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special article

Writing ‘Realism’ in Bombay Cinema:


Tracing the Figure of the ‘Urdu Writer’ through
Khoya Khoya Chand

Rupleena Bose

In the years following independence, Bombay’s popular Dense clusters of boats strung along the horizon.
Those closer in are loaded down with light,
films sought to create a unified, seamless nation where As they venture out their profiles fade into fog.
ruptures like Partition were made invisible and the hero Each is scattered into stillness, plump with peace, silence closing
around-sails billowing rapidly.
figure remained Hindu and upper caste. Realism But each seems to take its place wilfully
remained at the margins of this celluloid text since it did In a half life of quiet scrutiny
Ripening with life’s breath,
not fit this dominant discourse. Urdu writers, many of Along the far horizon where boats cluster by chance.
them Muslims, who were often part of the leftist –Miraji, The Juhu Shore (Farooqi 2008: 33)
progressive writers’ movement, questioned these

I
seamless narratives. This paper tries to reopen the n a world which has now repeatedly questioned nation spaces
history of realism in Bombay’s popular cinema by and the way communities are “imagined” and fictitious bonds
are forged, it is again of importance to step back in history
exploring the role of the Urdu writer of this period by
and look at the moment of divide between the individual and
engaging with a recent film, Khoya Khoya Chand and its her/his imagined home. When I say “home” here, I am attempt-
protagonist who appears to have been moulded on ing to understand this concept through the subjectivity of the in-
Saadat Hasan Manto. dividual, which often does not correspond to the physical address
of “home” that the nation imposes on him/her. Partition Studies
have worked extensively with the narratives of memory where
“home” remains an undisputed site in imagination rejecting the
actual physical space inhabited by the displaced. Forgotten by the
keepers of the national identity, “partition scholarship” has been
an interventionist step towards the recovery of individual parti-
tion memories; stories, fragments, and histories, which were
­neglected during the systematic constructions of a seamless “his-
tory” of the nation. However, as the focus of historio­graphy shifts
from the official to the “subaltern”, the texts of history are no
longer limited to conventional reading of facts and official inter-
pretations. In such an important context, prints, visuals, photo-
graphs, cinema, performances – that is, forms r­eflective of myriad
cultural and pleasure practices and broadly categorised as “public
culture” serve to give a more interesting and complex under-
standing of the nation and its plethora of people as subjects.1
Recent scholarship on film history has informed us of the inti-
mate connection between cinema and the nation where popular
cinema has often been used as a hegemonic space by the ruling
elite to voice dominant values of morality, class and majoritarian-
ism. This is also reflected in the real economy of film production
in India, which has mostly been under the control of the feudal/
ruling class or capitalist ruling elite. For a nation with a difficult
early history, cinema as a representational site has seldom
Rupleena Bose (rupleena.bose@gmail.com) teaches English at ­questioned the tensions laden in the very idea of “nation state”,
Sri Venkateshwara C­ollege, University of Delhi.
which itself is symptomatic of the way the domain of the popular
Economic & Political Weekly  EPW   november 21, 2009  vol xliv no 47 61
speciAl article

­ egates uneasy truths in favour of depicting the “acceptable” in


n reproduces keeping in mind the market and the “nationalist” sensi-
socio-political terms. A necessary form of interrogation is thus bilities of a majority Hindu nation. The film shows Zafar Ali as a
practised through the study of film as a historical text, not merely writer working for an Urdu journal during the day and writing
looking at the film in terms of political and ideological relevance, his novel in the red light areas of Bombay as dusk descends.
