In a literary, journalistic, radio scripting and film-writing career spread over two decades, he produced 22 collections of short stories, a novel, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches, and 12 scripts for films, including Eight Days, Chal Chal Re Naujawan and Mirza Ghalib, which was shot after Manto moved to Pakistan in January 1948. He also performed in two movies, Geo News reported.
Manto has been translated in Punjabi and Hindi in India where he is widely read. His plays have been adapted for stage plays in Pakistan and abroad. Government banned his five short stories by declaring them vulgar. Manto stands for people: the clerks, tonga-wallas, jobless, petty thieves, prostitutes, pimps, pickpockets,peasants, factory workers.
It was Partition that inspired Manto's greatest works-Toba Tek Singh, to mention just one, which gained him much posthumous fame. India's Doordarshan television, as well as Channel Four, UK, adapted this play as a telefilm, and it has been staged several times, including in faraway Norway. And yet, during his lifetime, he had to deal with much infamy. His unflinching realism and uncompromising observations of life as he saw it led to Manto being tried for obscenity half-a-dozen times, thrice before and thrice after Partition.