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Teacher-student romances in 2025? Let’s’ talk about the Main Manto Nahi Hoon

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Niche

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‘Main Manto Nahi Hoon’ has taken a nose dive in the last few episodes and has led up a concerning debate about in the year 2025, of all the things going on in Pakistan, promoting a teacher-student romance is now going to be among them.

The drama’s 25th episode drew backlash on social media after a clip went viral where the students pose a boycott. For better classes? To report a professor. Nope, it was so that Mehmal and Manto get a court marriage, in order to protect her from Farhad. The truly hilarious part of this clip is that the principal is also present on the scene, and applauds the students for pushing the right decision.

 

The clip obviously drew backlash, with users questioning that in the current times when Pakistani women have to face immense hurdles to pursue their education, or even to live an independent life- was this the plot we really needed at this point?

 

 

As women have rightfully pointed out, Pakistani women didn’t need more problems to deal with now that ‘Main Manto Nahi Hoon’ is pitching the delusional idea that a student and her grown professor could fall in love.

 

We decided to hold back and wait for the next episode and see if the show would debunk this prospect, so that the nation may breathe a sigh of relief. But nope, Professor Manto doubles down on his desire to marry Mehmal, only so that he could save her from Farhad and his blood-thirsty family.

Not only does he persistently pressure the father to give Mehmal to him, but the students once again pressure him to never give up and ensure that he defeats Farhad, and win her over. And Manto assures his students that he won’t fail in his mission. In the year of 2025, when has a classroom discussion ever brought down to pushing a professor to marry his student?  The audience is weirded out and so are we.

Ofcourse we know that some people might argue that there have been excellent Pakistani dramas with a wide age gap before, who were given praises for their gripping stories. Many users would refer to Kabli Pulao as an example, which is the love story of a 40-year-old man Siraj and a Afghan refugee woman Barbeena.

But there is a glaring difference between this and ‘Main Manto Nahi Hoon’ is that in the former. In ‘Kabli Pulao’, Barbeena and Haji do not marry out of love, but out of pressure to protect her from her in-laws. Also, Barbeena learns to stand on her own feet to become financially independent by setting up her own food stall. Whereas in Manto, Mehmal is a naive college student who has never stepped out of her own home without her father’s permission, or even is financially independent.

Pushing a romance between a college professor in his 40s and a young student is not just poor television writing—it sets a dangerous precedent, especially at a time when Pakistani women already face numerous challenges just to step outside their homes.

Just as a user has pointed out, this is an excellent time for Pakistani dramas to go along with the rest of the world in producing progressive stories like we have already seen on our screen. Jama Taqseem and Case No 9 are only a few episodes in, and yet have received outstanding reviews for how they are exploring topics like family harassment and gender-based violence laws.

Read more:

More than just a drama: Case No 9 lays bare the misogynist, legal hurdles survivors face in holding their abusers accountable

Rather than scrapping the bottom of the barrel for the ye-olde 1800’s content, we sincerely request Khalil ur Rehman to quit churning out the same regressive ideas and please for once, take a memo from audiences on what kind of content we want on our screens.

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