but also the “the narrative images and exhibition values which Zafar, who migrated to ­Bombay from his hometown, Lucknow,
the stars and genres transport, the degree to which these unfold, which was the 19th ­century hub of cultural and artistic activi-
expand and proliferate through the body-politic: the film thus ties patronised by the colonial feudal ruling class, hails from an
combines a textual as well as a social mode of address.”2 erstwhile respectable and famous family. Zafar’s past life rooted
In my paper, I would attempt to look at a film text not only as in the decadent feudal value system is shown to be an uncom-
a historical document but also as a form of representational fortable memory he has to battle as he resists the feudal and
history recreated through an aesthetic reworking of certain bourgeois values of the landed classes to identify himself as a
“knowledges” about the early years of Bombay film industry. writer seeking to represent the conflicts ridden in the society
These “know­ledges” have been handed down over the years where he belongs.
through the discourses cinema generates into the public culture Bombay as depicted in the film, was actually the new “home”
of the postcolonial nation. Hence, like myths that become known of many Urdu writers who had migrated to the city during the
and accepted as history in postcolonial societies, the world of 1930s and 1940s from the towns of north India, writing for noted
Bombay cinema has also acquired a mythical status in popular Urdu journals like Mussavar and Karawan which were published
Indian imagination identifiable through a set of familiar images, from the city. At a time when the language in cinema was pre-
clichés, stereotypes and consumed as an “unreal truth” repre- dominantly Urdu, the world of publishing was closely linked with
sented by the film form itself. However, it is necessary to note at the film industry, causing a steady exchange of ideas and themes
this point that this so-called unreal world represented in written expressed by the writers of those times. Writers like Saadat Hasan
or film narratives carries within itself real stories and questions Manto, Krishan Chandar, Ismat Chughtai and Shahid Latif who
of identity and ­belonging which were the predominant anxieties were eminent writers were also a part of the film industry of the
of the Indian nation during the years surrounding independence 1930s and 1940s. It is to be remembered here that know­ledges
and Partition. surrounding the film industry have been discursively spread
The film which I have chosen as my entry-point into the through the memoirs and reminiscences of writers like Manto
­v ibrant and yet turbulent period in Indian cinema housed in and Chughtai in the documentation of their experiences and
the city of Bombay is a recent film, Khoya Khoya Chand, directed ­associations with the film industry of that time. Hence the repre-
by Sudhir Mishra (Adlabs 2007). This film is an important text sentational history that KKC seeks to document is constructed not
seeking to represent the industry of which the film itself is a just from the cinema of the period, but also from the image
product. The film is also a self-reflexive attempt to document a about the industry, which has become a part of the public cul-
part of its own history of becoming, the history of early Bombay ture disseminated through autobiographies, film journals, mem-
cinema constructed through a narrative, which is in the form of oirs, etc. Discussing the later trend of film journalism, Rachel
stylised realism. It needs to be qualified here that historically Dwyer says “the post-war period saw the decline of the studio
realism was imported into India via the Victorian novels and system of production and the rise of the independent producer
was never the predominant form in Indian literature or film and the growth of star system resulting in new forms of infor-
narratives.3 Hence, the use of realism in the film Khoya Khoya mation supplied by trade weeklies and the ground breaking
Chand to depict the film industry from the 1940 to 1960, an era English publication of the Filmfare magazine in 1952” (Pinney
in which the predominant genre of film-making was the “ro- and Dwyer 2001: 251-52). However, this trend of organised
mance” genre, is a clever attempt at capturing history within the film journalism started in the 1950s, which implies that in the
established tradition of mainstream Bollywood cinema. In my years preceding Partition and independence, information was
analysis I will seek to ­locate the politics of the cultural space mostly circulated through the magazine Film India published
portrayed in this film’s narrative and the concerns of identity by Babu Rao Patel under the aegis of Prabhat Studios, making
in the emerging discourse of fervent nationalism challenging it extremely important to investigate writing which was not
some of the received know­ledge about the “fiction” of the a part of any studio set-up. One such text is Manto’s Stars
Bombay film industry. from Another Sky: The Bombay Film World of the 1940’s (1998). I
Khoya Khoya Chand (henceforth KKC) is a story charting the locate this text as the most interesting and relevant document
transition phase in the newly independent nation through the and a received knowledge of the film industry of the 1940s.
