Lhaaf And Manto's Thanda Gosht Analysis

Both Chugtai and Manto, “enfants terribles” of Urdu literature wrote bold stories that challenged notions of gender and sexuality. Partners in crime as it were, both were tried for obscenity. This paper proposes to study the body as a space with a focus on gender, sexuality and power politics in Chugtai’s “Lihaaf” and Manto’s “Thanda Gosht”. While Chugtai deals with female sexuality , Manto focuses on predatory male sexuality which looks at a woman’s body as a space to be controlled and exploited through the act of rape and aggression. . Ismat Chugtai and Sadaat Hasan Manto hailed from the Progressive Writers’ Movement (PWM). Chugtai wrote during a period when India was a colony but the struggle for independence and with a change in the socio-cultural fabric a woman’s body and behaviour became associated with national and communal identity. Chugtai celebrates the body and a woman’s sexuality.

She attempts to establish the “New Woman”, who would wield her power and autonomy inside the patriarchal set up, and rebel against the “heteronormative relationships” The zenana becomes the space where radical desires for sexual liberation are vocalized. The story distanced her from the Progressive Writers. The more conservative of these to quote M Asaduddin “felt dissatisfied with her for her obsession with the sexual aspect of life. Their hostility became apparent after the publication of her short story ‘Lihaaf’. But Ismat Chugtai was too much of a free spirit to be hemmed in by ideological considerations. She was a progressive but she was many other things too” (33). Asaduddin is also of the view that Chugtai besides depicting sexual relationship between men and women, deals with alternate sexuality which she perceives as the product of a moralist, sexually suppressive society. The language that she uses is incredibly bold, powerful and