Saadat Hassan Manto, um libertário.

Abstract

Saadat Hasan Manto was born in 1912 in Sambrala, a small town in the district of Ludhiana in the state of Punjab and died in 1955 in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. Manto is one of the greatest Indo-Pakistani writers and one of the world's great short story writers. He lived a period of his life in India and another in Pakistan. The greatest writer on the subject of Partition (the period following India's independence) and what is known as the “Hindu-Muslim problem”. Fictional and biographical stories, scripts for Indian cinema, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as work as an editor are among Manto's main achievements throughout his life. We can talk about changes in society, but the restriction of freedom of expression for writers, misogyny, patriarchy, persecution of minorities and other social ills are still growing, mainly in peripheral countries. We are witnessing the resurgence of far-right politics across almost the entire planet, including regions where a breath of democracy was temporarily felt, a temporary progress in politics. Despite having lived in the first half of the 20th century, the relevance of Manto's work is evident, especially when it deals with interreligious hatred and sociocultural issues and its victims, who are ordinary citizens and never those who belong to elites. The knowledge produced by Manto continues, therefore, to be necessary to understand what is happening today, especially in the religious, social and political fields.

Keywords: Manto; Urdu literature; India, Pakistan; Libertarian writing; Feminism.