Bureaucratic Logic and Institutional Language in Manto's Siyah Hashiye

Abstract

This article seeks to uncover the formalist and linguistic interventions of Saadat Hasan Manto’s often-marginalized micro-fiction collection, Siyah Hashiye (Black Margins), which captures the catastrophic aftermath of the 1947 Partition in its everyday mundanity. While traditional scholarship has solely focused on Manto’s longer narratives for their visceral representation of physical trauma, this study directly addresses a glaring critical gap by investigating how bureaucratic, administrative, and commercial lexicons are structurally weaponized to execute human annihilation. Utilizing an interdisciplinary framework, the paper synthesizes Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with Michel Foucault’s theory of institutional discourse and Hannah Arendt’s seminal formulations on the "banality of evil" and administrative language rules (Sprachregelungen). Through a meticulous close-reading of five specific vignettes—‘For Necessary Action,’ ‘Due Supervision,’ ‘Tidiness,’ ‘Cooperation,’ and ‘Permanent Vacation’—the study traces how the active verbs of slaughter are systematically replaced by the abstract nouns of management and transactional utility. These specialized linguistic filters act as an ideological shield, enabling perpetrators to detach themselves from moral guilt and normalize heinous violence under the guise of civic order and administrative cleanliness. The research demonstrates that Manto intentionally rejects traditional narrative closure, employing abrupt, ironic endings that force sanitized jargon to collide with the gruesome physical realities of Partition. Ultimately, this structural analysis reveals a profound thematic finding: rather than depicting violence as a byproduct of unreflective emotional frenzy, Manto exposes the alarming ease with which modern rationality and civil governance can be adapted to facilitate genocide. By utilizing the condensed vignette form, Manto highlights how traditional narratives break under systemic historical trauma, leaving behind fragmented, ironical linguistic artifacts that warn against the clinical sanitization of violence through institutional language.