NATIONALISM AND MADNESS IN THREE TRANSLATED STORIES OF MANTO: TOBA TEK SINGH; THE DOG OF TETWAL; SEE, KABIRA CRIED

The work of partition-affected and brutally honest Saadat Hasan Manto delves into existentialist theory, social justice, and the struggles of oppressed people. He questions accepted wisdom, explores the nuances of gender roles and human desire, and clarifies the issues surrounding mental illness. Studying Manto opens our eyes to a raw image of mankind that challenges social inequities and the intricacies of the human condition. This study explores the rapport between reality and madness that is recurrently found in literature from the olden days to the present. The eccentricities and prototype of mad genius push the writer to see and express the ruthless reality, and this can be seen in the work of tortured genii like Saadat Hassan Manto, Sahir Siddiqui, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Wolfgang Mozart, Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Allan, Kafka, and many others. This paper aims to analyze the content of three of Saadat Hassan Manto’s stories to see the nuances and association between madness and the cannibalistic actuality of nationalism during and after the partition. The qualitative method is used to analyze the content of the stories written by Manto. Descriptive and narratory research designs have been used to analyze the content of the stories. The study of his n arrative reveals the desire to make a distinction between ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ nationalism. His writing was a creative and cathartic process for him where he was, at the same time, fighting with his inner and outer demons as well as producing timeless art. The way Manto exposes the pretense and canard of society through the ink of madness is remarkable.


INTRODUCTION
Exploration of Saadat Hassan Manto's work is an exploration of veiled demons of souls; under the magnifying glass, he sees man as a slave of prejudice, religious and national fervor, and animal instincts.Unlike any moralist, he knows in his heart precisely that human nature is like a warped wood that could never be straightened, so he never tries, never judges them, rather gives freedom to his characters to act naturally to divulge the veracity.He himself says that I accept my characters with all their depravities, ailments, abusiveness, and grouchiness.Farrukhi and Shirin (1985) were of the opinion that Manto's characters are of flesh and bones, and they breathe tragedy.He collects his material from palpable situations and transforms his fiction into a gigantic hologram of guilt and grief for the reader to haunt.He explores the intricacies and complexities of human psychology.His characters do not live in far-off mystic lands but in brothels, poverty, mental asylum, and sometimes on geographical borders.Manto's characters often seem to be the object of strain, moral crunch, social tensions, prejudices, and grudges, and their madness takes its roots from that vulnerable existence and quandaries of their absurd lives; however, the reader can see the method in their madness.Stories of Manto have various themes, but madness is a preordained component of his characters, either over the skin or deep-down running in the veins with stained blood (Ispahani, 1988).
Three translated stories of Manto were taken for analysis; two of them, Toba Tek Singh and The Dog of Tetwal, were translated by Hussain (1987), and the third one, See, Kabira Cried, was translated by Naeem (2015).According to Assaduddin (1996), Manto's works are expertly translated by Khalid Hasan into fluent English, which is quite readable for non-Urdu readers.Even though some people might criticize Hasan's translations as being truncated and reductive, his overall translation strategy ensures a trustworthy and accurate representation of Manto's work.Nevertheless, it should be noted that Hasan's translations may not always be flawless due to his excellent command of English.
Madness has many sides, but choosing three of Manto's stories, Toba Tek Singh (published in 1955), The Dog of Tetwal (published in 1955), and See, Kabira Cried (published between 1948and 1950), different shades of insanity can be seen, which he believed was the result of crazy jingoism and ethnic nationalism (Ispahani, 1988).Similarly, in his stories, we find the marginalized at the center of the narrative.We can draw a parallel between those who held power and the madness they inflicted upon the masses in the name of nationalism, religion, and patriotism during and after the partition.The pain and anguish one feels while reading Manto cannot be felt by merely looking at the statistics of the massacre during the partition.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Saadat Hassan Manto paints his characters with such strokes so the world can see the naked realities as he sees, and he aguishly loves to expose the hypocrisy of the society hidden behind the shroud of morality.He was only 19 when he witnessed the bloody madness at Jallianwala Bagh and penned that massacre in his story Tamashaa.Similarly, partition for him was a period of complete insanity and absurdity that transformed friends of decades into foes, and he transformed this craziness into prodigious literature.We can see the lunacy in a mental asylum as well as in the behavior of the sane ruling elite and in the slogans of ethnic nationalism.For Manto, human beings though are Masjood e Malaik but capable of wreaking great havoc and corruption.Manto's portrayal of a human person, according to Farrukhi and Shirin (1985), goes beyond the duality of good and evil.He depicts them as flawed beings who are susceptible of harm and sin but also have the capacity for kindness.The idea that angels bow down to people suggests that even though people have faults, they are still worthy of respect and dignity.
