Vol. 5, Issue 1, Part B (2023)

This article examines at how memories and the humanitarian situation are connected in the context of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition as it is portrayed in Sadat Hassan Manto’s short stories. It will look at the ways in which Manto’s fiction captures the anguish of physical and existential displacement brought on by the birth of two states following a campaign of political and epistemological violence and remapping. The study will pay particular attention to the relationship between memory and insanity in addition to the more general concerns of nation-formation, alienation, and loss. The Partition trauma of 1947 will be examined as a psychological and existential crisis that commonly showed up as insanity, aphasia, and forgetfulness. By referencing trauma studies, phenomenology, and cognitive psychological studies in episodic memory, unreliable narration, and cognition, the paper will explore the human condition of shock and loss with an emphasis on the formal aspects of Manto’s short fiction.