In Sahib-e-Karamat, the village folk are described as ignorant. However, I think that Manto was not completely supportive of this stance since the picture of community he presents is not pretentious in religious sense. The sentence, ‘us ne dil hi dil main apnay makhsus ganwar magar mukhlis andaaz main Allah ka shukar ada kia’, is illustrative of that interpretation.
It might be a critique of modernity and the way it affected attitude of people. As Maryam said, the character of Maulana looks pretty urban and imposing. He is successful in selling his dupery to the people of the village, who are described as simple, unpretentious yet in the modern sense ‘ignorant’. Manto might then be mocking the literate or the bourgeoisie segment of the society, who excluded anyone as ‘ganwar’ if they failed standards of formal education and religious piety that they had set. Hence, they were exclusionary in that sense.
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