Violence And Trauma Of Partition: Construing Selected Short Stories Of Saadat Hasan Manto

Abstract

It is an acknowledged fact that the partition of India brought about much turmoil for the people and unleashed a long history of sufferings. The people who once were friendly and shared the same space soon turned hostile to one another. The intense hate turned one community against the other in a cruel game of refutation demanding blood for blood, life for life, violence for violence. The brutal aggression laid its hold on the collective consciousness of the masses which completely swayed and transformed itself into a rampant conflagration and swept away the masses. This partition cost a heavy toil not only on individual human lives but also shattered their kith and kin and social relationships. There was large scale violence and genocide. The resultant effective was the trauma which percolated down the memory lanes. Saadat Hasan Manto, a renowned short story writer of South East Asia depicts the psychological and physical sufferings of the people in India and its subcontinent during the partition of India in 1947. His short stories are the true representation of the ruptures that the people of India and Pakistan faced at the time of partition. The contention of this paper is to analyse how the acts of violence and victimization recreate a sense of shock by transmitting the trauma within them in a few short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto.