Khol Do by Saadat Hasan Manto

Question: “Khol Do” by Saadat Hasan Manto.

Image: A refugee train, Punjab, 1947. Photograph in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

 Khol Do

 

Manto's historically progressive work also details the forms of violence that particularly affected women, including sexual assaults on both sides of the border - considered a threat to the 'dignity of women and their communities, and led to mass suicides to prevent this 'disgrace'. For a long discussion on the spectrum of violence against women in the Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities, see here in the short story Khol Do.

For a detailed reading, see Analysis of “Khol Do” by Saadat Hasan Manto.

•  The Horrors of Rape and Trauma in Khol Do by Saadat Hasan Manto

Khol Do (Khol Do) is a story that is told in parallel to the depths of human misery that was witnessed during the partitions and after independence. The short story is told in the context of Sirajuddin, whose daughter Sakina goes missing when the train on which he was traveling was attacked by rioters.

Sirajuddin asks some social workers in Pakistan to form a search party for his daughter. It turns out that on finding her, the men themselves rape her, and leave her to die near the refugee camp, where Sirajuddin lives. In the closing scene, in which Sakina barely regains consciousness in the doctor's office, takes off her shalwar, expecting to be raped again, especially the trauma of the victims, which was inflicted by men from their own communities as well as others. Khol Do challenges the inter-religious continuuing narrative of violence with which divisions are often perceived. Questioning the institution of social work, which was central to the nationalist movement's agenda, Manto portrayed the futility of nationalist ideology on both sides of the border, based on hyper-masculinity.

Manto explores the same Partition violence in A Literary Analysis of Thanda Gosht by Saadat Hasan Manto and in Analysis of “Toba Tek Singh” by Saadat Hasan Manto..

 

"PERPETRATORS WERE MEN WITHIN THEIR OWN COMMUNITIES AS OFTEN AS THOSE OF OTHERS."

 

For Manto’s life and the Partition background, see the Britannica biography of Saadat Hasan Manto and Britannica on the Partition of India; the story is collected in Penguin Random House India’s Manto: Selected Stories.

Sources

• Britannica, “Saadat Hasan Manto”
• Britannica, “Partition of India”
• Penguin Random House India, Manto: Selected Stories, translated by Aatish Taseer