chequered life of the protagonists Zafar Ali Naqvi, an Urdu This work possibly forms the basis of the imagined characters
writer and Nikhat, a dancer aspiring to be an actress, during of a contemporary film like KKC and is essentially one of the
the transitional years of the Bombay film industry. Zafar Ali reference points of the events that are a part of the fiction
is introduced as a rebellious young Urdu writer who already that the film creates. The sketches of stars, musicians, writers
has an established literary status in Urdu literature with two whom Manto remembers from his years in Bombay dating from
published novels and a volume of short stories. Zafar Ali, as 1936 to 1948 were first published in Afaq, an Urdu daily from
the Muslim protagonist of a contemporary film, is unlike the ­Lahore and in Director, a popular weekly magazine about films.
dominant upper class Hindu “hero” that Hindi cinema consistently Written around 1948 to 1954 after Manto’s departure from
62 november 21, 2009  vol xliv no 47  EPW   Economic & Political Weekly
special article

Bombay, Stars from Another Sky, in addition to giving an insight Himanshu Rai was aroused because of their common regional
into the Bombay film universe, also produces an image of the background of being a “Bengali”. Manto’s comment is extremely
“script-writer Manto” in the self-sufficient communities within important in the understanding of communities forged even
the film industry. Such a figure of the writer emerges consider- in the film fraternity, which was not devoid of regional and
ing that Manto’s autobiographical sketches were written many religious associations.
years after the actual events, creating a distance between the Ravi Vasudevan comments on how most narratives about the
writing self and the written self. The written self then is like a film emphasised the way film-making enterprise was like a
character searching for his own space and identity in an ­family unit, where “memories of Prabhat and Bombay Talkies as
“unreal” universe informed by a morality separate from that of households in which a benevolent paternal regard of employee
the ­dominant “new” patriarchy voiced by the ideals of national- was of foremost importance carved out a social legitimacy for
ism in that period.4 its production system” (1991: 184). The notion of the family
Manto first arrived in Bombay from Amritsar in 1936 to work emphasised in the film narratives and in KKC is akin to the joint
for the Urdu journal, Mussavar owned by Nazir Ludhianvi and Hindu family business in which the predominant economic con-
consequently moved to Karawan in 1940 at the behest of Babu trol was with the Hindu owner and the Muslim writer/musician/
Rao Patel. At about this time, Manto started writing screenplays actress was appropriated within this rhetoric. For instance,
for films beginning as a scribe or a “munshi” with Imperial Film Nikhat’s relationship with the Hindu actor Prem Kumar could
Company. The earliest film written by Manto was Keechar based never attain ­legitimacy because she was an actress, and it is
on socialist ideas for Hindustan Movietone filmed as Apni rightly shown in the film that Prem Kumar chose to marry within
­Nagaria, followed by Kisan Kanya (1937), the first colour film the moral patriarchal fabric a Hindu woman who is outside
­produced by Ardesher Irani of Imperial Film Company. Despite the flexible morality of the film industry and placed within
the fact that most of the films that Manto wrote were not success- dominant Hindu patri­archal culture. Nikhat’s past as a dancer,
ful in an industry in which melodrama was the acknowledged symptomatic of most actresses of that period who traced their
mode of acting and expression, he played a part in the production dancing skills from their history as courtesans, was not deemed
of most films coming out of Bombay Talkies and Filmistan. The acceptable according to the social institution of marriage.
only film written by Manto which achieved relative success was The film, however, does not delve into the difficult questions
Aath Din featuring Ashok Kumar where he also played a small of identity, which informed characters like Nikhat or Zafar.
role of a shell-shocked officer. Zafar remains an outsider despite his association with the
When Najmul Hasan ran off with Devika Rani, the entire Bombay studio, his character separated from the others by virtue of his
Talkies was in turmoil. The film they were making had gone off the arrogance as a writer of eminence but never quite a natural
floor and some scenes had already been shot. However, Najmul Hasan member of the “family” that the film unit believed themselves
had decided to pull away the leading lady from the celluloid world to to be. A writer who encounters difficulty ­because of his associa-
the real one. The worst affected and most worried man at Bombay
tion with “realism” as the chosen genre of writing, Zafar’s sto-
Talkies was Himanshu Rai, Devika Rani’s husband and the heart and
soul of the company. S Mukerjee, Ashok Kumar’s brother-in-law, who ries which go on to be made into films belong to the style of
was to make several hit movies in the years to come, was at the time writing which in the 1930s and 1940s was called upon by the
sound engineer Savak Vacha’s assistant. Being a fellow Bengali, he felt Progressive Writers movement as a necessary tool to delineate
sorry for Himanshu Rai and wanted to do something to make Devika societal conflict.
Rani return (Manto 1998: 1-2).
In 1936 at the inaugural conference of the All India Progressive
In this manner of beginning his sketch of Ashok Kumar, Manto Writers Conference in Lucknow (Zafar Ali in the film KKC is
in his concise and brazen manner gives the story of the Bombay shown to have migrated from Lucknow and it can be assumed
film world and its alternative moral universe. An industry which that his fictionalised character knew of the ideas propagated by
was not informed by the bourgeois morality and codes of the the PWA), Premchand delivering the presidential address made a
middle classes, the world that the “scriptwriter” Manto ­inhabited clear appeal for producing literature that would champion the
in his years of living in Bombay was one complete with quasi cause of social justice and would be reflective of the existent evils
communities formed through affiliation to the same studio where of the nation expressed through the unambiguous use of social
they worked. In a similar set of incidents strewn throughout the realism, while also urging the writers to maintain a balance
film KKC , actress Nikhat’s affair with the leading star Prem ­Kumar ­between the construction of subjectivity of the individual and the
which led to the suicide attempts of an older actress, Ratanbala, larger social problems.5 Looking back at an important historical
resulting in the disruption of filming schedules; Zafar Ali’s rela- moment in Urdu literature following the 1857 Mutiny, Muslim
tionship with Nikhat which caused problems of authority and ­reformers like Syed Masood urged that it was necessary for Urdu
jealousy for the star Prem Kumar during the shoot; the resulting literature to modernise Indian Muslims and inculcate a national
rift within the communities formed in the production studio; and consciousness amongst them, making them a part of the “nation”
yet, all the characters come together as a community while at- which was identifying itself as an oppositional force against
tempting to complete the production of a film and upholding the ­colonialism. It was also during this period that Urdu acquired the
pride of their studio. status specifically of a “Muslim” language with the objective of
However, one subtle comment of Manto’s in the above contributing in the construction of “national literature” (Ahmed
passage needs to be analysed; that Mukerjee’s sympathy for 1993: 19-35). It is hence evident that for Urdu to play a legitimate
Economic & Political Weekly  EPW   november 21, 2009  vol xliv no 47 63
speciAl article

part in the rising consciousness of a nation which was defining well as film narratives in India. KKC aptly captures this in its nar-
itself to be largely Hindu, it was important for the language to rative in which the films being shot in the course of the story are
declare its solidarity with the agenda of “nationalism”. Likewise, either historical romances or courtly dramas with the exception
it was important for the Indian Muslim to separate himself from of Zafar’s novel which is adapted for the screen. Sandra Freitag
the Muslim League and prove him/herself as a “Nationalist mentions that visual culture in India dated from the religious act
Muslim”.6 Zafar’s character as a writer in the genre of realism of darsan prevalent in the act of viewing god and the medieval
