Saadat Hasan Manto, born in 1912, was known for his fierce nonconformist and honesty. He was born at Samrala in Ludhiana district in Punjab in a family of barristers. He studied in Amritsar and worked as a journalist in Aligarh. After 1936, he lived in Bombay and Delhi, writing film scripts and radio drama. Growing communal tension after Partition forced him to migrate to Pakistan in 1948. But he died a disillusioned and impoverished alcoholic in Lahore.

Identified with the Progressive Writers` Movement in Urdu theatre, Saadat Hasan Manto is famous mainly for his realistic short stories. Special mention can be given to Toba Tek Singh, which offer a powerful indictment of the insanity of Partition and satirize the hypocritical exploitative assumptions in society. He also wrote over a hundred plays and sketches for radio and stage. However, his drama, like Tin auraten i.e. `Three Women` in 1942, lacks the force and interest of his fiction and is seldom read or remembered outside academic circles. His best screenplays include Kisan kanya or `Peasant`s Daughter` in 1937 and Naukar i.e. `Servant` in 1943. This was about the underprivileged, and the comic Eight Days in 1946. In this he also acted as an air force officer. Saadat Hasan Manto died in the year 1955.

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