Joshi's article covers Saadat Hasan Manto's literary rejection of ideas that are political, religious, and nationalistic.Manto's characters are challenging to identify because they are frequently bizarre and have concealed inner lives.Manto's protagonists use subversive tactics rather than provide remedies for systemic or personal ills.His writing is anti-establishment and individualistic, emphasizing the humanityor lack thereof-in his characters while leaving the reader to make sense of the sociology (Joshi, 1996).Koves (1997) claims that even while Manto's tales of the Partition may have questioned some components of the national community's religious foundation, they did not entirely undermine it.In response to accusations that he oversensationalized the sad events in his books Thanda Gosht 'Cold Meat' (1950) and Khol-do 'Open It' (1948), he justified his actions by saying that he had kept an analytical distance from the happenings.His storytelling style, which he felt was not motivated by self-pity or despair, was a reflection of this strategy.The Progressive Writers Movement also criticized Manto for his writings.
The most traumatic phenomenon for Manto was in vain, attempting to detach Indian and Pakistani identities from each other.According to Hasan's (1995), Manto questioned the people if they belonged to Pakistan or India as well as the identities of those who were losing their lives every day.In addition, he questioned, without respect to their religion, whether the deceased's remains were being buried or burned.Manto thought that only death and destruction were moving forward and that everyone was going backward.Manto believed that history was about to witness an unprecedented amount of bloodshed.Despite the fact that India and Pakistan were now independent, brutality, religious fanaticism, and bigotry still held people in both countries as slaves.
The land of the Indian subcontinent had an entwined history of both the nation and cultures, which could not be disjointed and compartmentalized into two wedges by the stroke of a pen.In his essay "Overlapping Territories and Intertwined Histories," Said (1994) claimed that geography, power, and territory are all interwoven.He emphasized that the soil is the source of all human history.Additionally, he argued that no one is exempt from the conflict over geography and that there are no empty or uninhabited spaces on Earth.This conflict, in Said's opinion, is complex and fascinating because it encompasses not only physical might but also concepts, forms, visual representations, and imaginative processes (Said, 1994).When the land got divided, how to divide the literature, culture, and history was the traumatic probing for many others like Manto.
In his stories, he challenged the established values of religion, culture, and politics, and partition was the time that added rage, contempt, anguish, and remorse in his writing, too.Manto spent his last years in psychiatric hospitals for the treatment of his alcohol addiction, which inspired him to create the eternal character of Bishen Singh, who sees the rattling havoc of partition from the realm of his invulnerable madness.According to Sehbai (2012), Manto perceived lunacy in reason and reason in madness.He crept under Bishen Singh's skin one day before silently leaving for a no-man's land that was unclaimed by armies, flags, nations, or power identities.He went to a place where art is made that is liminal (Sehbai, 2012).The mayhem outside and the rebellion inside are knotted together not to create a harmonious narrative but to show the crumbling state of society in the name of nationalism and religion.Singh (1989) notes that in this bizarre and macabre context, Manto has portrayed the tragic-comedy of a society torn apart by the wildfires of hatred.
Keeping in mind the level of syntax and discourse, Yusin (2011) talked about the plight and misery of the lunatics in the story Toba Tek Singh (published in 1955) by focusing on the ambiguity of the language.The phrases used by the lunatics like so boley so nihal, Fitey moon, upper dey gur gur are not only difficult to translate she says, but the ambiguity hovers in the characters, in their names, in the theme, and in the meaning of the story, it seems that as for Manto the meaning of partition was the absurdity and essential loss.
In stories like The Dog of Tetwal (1955), Manto has tried to depict the first combats of the newly emerging India-Pakistan hostility, where animosity seems rooted in nationhood and religion.
He draws his characters to reflect themselves in readers' minds, no matter be a dog or an anonymous lunatic, or a commoner like Kabira.Flemming (1985) argues that the story delivers a gloomy prediction about what will happen to people who are unable to make a decision and uses the dog as a clear emblem for individuals caught between opposing loyalties.Flemming (1985) predicts that those who have already committed will ultimately be the ones to murder them.Like a sear and foreseer Manto in See, Kabira Cried (1948-50) critically satirized the drifts of the emerging trends of fanaticism, orthodoxy, and ethnic prejudice in the newly formed Pakistan.Rousseau (1974) develops the idea that human beings move from a state of nature towards a social agreement and after the agreement is formed, freedom obeys the general will.Manto, being ethnic nationalists influenced by Johann Gottfried Von Herder, believes that it is not the state that creates a nation but rather a nation that creates a state, as ethnic characteristics glue a nation together and in the case of India-Pakistan, religion played a pivotal role in developing ethnic discrimination.