which itself was not the predominant genre in Bombay cinema courtly event of the ­Emperor letting himself to be viewed by the
reflects the need on the part of the film to establish him as a audience (Pinney and Dwyer 2001: 35-67). The film narrative
­“nationalist Muslim” believing in the cause of reform, and never was an extension of the visual culture dramatising mythologies
expressing any ambiguity about his identity in those divided for the viewers in the form of historical romances and the secu-
times either through his writing or his cinema. Zafar’s identifica- larisation of cinema started only with the use of realism by pro-
tion as a writer using Urdu language and literature as a vehicle of gressive writers in films beginning with the years of the war. The
social change is depicted in the first story that he writes as a generic success of realism can only be mapped in the 1950s in the
scriptwriter acted out by Nikhat and Prem Kumar. context of ­Nehruvian socialism when a new nationalist elite de-
The story is set in the context of the post-reform movement manded that cinema had to serve the purposes of development of
and freedom struggle in Bengal and the success of the film de- the new ­nation. Akin to the agenda for progressive writers, the
spite its use of social-realism in its form is also an indicator of the new ­nationalist elite ensured a control and regulation over
steady change in Bombay cinema through the 1940s and the c­inema and demanded the cooperation of the film industry in
1950s when a lot of progressive writers like Bedi and Chander spreading nationalist sensibility amongst citizen subjects. The
were writing scripts for cinema. Most of early cinema dramatised Film Enquiry Committee, set up in 1949, clearly stated that the
either mythologies or historical romances drawing from the Ministry of ­Information and Broadcasting saw cinema within the
e­stablished tradition of theatre, ram lila and nautanki; realism, framework of nation building and urged producers and directors
as mentioned before, was a late entrant in the life of literary as to ensure a positive cinematic representation of a young India

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64 november 21, 2009  vol xliv no 47  EPW   Economic & Political Weekly
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and build myths of “Indianness” through film narratives (Schulze difficulty of expression of an identity which was rendered as a
2002: 1-17). It is hence to be noted that realism as a genre either suspicious “other”. With the drawing of lines on real physical
located itself in the representation of the past, that is, the reform spaces, the question of homeland was linked to religious belief
movement and the freedom struggle of India, or in the role of disregarding the emotional and cultural affinity of individuals.
creating myths of a consolidated “nation” through films like No other writer was able to respond to the immediacy of ­Partition
Mother India (1957) brushing aside the immediate reality of Parti- like Manto, and even in cinema the first attempt of under­standing
tion violence and the deeply entrenched communal sentiment of Partition happened much later in M S Sathyu’s Garam Hawa
the “other” which was the reality of that period. The film KKC like (1973) written by Ismat Chughtai, which posed the problem of
most other mainstream representations also bypasses the ques- accepting the communal reality of the subcontinent rendered
tion of identity in the characterisation of Zafar as a writer in the ­naked through Partition violence. Unlike the urgency with which
context of communal divisions, which were a stark reality of the Manto responded, even important writers like Chughtai took
1940s and the 1950s. While the film positions itself as a saga many years to accept the ugliness of Partition violence and the
m­apping the “glorious 1950s and 1960s” of the film industry, the stark question of belonging.
events and characters as I have observed in this paper are closer
Shyam and I were listening to a family of Sikh refugees from
to the knowledge of the 1940s in the public imagination. E­v idently
­Rawalpindi. They were telling us horrifying stories of how their ­people
the need to dissociate the representational universe of KKC from had been killed. I could sense that Shyam was deeply moved and I
the Partition is only one more in the series of denials of Partition could understand the emotional upheaval he was undergoing. When
­v iolence by the “secular” nation. we left I said to him, ‘I am a Muslim, don’t you feel like murdering me?’
Like the inability of realism to grasp or make sense of Partition ‘Not now’, he answered gravely, ‘but when I was listening to the atroci-
ties the Muslims had committed … I could have murdered you.’ I was
violence leading to its interpretation as an aberration caused by
deeply shocked by Shyam’s words. Perhaps I could have also murdered
“outsiders”, progressive writers both in their literature and scripts him at that time. But I suddenly understood the basis of those riots in
glossed over the violence that had questioned the very core of which thousands of innocent Hindus and Muslims were killed every-
so-called harmonious and rational Indian society. Aamir Mufti in day. ‘Not now … but at that time yes.’ If you ponder over these words,
his reading of Manto’s short stories notes that Manto dismissed you will find an answer to the painful reality of Partition, an answer
that lies in human nature itself (Manto 1998: 73).
the canonical forms of Indian realism: the novel format, the real-
ist narrative and the allegoric ­rendering of the nation as the Manto’s sketch of actor Shyam (who was the only person
mother. Through short stories where marginal figures like female seeing Manto at the time of his leaving) finds reference in
prostitutes were the central characters, Manto used irony to state his story “Sahae” where the protagonist suddenly leaves for
the “familial semiotic of nationalism to interrogation” exposing Pakistan following an exchange with a close friend similar to
nationalism’s universalising of identity formation7 (Chatterjee the passage quoted above. The story unfolds as the two Hindu
and Jeganathan 2000: 1-36). Even in his writings on the film in- friends accompany the protagonist to his ship for Karachi and
dustry where Manto repeatedly said that his experience of Bom- their ensuing conversations. “Sahae” is a simple story, which
bay and the film industry were the happiest years of his life, he r­eveals the way friendships and interpersonal relationships are
presented the dichotomy between identification either as a “na- not neutral spaces and negotiated through the politics of com-
tionalist Muslim” or as the “other ­Muslim” who was the symbol of munal difference, but are an underlying aspect of one’s subjec-
separatism in national­istic discourse. tivity where belonging is also a category marked with religious
connotations in a region like south Asia. Citing Gyanendra
In Bombay, the communal atmosphere was becoming more vicious by
the day. When Ashok and Vacha took control of the administration of P­andey in this context could offer an explanation: he states in
Bombay Talkies, all the senior posts somehow went to Muslims which his book Routine Violence that the ­v iolence of everyday life is not
created a great deal of resentment among the Hindu staff. Vacha ­began merely manifested in “explosive” and visible but also in hidden
to receive anonymous letters which threatened everything from mur- and disguised ways, sometimes even through gestures and cul-
der to destruction of the studio. Neither Vacha nor Ashok could care
tural practices; “routine violence is involved in the construction
less about this sort of thing. It was I, partly because of my sensitive
nature and partly because I was a Muslim, who expressed a sense of of naturalised nations, of natural communities and histories,
unease to both of them on several occasions. I advised them to do majorities and minorities” (2006: 8).
away with my services because Hindus thought that it was I who was Unlike the dramatisation of Zafar’s sudden departure ­explained
responsible for so many Muslims getting into Bombay Talkies. They as his reaction to the failure of his first directorial “realist” film,
told me I was out of my mind (Manto 1998: 73-74).
the exile of a “Muslim” during and after the Partition was not just
Most of the biographical criticism of Manto construct him as an egoistic choice or an imposed act. Rather it was a phenomenon
an egoist writer where his leaving for Pakistan in 1948 is with its seeds in the basic question of how to categorise one
­explained through his arrogance over the rejection of his script in ­physical space as homeland when “home” itself had become a
favour of Chughtai’s Ziddi and Nazir Ajmeri’s Majboor, but never ­political entity organised around religion and exclusion.
