RESEARCH PAPER

Manto’s Charnel house: The Violence Against

the Violated Bodies in Khol Do and Thanda
Ghost

Introduction
Violence, brutality and mass-murder were some of the things which
were hugely witnessed when one breaks free from time and space and
enters the realms of Saadat Hassan Manto’s Indian subcontinent. The
partition of India without a doubt was and is till the date most horrible
incident in the history of subcontinent.
However, this history of violation has-been attached to great
revolutionaries, castes and creeds and to men, children and women in
general. Within this history, lies another one and it is that of terrible
brutalities suffered by the women of that time. Our historical pieces
lacked a lot of stuff but prominently it was how woman indifferent of
religion suffered and this suffering was nothing of the archetypal
suffering described in the rubber stamp literary works of history.
Saadat Hasan Manto, brave, blunt and apt as he was, was one of the
literary figure who stood up and took to writing about the degraded
and condemned bodies ‘women’.’
Violence against women can be a thing easy to speak of but difficult
to make sense of. In wars what one sees is different people using the
hardest weapons as instruments of war. Partition was no different and
rape at that time was also taken as an instrument of war. The body of
the women became the container for one side’s honour, and the
instrument of the destruction of said honour for the other side.

Sadaat Hasan Manto was one of the most popular writers of his time
and this popularity was also because of the way he used to address the
issues of women. Manto perhaps stands out in what Ishtiaq Ahmed
describes as his proverbial “indictment of the senseless partition
violence.” Manto’s women ‘were prostitutes, spinsters and one could
say also the pioneers. If Manto’s women in the partition scenario are
taken account of they were the naive and innocent victims of the
brutalities of war.[ CITATION Raz15 \l 2057 ]. Manto’s depiction of women
in stories like Khol Do and Thanda Ghost brings forward the pain and
trauma suffered by women during partition which is extremely
shocking and tragic. Manto’s partition women can be taken as a true
example of Gayatri Spivak’ssubaltern but to clarify it, not those
subalterns as are portrayed by West. Subaltern’ in the context of
Manto’s violated women are not limited to those who are non-
Western; the subaltern can refer to any member of a community that
is generally marginalised and thus misrepresented because they don’t
have the power to represent themselves, relative to the context of the
writer representing them and any privilege that writer may have over
them in terms of race, class, and/or gender. In this context the women
of partition crisis are considered subalterns.

Thesis Statement
In this paper I will be critically examining Manto’s two short stories
Khol Do and Thanda Ghost to see the factors and causes behind the
violation of woman’s body and what made the woman of that time a
house of ashes, a centre of revenge, lust and brutality for men. This
paper will also examine role of gender and patriarchy in
dehumanizing Manto’s Sakina and the Muslim girl in Thanda Ghost. I
will also connect Spivak’s idea of gender subalternity with my
argument and examination. I would be looking at the linkage between
the history of subcontinent with the history of woman’s body and its
connection with factors like war, gender and the idea of subordinate
other in relation to the text. Apart from this I will also see the
connection between Sakina from Khol Do and Muslim girl from
Thanda Ghost to find out the commonalities between both the
characters.

Significance of the Study

The aim of this study is to bring forward another facet or another side
of the violence which is solely connected to women. This research
also looks into notions of gender roles, androcentrism and how and
why woman’s body has been taken as a medium or a passage for men
to give an outlet to revenge, lust and barbarism. This paper will target
the effects and reasons behind the lustrous male psyche. It will
question the standards of morality and will determine how values
have been shaped up. Apart from this, this study will bring forward
different forms of violation and the linkage between all of them.

Research Objectives
The objectives of this research are:
 To explore the female characters in Manto’s short stories
through the idea of subaltern and to see their relationship as
women.
 To explore the link between woman suffering and national
culture or gendered nationalism.
 To investigate the reasons behind the linkage between
woman’s body with territorial landmass.
Research Questions
This research will address the following questions:
1. How Sakina and the Other Muslim girl represent trauma bodies
losing their self and resistance?
2. How women in these stories are made to suffer in the name of
nationalism, religious rivalry and how actually all this is linked
to gender and sex?

3. How Manto connects masculinity with violence and violators

and femininity with violated ones?
Theoretical Framework

I will make use of some of the aspects of Gayatri Spivak

Chakarvarty’s theory of subalternity to elaborate my idea about
violated and condemned bodies. I will make use of Spivak’s and
Gramsci’s term ‘subaltern ‘to refer to the women who were abused
and violated in the stories Khol Do and Thanda Ghost. (Gramsci
55) I will attach Spivak’s concept of ‘Subject-Other’’ to the
women victims at the time of partition. Also I will use her idea of
‘difference ‘which men use against women to rape and brutalize
them. I will also use her idea about gender subalternity and women
as a ‘fairer sex’ to see how men, in fact whole society perceives
women as an object of sex. I will form connection of this idea with
the texts to see how male links humanity and power with himself
and woman is identified in relation to him, man takes woman as a
toy for himself. This idea of woman as a subjugated secondary
organism will be connected to Sakina and Muslim girl from
Manto’s stories.