Manto gave voice to the anger, horror, and despair of marginalized characters and transformed the insanity from the level of bewilderment to observance.He does not speak directly about the oppression of the new masters, horrors of newly acquired power, massacre, and bloodshed of partition; rather, in a very subtle way, he unveils the catastrophe of the torn time in his stories.Stephen Alter comments that Manto was the only writer who forcefully wrote about the ambiguities of the communal conflict.Alter (1994) observes that Manto's writing captures the desperation and upheaval brought on by the division of India and Pakistan.Manto brilliantly captures the rage and terror of this era through his writings, as well as the anguish endured by refugees who were uprooted and wronged by the arbitrary border-drawing.Manto's characters see the relentless inhumanity of the conflict between Hindus and Muslims, which includes killing, sexual assault, and mutilation, and their only logical reaction is to go insane.The era after the partition was also dissatisfying for him because he couldn't see the promise of peace and harmony fulfilled; people fought and died for him.Naeem (2015) draws two possible conclusions for the story See, Kabira Cried: either it is a socio-political parable for modern Pakistan, or it is a thinly veiled autobiographical picture of Manto's personal Kabirian struggle during the eight years he lived in newly established Pakistan.Manto's experience with the trauma of partition has fashioned his consciousness that is beyond limits.His stories project not only the deadly sarcasm and frenzy realities of partition but also a tinge of emotional madness, prevalent at that time, which can be seen as well.
The terrible tale of treachery and violence sparked by religious hatred is shown in Manto's stories.Innocent deaths and mindless cruelty expose the heinousness that has been passed down through the years.The author draws attention to the paradox of religious hatred, whereby all major religions promote compassion for others while also supporting an ideology that results in the murder of children who practice other religions.This has happened frequently in India since its independence as well as historically in numerous other locations and eras (Moen, 2006;Koves, 1997;Joshi, 1996;Ispahani, 1988;Hussain, 1987).

METHODOLOGY
Keeping in view the nature of the study, the qualitative method is used for this research because this method is very supple for the social context in which the data is produced.Latent content analysis of three translated stories has been done to extricate and describe the connotations hidden behind the manifest content in Manto's work.Careful, detailed, systematic examination of stories has helped identify patterns, themes, biases, and meanings.Narrative and descriptive research designs have been used so that all the metaphors and syntactic intricacies could be resolved to reach the meanings that lie beneath the words.Three essential claims are highlighted by Moen (2006) in the discussions of the narrative research approach.According to the first assertion, humans organise their accounts of the outside world into narratives.According to the second assertion, the stories that are told depend on a variety of elements, including the narrator's values, audience, context, and past and present experiences.The third claim, which is connected to the second in a close way, emphasises how tales often contain multiple voices or viewpoints.The present research explores the selected stories according to these claims.

Analysis of the story Toba Tek Singh
As Said (1978) defines in 'Orientalism' that the foundation of Postcolonial studies relies on the role of intellectuals in the colonial strife otherwise the history of the oppressed will be erased.Toba Tek Sing is a post-colonial text that reveals the important concepts of post-colonialism, such as national consciousness, alienation of people, and aggression through violence.The horror and madness of partition made Manto write about the violence in a very critical way.Friedrich Nietzsche once said that Madness was rare in individuals, but in groups, nations, and ages it was the rule (Nietzsche, n.d.).This rule led the continent into chaos, and the short story Toba Tek Singh gives an excruciating glimpse of the patients of a lunatic asylum in Lahore.In the story, the patients are being split in the commotion of partition, in which Hindu inmates are being transferred to India and Muslim inmates are going to Pakistan.It is a harsh satire on the pull of madness from both geographical sides; the lunatics are portrayed as saner than those who indulge in the killing and separation of people.'Whether it was a reasonable or unreasonable idea is difficult to say" (Hussain, 1987, p. 11).The story is about the madness of rational beings, which is in a way more detrimental than the psychosis of an asylum.The setting is the lunatic asylum of Lahore, which is more of a metaphor and Bishan Singh is not from Toba Tek Singh; he is Toba Tek Singh, where his daughter would live.Almost bald and has swollen legs, according to Hussain (1987), appeared to be standing all the time and kept repeating, "upper the gur gur the annexe the bay dhayana the mung the dal of laltain" (p.14).The prisoners were unsure of their location when the news of the partition was announced since they couldn't understand its importance.They didn't know where Pakistan was, so they couldn't tell whether they were in India or Pakistan.And it was possible that yesterday they were in Pakistan and now they were in India.Manto horrendously belittled the geographical demarcation of the Subcontinent.One patient had become so mired in the India-Pakistan snafu that they couldn't tell "if they were in India or Pakistan.…installed himself on a branch of a tree […] declared: 'I wish to live neither in India nor in Pakistan I wish to live in a tree" (Hussain, 1987, pp. 12-13).
Even when he hears about his family's arrival in India, he perpetually keeps asking where is Toba Tek Singh.Though he has lost the sense of time and space, his sharp sense of identity and madness are so intertwined that they are inexorable, and only Manto can stretch the wires of identity on which his madness can dance wildly.Finally, the day arrives and on a cold winter evening, all lunatics leave for the border and are packed in Lorries; when Bishen Singh steps out from the bus, he asks the official, "….Where is Toba Tek Singh?" (Hussain, 1987, p. 17) When he was told by an Indian policeman that his land has gone to Pakistan, Bishen Singh attempted to flee but was stopped by Pakistani guards who attempted to shove him over the border.He, however, would not budge.(Hussain, 1987).He finds the idea of repulsion, bolting up in a tree, he is not interested in the destination he prefers to die on a piece of land that belongs neither to India nor to Pakistan.At the daybreak, he loudly cries, "This is Toba Tek Singh, upper the gur gur …..Hindustan te Pakistan di dur fitey munh" (Hussain, 1987, p. 18) and dies on the no-man's land between the two countries.Bishen Singh might have lost the touch with the realities of the outside world, but he was in touch with his inner realism and his heart knew the truth.His madness lies between the political chaos and the dream of his daughter.He represents all the anonymous victims who were forced to die homeless due to the brutality of the sentiment that divided the people, cultures, land, and history.His death is very symbolic, the death of an integrated nation, the celebrated culture, and the shared history.Assaduddin (1996) believed that the politicians drew the border between the two countries without taking into account the effects it would have on the people who would be impacted.In his interpretation of history, a common man is seen as little more than a historical pawn.Bishen Singh's madness actually questions the division of the collective past, culture, history and identity and its aftermath and this question will keep resurfacing in different voices and one such elegy is Gulzar's who shared the same past as Manto.Gulzar (2017) discussed the necessity to warn Bishan about his friend Afzal and the information that Lahna Singh, Wadhwa Singh, and Bheen Amrit had been murdered and had their belongings stolen while traveling from Toba Tek Singh to Wagah.He also added that there were still a lot of insane people on both sides of the border who had not yet arrived at their destiny.

Analysis of the story The Dog of Tetwal
This story hints at Manto's disregard for the division of the continent and the cartography of people based on communal sentiment, which was changed into the madness of jingoism.The Dog of Tetwal is about national madness and a severe critique of political sanity.It is about the same thematic concern as Toba Tek Singh mocks the idea of superpatriotism (Hussain, 1987).The story tells the fate of a meek wandering mongrel who gets caught in the crossfire of two steadfastly opposed rival encampments of vegetarians and non-vegetarians.Each camp plots savagely to bait the dog to their side, wanting to make a citizen out of him.The story is set on the border of Indo-Pakistan in the disputed region of Kashmir's Tetwal valley.Manto's depiction of nature takes the reader into the peaceful and beautiful valley of Kashmir.He described that the weather was extremely pleasant and the air was fragrant with wildflowers, showing that nature was moving forward unconcerned with the soldiers who were hiding in the mountains behind rocks and plants.The flowers were in full bloom, the birds sang their customary songs, and the bees leisurely walked around.The seeming peace and beauty are eventually destroyed by the frenzy of the two armies.The soldiers of both countries are vigilantly on guard and the new opponents once fought as the same army.The intrusion of the dog near the Indian army camp was a welcome digression from their daily routine.According to an Indian soldier, the atmosphere was so tight that even dogs had to pledge their allegiance to either India or Pakistan (Hussain, 1987).The soldier baptized it with Jhun Jhun and places a name tag to his color, adds a connotation that "This is an Indian dog" (Hussain, 1987, p. 22).The height of newly gain nationalism and patriotism can be felt in the declaration by an Indian soldier: "And all Pakistanis, including dogs, will be shot" (Hussain, 1987, p. 22).The smell of breakfast leads Jhun Jhun to run over to the Pakistani camp, where Pakistani soldiers also give him a warm welcome.They considered the message as some secret code and the whole nonsensical conversation between the soldiers about the code Jhun Jhun mocked the absurdity of the afresh gained antagonism. Subedar Himmat Khan replaced its name with "Shun Shun"and said, "This is a Pakistani dog" (Hussain, 1987, p. 24).He sent the dog toward the Indian Camp and he also dispensed this important news to his high officials.