really analysing the events leading to the disillusionment of a
sensitive writer whose astute understanding of violence was un- Conclusions
paralleled. Manto himself through his writings gave numerous Miraji’s poem quoted in the epigraph talks about the boats
explanations of his own departure, each proving the impossibil- clustering along “the Juhu Shore” and each fading away as
ity of pinpointing a logical reason for an experience rooted in the the light dims. Fading into oblivion the figure of the enigmatic
Economic & Political Weekly  EPW   november 21, 2009  vol xliv no 47 65
speciAl article

“Urdu writer” is suddenly recovered and brought back into the P­resident’s gold medal for the best feature film in 1954 (the first
contemporary domain of the popular/public by the film KKC . In equivalent of the national awards), receiving appreciation from
redefining the “hero” as a Muslim writing a “Muslim language” Nehru himself. Interestingly in the film, the credits stated, “orig-
which has almost disappeared from the public world barring cer- inal story by S H Minto, ­dialogues Rajinder Singh Bedi and
tain singular attempts in cinema and music, the attempt of KKC to screenplay J K Nanda” by which the name of the “greater short
bring back a forgotten era within the limitations of commercial story writer than God” was changed into an unknown name, re-
Bombay cinema is commendable. moving all markers of his identity in the country that remained
In a letter reflecting his concerns about Urdu language his “home” if not his nation.
written to Pandit Nehru, Manto stated, “You are a litterateur in Christina Oesterheld notes that the histories of Urdu narrative
English. Here I write short stories in Urdu, a language which is genres usually focus either on older traditions of qissa or dastan
in the pro­cess of being wiped out from your country” (quoted in often neglecting shorter narrative forms, leading to a gap in the
Bhalla 1997: 175-83). With a strange sense of prescience, Manto study of the various vast fields of Urdu literary production which
foresaw the exile of Urdu by the Urdu writers who had exiled the have not been part of any established canon (Oesterheld 2004:
language in their new “Hindu” homeland. Written around 166-68). However as recent studies have retrieved important fig-
August 1954, the letter ironically shares its moment in history ures like Manto in the public imagination, I suggest that it is also
with the release of the last story written by Manto for the Bom- necessary to look at the construction of the elusive figure of the
bay film industry, Mirza Ghalib (1954) directed by Sohrab Modi. “Urdu writer” represented in the texts of criticism, literature and
Released years ­after it was written during Manto’s tenure in history.
Bombay, Mirza Ghalib dramatised the life of the greatest Urdu My exercise of locating the figure of the “Urdu writer” fiction-
poet in the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar, his conflict between alised as the “hero” in KKC a contemporary film text, is an effort
domesticity symbolised by his wife and liminal space repre- to juxtapose cultural texts imagining the writer as a character
sented by the courtesan, along with the struggle of the writer read with real figures emerging discursively within the politics of
desiring acknowledgement for his vision. The film won the identity and representation.

Notes References Manto, Saadat Hasan (1998): Stars from Another Sky:
Ahmed, Aijaz (1993): In the Mirror of Urdu: R­e­ The Bombay Film World of the 1940s (New Delhi:
1 See Christopher Pinney’s usage of Appadurai
compositions of Nation and Community, Penguin Books).
and   Breckenridge’s formulation of “public culture”
1947-1965 (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced – (2000): Manto ki Kahaaniyan, Narendra Mohan
to understand politics of the popular consump-
Studies). (ed.), (New Delhi: Kitabghar).
tion of visual forms in Pleasure and the ­Nation
(2001: 1-30). Bhalla, Alok, ed. (1997): Life and Works of Saadat Mishra, Sudhir (2007): Khoya Khoya Chand (Adlabs).
2 Quoting from Thomas Elsaesser (1986). ­Hasan Manto (Shimla: Indian Institute of Mufti, Aamir R (2000): “A Greater Short-Story Writer
­Advanced Studies). than God: Genre, Gender and Minority in Late
3 Priya Jaikumar (2007) discusses the two forms
Chatterjee, Partha (1995): The Nation and Its Colonial India”, Subaltern Studies XI, 1-36.
realism in Indian cinema, the “nationalist real-
­Fragments (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Oesterheld, Christina (2004): “Entertainment and
ism” of Ray and Ghatak and the second used in
Chatterjee, Partha and Pradeep Jeganathan, ed. ­Reform: Urdu Narrative Genres in the Nineteenth
popular cinema, closer to Hollywood realism.
