Sirukathai Topics In Tamil

0 views
Skip to first unread message

Sofía Goldthwait

unread,
Aug 5, 2024, 12:27:58 AM8/5/24
to teinirolor
Thenext time I read about this writer was when I happened upon a feature story while excavating articles important for work on my second book AN ENGLISH MADE IN INDIA. One of the articles I happened upon was titled Damme, This Is The Oriental Scene For You! by Salman Rushdie in The New Yorker in June 1997. Rushdie observed that, with the exception of Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto, no other Indian writer writing in the vernacular was worthy of mention.

Each and every post about his life in Pakistan after Partition is harrowing. The essays are laced in sarcasm and disillusionment. As the commentary to God is Gracious in Pakistan says, the incendiary essay is not even publishable any more in contemporary Pakistan. In the essay on what is an Orwellian Dystopia, Manto proceeds to sketch an apocalyptic future in his country. Few will counter the resonance of this piece some seventy years after publication. Manto says that in his new country, Pakistan, the dancing girls are gone. Gone, too, are the poets.


I was first introduced to Saadat Hasan Manto through the translation, from Urdu, of a short story titled Toba Tek Singh that I\u2019ve now read many times over. With every reading, the poignancy of the piece churns my stomach some more. To Manto, Partition was devastating at a professional and a personal level, and he limns the pathos and horror of it in this potent story.


I was taken aback by the observation. Clearly, there was no way for any reader to have read a fair amount of Indian literature, in the original, by the writers working in any of India\u2019s 22 regional languages. I discovered, as the years went on, that at the time of the publication of that story in The New Yorker, the article had incinerated several writers working in the vernacular in India. Among those who wrote an open letter to Salman Rushdie was a celebrated poet and writer I met in Kolkata in 2016. In her rejoinder in The Express Sunday Magazine of July 13, 1997, Nabaneeta Deb Sen asked Salman Rushdie how he could have jumped to that conclusion. If a man did not read in all these other languages how did he know anything at all about the quality of the work to pass such a judgement?


Saadat Hasan Manto\u2019s best short stories were indeed held in high regard by the literary community. Often they touched upon topics hitherto taboo and led to furore in both Indian and Pakistani society. Writing mainly in Urdu, Manto produced 22 collections of short stories, a novel, five series of radio plays, three collections of essays and two collections of personal sketches. His choicest stories lamented the partition of India following the country\u2019s independence from British colonial rule in 1947.


The collection I read this week was a translation, by Aakar Patel, of Manto\u2019s short columns published in Urdu newspapers. The book takes us through the changes in his life and we see the buildup of disillusionment and rancor in the writer as he cobbles together a life in Bombay and is wrenched away from it because of Partition. He leaves his heart behind in Bombay and attempts to build a semblance of a life in Lahore, once his hometown. It\u2019s not the same, however.


What happens when the city once familiar suddenly becomes alien to you? After he moves to Lahore following Partition, Manto describes the place of his childhood with growing disenchantment and scorn. Everywhere he sees the words \u201CPakistan Zindabad\u201D\u2014which translates to \u201CLong Live Pakistan\u201D\u2014and the dissension that has been sown into his country is already popping up in myriad small ways about the town.


The work titled Virtuous Women in Cinema is Manto\u2019s attempt to show that women had every right to enter the Hindi film industry if it pleased them to do so. He opines that they could actually be excellent in what they did and that the loose morals attributed to it only serve to underscore the hypocrisy of contemporary society.


Manto wrote the work titled A Question is Produced a few months after India\u2019s Partition. In his essay, Manto demonstrates that much as a government might squeeze the voice of its people, the questions will always lurk in the shadows waiting to be posed. While the ideological State oppressed the individual and denied him the freedom of speech, it would never stifle something that would be born anyway. If questions could not be born, we would need birth control for them, he says, in a piece that bursts with relevance in the world today.


I found out that as a young man in his early twenties, Manto translated Victor Hugo's The Last Day of a Condemned Man into Urdu; he also translated Oscar Wilde\u2019s Vera into Urdu in 1934. He published his first original story in Urdu, Tamasha (based on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre) under a pseudonym in Abdul Bari Alig\u2019s Urdu newspaper Khalq (Creation). He also edited and translated Russian and French stories for the journals Alamgir and Humayun.


Hailed one of the finest 20th century Urdu writers, Manto has been the subject of several biographical films. This week on Netflix, I watched Manto directed by Nandita Das, with Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the lead role of Manto. It\u2019s a dark and intense film about his life but when I consider that 75 years after his passing we are still discussing censorship and book banning, I don\u2019t know what is more depressing, life as lived in the world or life as depicted on the silver screen.


Books continue to be banned even in western societies where, supposedly, the freedom of speech is a guarantee. Is it, really? I\u2019ve often heard it said that my freedom of speech ends where someone else\u2019s nose begins:-)


In this odd week, I\u2019ve also been privy to a terrific discussion about book bans from experts at a panel conducted by Mellon Foundation. In the grandest of ironies, a ban simply goes on to pump up the sales of a book! I also came upon a post in The Guardian this week that discusses Ian McEwan\u2019s criticism of the hiring of \u2018sensitivity readers\u2019 to look for offensive material in manuscripts. Time for an \uD83D\uDE44 emoji.


Saadat Hasan Manto was tried for obscenity six times; three times before 1947 in British India, and three times in Pakistan following India\u2019s partition. The power of the written word won the day. Manto was never convicted.


K. Ganeshram was born on January 19, 1981, in Cuddalore to couple, Krishnan & Rajarajeshwari. His schooling was in St. Joseph's Higher Secondary School, Cuddalore. He did his MA in English Literature from Puducherry University. His research topics were Comparative Literature, American Literature, and Post-Modern Fiction for receiving his PhD in English.


Ganeshram is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Annamalai University, Chidambaram. His Wife C. Bhuvaneswari is a Lecturer at Government College of Nursing, Cuddalore. They have two Daughters, Mathura Sri and Mithuna Sri.


During your academic career in college or university, you will need to be able to do research whenever you need to do any written assignments. Quality research and credible references are always the backbone of any academic writing project.


The bottom line is that research is always going to be important, and knowing how to find good research material, narrow down a good research topic, and analyze the data are always going to be important skills you need to have.


For specific paper topics, check out our other master lists of 200 informative speech topics or 100 argumentative essay topics. Our team of experts has put together some amazing references for you so you can always find something that works for your assignment.


Think about the broader connections of a subject and how it relates to the world. Are there lessons we can learn from these topics? What do they mean for society? What specifically interests you about these topics that you can break down into more specific subject areas?


When it comes to utilizing good research topics for college students, university students, or even working professionals, everything is going to come down to being able to source good research material. With research, everything is about quality.


Stick to the type of sources listed above to make sure that you are always providing quality evidence, information, and data. Be sure to avoid this list of unacceptable references, sources, or research materials:


When times get too tough, you can always turn to us. Homework Help Global provides custom essay writing services, as well as many other services such as editing, proofreading, presentations, and tutoring. All of our essays are written specifically for you based on your assignment details and instructions, are free from plagiarism, and are thoroughly researched by our team of scholars and academics.

3a8082e126
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages