Manto chronicled the chaos that prevailed, during and after the Partition of India in 1947. Manto strongly opposed the partition of India, which he saw as an "overwhelming tragedy" and "maddeningly senseless". He started his literary career translating the works of Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde and Russian writers such as Chekhov and Gorky. His first story was "Tamasha", based on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre at Amritsar. Though his earlier works, influenced by the progressive writers of his times, showed a marked leftist and socialist leanings, his later work progressively became stark in portraying the darkness of the human psyche, as humanist values progressively declined around the Partition.