
0:56.0	one of the largest ever forced mass movement of humanity was set in motion.
1:02.0	The border between India and Pakistan was arbitrary and artificial and in trying to slice the country along religious lines
1:09.6	former Muslim, Hindu and Sikh friends and neighbours turned against each other.
1:16.0	Some 14 million people were on the move and up to 2 million would die as a result.
1:22.2	The greatest chronicler of this bloody chapter in the region's history
1:25.8	was a man who is largely unfamiliar in the West, but regarded in India and Pakistan
1:31.5	as among the greatest writers to emerge from the subcontinent.
1:34.8	On a good day I think he's one of the best, not just in Urdu but in any language in the world.
1:40.7	His work has inspired so many generations now.
1:44.2	He was many things, a Muslim journalist, short story author and screenwriter.
1:49.3	His works are still, in fact they're more relevant today than they have been ever before.
	...

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