Manto mocks the new experience of jingoism exercised by politicians and armies.So this perpetual movement of the dog provokes the foes and they treat the dog like a nark of the enemy and kill it brutally.Both soldiers start shooting the dog, one outraged by his deception and the other forcing the dog to show valor and courage by saying that it should keep on and finish the task since the valiant do not turn back from battle.The dog runs helter-skelter for safety but is killed ruthlessly in the end.It's a fact that both India and Pakistan exploit the contested territory for their own benefits, political most of the time.Even in the context of the war fought between the two countries, it is a question of who is a martyr.And who dies the death of a dog?Valor and heroism have the same definition on both sides.Manto rejects the foolish nationalism that only survives on human national and religious identity.The depiction of the senseless border and jingoism is a parable of the politics practiced by both sides.
In all this bigotry, there is no place for humanity, which is the major concern for Manto, as the story is an allegory with various layers of opinions on conditions created by Partition, which, through simple plot ridicules the newly gained identity and power to the colonized after the colonizers left.The madness and absurdity are heightened by describing how borders are drawn by holding army posts on mountains.Metaphorically, the dog symbolizes partition refugees who were treated like playthings in the hands of politicians after borders have been defined.Religious madness that causes hatred, which both nations show towards each other, is also reflected in this story.Two completely different impulses with the same outcome: a dead dog depicts their religious difference, a martyr for one side and an object of pity for the other."The poor bugger has been martyred" (Hussain, 1987, p. 28).Manto uses the dog, jhun jhun / Shun Shun to depict also the Kashmiris, which have no voice and also display their sufferings.He believes that this is what borders do to individuals.The story also reflects the ludicrousness of human hunger for subjugation and control not only over lands but on people as well for their own selfish desires.

Analysis of the story See, Kabira Cried
The short story is an elegy and requiem on the unfulfilled promise of a new dawn in the new state.New oppressors have recently found their place and they impatiently and frenziedly want to implement all the religious decrees because the state was gained in the name of religion.Manto captures the unscrupulousness and political and religious verbiage that characterized the newly formed state of Pakistan.The story was published soon after his hesitant exodus to Pakistan.Kabira, reminiscent of 15thcentury poet Bhagat Kabir, a marginalized and unheard voice, wandering in the streets of the newly born state sees and cries to see literature, human being, and culture divided and demeaned, There were papers including Bhagat Surdas' poetry, according to Naeem (2015).Not utilising the poetry to manufacture envelopes would degrade it, the speaker cautioned.Early on in the newly independent state, the streets were crowded with passionate statements endorsing beards and veils while decrying literature and the arts.Slogans like, damn your reactionary and sick Flaubert and Baudelaire! were screamed by the crowd (Naeem, 2015).Everywhere around him, people enthusiastically wait for the execution of new decrees.Only Kabir is grief-stricken; he bitterly weeps when he sees, on the top of a building, a dishonored statue of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, which is wrapped in shabby and dirty rags.When Kabir saw this, his eyes welled up.The office workers solaced him and said that their religion does not permit such idols (Naeem, 2015).How the problem of women and prostitutes had been resolved was painful and inhumane for Kabir, as they are rotten and decayed entities in the society that they must get rid of.Kabir voiced his concern about a recently imposed rule that all prostitutes in the city must get married and live decent lives within a month.He noted that this presented a significant difficulty because these women had been saved and needed to be kept from potentially returning to prostitution.Kabir pleaded with his fellow brothers to come up with a solution and take charge of making sure that these women did not become whores.He emphasized that in order to keep children from having a dreadful future, we must make accommodations for them in their families (Naeem, 2015).The fire breather preacher himself is a bachelor, waiting for some rich future prospects.This is the hypocrisy Manto was trying to unravel that getting a state was easier than administering it.When Rousseau said that it was easier to conquer than to rule, he was highlighting the complexity of governing.He used a metaphor to describe how, with sufficient energy, even a finger could topple the Earth, but that in order to support it, one needed the strength of Hercules' shoulders (Naeem, 2015).