Data Analysis
Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories Khol Do and Thanda Gosht can be
taken as the best illustrations of the plight of women during the
partition scenario. The women in these stories are picture perfect
examples of the bodies that were violated, condemned and physically
abused. And of both these stories Khol Do is very symbolic and puts
forward the grotesque nature of men indifferent of what religion they
were from.
Khol Do is a ground-breaking work by Manto when it comes to the
depiction of violence during the rehabilitation time of partition. In the
story, an elderly man named Sirajuddin arrives at Lahore safe but is
very upset because he lost his daughter somewhere during the riots.
He searches for her in the rehabilitation camp but is unable to find
her. The volunteers assure him that if she is alive they will find her
and bring her back to him. However Manto turns the whole normal
story to something shocking and terrible all of a sudden. The
volunteers do find Sakina but keep ignoring her father and say
nothing to him. A few days later, a half dead girl is brought to the
camp. The camp doctor inquiries Sirajuddin, who identifies the girl as
his daughter. The doctor says Khol Do (open up) the window to
Sirajuddin so that some fresh air could enter the room. After this what
happens is extremely ironic and puts forward the crux of m whole
argument.
Manto continues
“The young woman on the stretcher moved slightly. Her hands groped for the
cord which kept her shalwar tied round her waist. With painful slowness, she
unfastened it, pulled the garment down and opened her thighs.” (Manto 31)

The girl (Sakina) is basically so used to of being violated that she just
hears the words and even in this weak state she tries to obey. Maybe
it’s because she knows the alternative will be even worse. The
character of Sakina can be perfectly linked with Spivak’s concept of
Subaltern. As Spivak says, subaltern means the oppressed subjects
or more generally those “of inferior rank. (Spivak 283) The girl from
Khol Do is both taken as an oppressed one and because of her gender
she is also considered to be of lower strata. Spivak also talks about a
woman subaltern and says, subaltern as a female is even more deeply
in shadow. (Spivak 287) The irony which one witnesses in Khol Do
is raped by the very volunteers who were supposed to protect her and
bring her back to safety. But instead of bringing her back they exacted
terrible violence on Sakina’s body as well as her mind. They take
away her wits and her true self and take her to the point where she
believes that she is nothing more than a sexual object. This is what
Spivak talks about when she says woman is treated as ‘fairer sex’ or
‘second sex’ by man. In the story when those men find Sakina they
forget everything and see her as nothing more than attractive flesh
which exists and should exist to fulfill their physical lustrous desires.
Simone De Beauvoir says:
Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as
relative to him: she is not regarded as an autonomous being … Man
can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself
without man. And she is simply what man decrees: thus she is called
„the sex‟, by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male
as a sexual being. For him she is sex – absolute sex, no less. She is
defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with
reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the
essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other (16).
Beauvoir very transparently and blatantly brings forward the status,
the existence of woman in the eyes of man. Beauvoir’s idea that
woman is nothing more than sex for men can be found so relatable to
the story Khol Do. Those volunteer men when they come across
Sakina forget their duty, forget that she is the daughter of some, in-
short even forget that they are humans with any moral values. All they
see is sex, absolute sex and that is what they go for. The way Manto
represents this deathly tragic incident is very raw and real.
Priyamvada Gopal writes that Manto explores “the experience of
masculinity most powerfully in the context of violence that marked
nation constitution” (Gopal 32) and this is what we see in this piece
by Manto, he strongly critiques about the dominant male masculinity
model here. He points out what actually is internal violence and how
it is internalized. In this story we see a double layer of violence.
In this story, one form of violence was that of ‘us’ and ‘them’ which
points to India Pakistan or Hindus and Muslims. However the other
kind of violence was that towards woman and this violence broke all
the boundaries broke all the moral codes. This violence was towards
women by men and this was the sexual violence which saw no
religion, no nation, and no manifesto. This was the violence which
bubbled up because of the male lust. Goppal says that the story:
“Suggests that a very thin line separates patriarchal violence from patriarchal
protectionism.” (Gopal 33)

In relation to Gopal’s statement it could be said that the men who were the
protectors, who were the saviors were actually the ones who brought down
worst possible physical violence on Sakina. So we see a delicate link between
male protectionism and male violence in the story.

The concluding paras of the story hold a lot more irony and a lot more hidden
truths which show the grief and helplessness of the father who was unable to
protect his daughter from vicious beasts. What one sees apart from the wars and
battles is that men have find a universal victim who is also unable to put a good
fight. In man’s world of ruthlessness and savagery to somehow show his
dominance and fulfil his illegimate desires he has the toy or the helpless being
in his hand, the ultimate ‘Other’, the women.

Gayatri Spivak says women are taken as ‘Gendered subalterns.’ And these
gendered subalterns are considered even more worse and low then other
subaltern categories. Men take these subalterns as objects which only exist to
please them as they (according to men) have no serious role to play. The entire
existence of women is overshadowed by men. (Spivak 271)

So in a nutshell if we sum up our analysis of this story by Manto what we see is

that, partition actually brought out a nationalist and patriarchal fetish on female
sexuality. Woman’s body is taken as a playground or stage to perform the
actions which define man as a man. It is a platform for men to show strength
and power. Also probably it can be related to the psychological impact of
partition on the minds of men. Many of the men at that period of time were
unable to protect their women, so this probably made them feel that they were
cowards and impotent. In all this frustration and anger men became
maddeningly sexual and starting abusing women to probably satisfy the notion
that they were not impotent and were powerful. If the craft of Manto is deeply
noticed what one sees is that he is trying to show that although in 1947 the two
nations did get their freedom and it was a call for victory for them. But the
women of that time, both Hindus and Muslims never tasted that freedom
because they were not the ones for whom this freedom was. Alas they did not
even get a shred of the freedom from such huge nations.