(2000): Community, Gender and Violence: Subal­ Century” in Stuart Blackburn and ­Vasudha Dalmia
4 Partha Chatterjee theorises about the “new” (ed.), India’s Literary History: Essays on the
tern Studies XI (New Delhi: Permanent Black).
­patriarchy which was formulated through the Nineteenth Century (New Delhi: Permanent
­discourses of nationalism and the agenda of Elsaesser, Thomas (1986): “Film History as Social
­History”, Wide Angle, 8, 2. Black).
­social reform redefining domesticity and
Farooqi, Mehr Afshan, ed. (2008): The Oxford India Pandey, Gyanendra (2006): Routine Violence: Nations,
m­a rriage in the context of anti-colonial struggle
Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature (New Delhi: Fragments, Histories (New Delhi: Permanent
where the ­i nner world was the domain of the Black).
p­r ivate, the morally superior “home” which had Oxford University Press).
Freitag, Sandra B (2004): “Visions of the Nation: Pinney, Christopher and Rachel Dwyer, ed. (2001):
to be protected from the immoral ideas of west-
Theorising the Nexus between Creation, Consump- Pleasure and the Nation (New Delhi: Oxford
ern modernity in The Nation and Its Fragments
tion, and Participation in the Public Sphere” in University Press).
(1995: 119-24).
Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha ­Dalmia (ed.), Schulze, Bridgette (2002): “The Cinematic ‘Discovery
5 Saikat Ghosh in his unpublished dissertation
­India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth of India’: Mehboob’s Re-invention of the Nation in
gives a detailed reading of the Progressive Writers
Century (New Delhi: Permanent Black). Mother India”, Social Scientist, 30, 9-10.
Association and their uneasy relationship with
Manto, also looking at the way the Progressives Ghosh, Saikat (2004): Partition’s Forgotten Double: Vasudevan, Ravi (1991): “The Cultural Space of a Film
mirrored the construction of “nationalistic” ideas Reception Histories and Cultural Contexts of Narrative: Interpreting Kismet (Bombay Talkies,
within which differences and questions of identity ­Manto’s Stories on the Partition, Diss Jawaharlal 1943)”, The Indian Economic and Social History
and subjectivity were subsumed. Following ­direct Nehru University. ­Review, 28, 2.
control of the Communist Party over ­progressive Jaikumar, Priya (2007): Cinema at the End of Empire: Wadhawan, Jagdish Chander (1998): Manto Nama:
writing by the 1940s with its overt agenda of A Politics of Transition in Britain and India The Life of Saadat Hasan Manto, Translated by
Soviet realism, most talented writers like Manto (Calcutta: Seagull). Jai Ratan (New Delhi: Roli Books).
and Chughtai had drifted away from it. See Parti­
tion’s Forgotten Double (2004: 28-30).
6 Gyanendra Pandey (2006) mentions that there
were two kinds of Muslims identified during the
For the Attention of Subscribers and
years of Partition; the “nationalist Muslim” and Subscription Agencies Outside India
the Muslim as the minority.
7 In an interesting moment from the film Khoya   It has come to our notice that a large number of subscriptions to the EPW from outside the country together with
Khoya Chand (2007), Zafar Ali is shown to be the subscription payments sent to supposed subscription agents in India have not been forwarded to us.
­v isiting a prostitute in one of Bombay’s red light   We wish to point out to subscribers and subscription agencies outside India that all foreign subscriptions, t­ogether
areas in order to have a conversation with her on
local politics for the story he was writing. Also with the appropriate remittances, must be forwarded to us and not to unauthorised third parties in India.
see similar incident of Manto visiting a prostitute   We take no responsibility whatsoever in respect of subscriptions not registered with us.
at a brothel as described by Jagdish Chander Manager  
Wadhawan in Manto Nama (1998: 54-59).

66 november 21, 2009  vol xliv no 47  EPW   Economic & Political Weekly

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