The story ends in situational irony when people who are wearing black armbands start beating Kabir and call him a communist and He laughed in response and clarifies that he has no armbands on of any colour (Naeem, 2015).Rabindranath Tagore's character in The Home and World displays an opinion on nationalism by saying that while they are eager to serve their country, they reserve their worship for Right, which they regard to be superior to the country.They believe that treating their nation like a god could curse it (Tagore, 1919).Tagore believed that when Britain colonized India it was the victory of British nationalism, for him nationalism was an expression of the greediness of individuals and the nation-state.Ghosal (2019) was of the opinion that Tagore is said to have stated that the current nationalist trend is a disease that is spreading over the globe and harming its ethical and moral principles.Manto can be well understood by what Tagore stands for, the repulsion to the idea of worshiping nation and state and keeping nation higher than humanity.By opposing the kind of education that places national interests above universal human principles, Tagore believes his fellow citizens would develop a true sense of their Indian identity (Ghosal, 2019).He preferred the idea of civic over ethnic nationalism, which promotes nationalism in the name of common faith and common ethnic ancestry.
All those years ago, Manto had pointed out the very features like belligerent generals, aggressive and fierce mullahs, and storming avengers and vigilantes that have come to stand for the sorry state of Pakistan.The short story is a pungent sarcasm on ethnic, social, and political endeavors.Kabira represents the sane and critical voice when he sees people busy in getting allotments, along with his humanity cries, when the literature of the continent gets debased, humanities bewail, when the subject of deserted women arises, demanding solution for prostitution and the proprietors of the culture stay silent, humanity whimpers.When jobless people starve and the stakeholders of the country think about war, humanity dirges.The religious intolerance and orthodoxy make Kabir heart-stricken and like a clairvoyant Manto tries to awaken the consciousness and laments.Faiz (1983) also articulated the grief and discontent of Partition and the cost the Indian subcontinent paid for freedom and his evocation of the unfulfilled promise is resonant of Kabir's wailings: Ye daagh daagh ujala, ye shab gazeeda seher Wo intezaar tha jiska ye wo seher tau nahi Ye wo seher tau nahin, jis ki arzu le kar
Translation: This morning is blemished, and it has failed to meet my expectations.Unfortunately, it doesn't match the excitement I was hoping for, my dear.This is not the city we had been longing for, and it didn't live up to our expectations in the evening either.My heart is still struggling, and we have not yet reached our destination.We need to continue our journey.

CONCLUSIONS
The horrors of partition, the bloody rage, killing, and defiling of humanity were something Manto couldn't live with and his partition stories are chockfull of such images.The idea of the nation-state and ethnic nationalism was troublesome for him as the world has seen the catastrophic effects of ethnic nationalism in the form of Hitlerism, the Holocaust, and the very recent Indian Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB).His story highlights the benefits of patriotism, which he defines as a sincere and compassionate love for one's nation.However, he also criticizes ethnonationalism as a misguided and constrictive ideology that prioritizes blind allegiance to a nation over more significant values like justice and humanity.He emphasizes the need to distinguish between civic nationalism, which views all citizens as belonging to the nation regardless of their background in religion, and ethnic nationalism, which uses elements like genealogy, language, and religion to establish national identity.His message emphasizes the necessity of embracing a more inclusive and compassionate kind of nationalism while avoiding the traps of ethnic nationalism.The solution to avoid ethnic cleansing in the future, or at least to condemn it, is to build the narrative that civic nationalism is the need of the time.In See, Kabira Cried, even after the independence, the problems remained the same for the masses, even worse than before.Manto saw the deterioration of humanity in the name of nationalism, where humankind had already suffered two horrific wars for racial purity and, after those, one million deaths in 1947 and 10 million refugees with their untold miseries.Moral corruption and degeneration after getting independence and getting a piece of land in the name of religion was the duplicity Manto couldn't stomach.His stories unveil the truth that greed and hunger for power lead to moral death and madness and the line between sanity and insanity is very flimsy.A person who does not behave according to the norms and guidelines of society is declared mad.Manto is questioning and challenging all such rules and norms set by a saner but Machiavellian society.He does not believe in the given definition of sanity, so his choices of a mental asylum, soldiers' camps, and a newborn state are very meaningful.