In the introduction to The Collected Poems of Sudhindranath Dutta, Buddhadeb Bose famously remarked that Dutta could have taken up many other professions and they would all have been natural to him, yet he chose to become a poet. The same can be said about SM Sultan. He used to say that he has broadened his horizons in life and is eager to learn many things. He could have been a skilled dancer, a good actor, a tabla player, perhaps even a skilled singer, if he had pursued these things and immortality would have knocked at his door. But he chose painting and even after 100 years of his birth, it remains contemporary and relevant. A man of mysterious magnetism, SM Sultan had intuitive access to the world of creativity.
Despite the shortcomings, some of which have been mentioned here, Sultan is a text of profound contemporary relevance. It has become essential for people to study this novel and the life and art works of SM Sultan, especially in this moment of intense anarchy and growing intolerance in the human mind and because communalism of various kinds is showing its teeth and its followers have, to some extent, succeeded in instilling ideas among some people which are evolutionary.