Sejal Khanna

Ms Indu Jain

B.A. (Hons.) English | Sem VI

259

Critically analyse the short story, Toba Tek Singh, by Manto.

"The desperate attempt to maintain the linking of place, ancestry, sanctity, and, moral order was
cast against the backdrop of a fixed Partition of territory that symbolically torn these linkages
asunder. No work of literature encapsulates this more dramatically than Sadat Hasan Manto‟s
Urdu short story, "Toba Tek Singh..." -Gilmartin

An entire subcontinent was devastated by the 1947 partition of India into Hindustan and
Pakistan, which also unleashed a sea of unspeakable miseries onto its people. On both sides of
the border, more than 13 million people were displaced, and more than a million deaths occurred.
Many houses and families were dismantled and split apart, and many of them met fatal ends;
their memories of these events continue to torment them and feed the national narrative of
intergroup animosity and intolerance. The Partition's widespread departure not only created grief
for a whole nation but also presented its people with the conundrum of having to choose. It was a
ridiculous choice to make – to choose one limb over the other, the heart over the body or the
head. Saadat Hasan Manto's masterpiece, Toba Tek Singh, captures the trauma, miseries and
hardships humanity suffered during the catastrophic event of the Partition of 47. The story talks
about the life of the bearded Sikh from the mental asylum of Lahore, Toba Tek Singh, as his mad
friends call him, standing on the no man's land strip at the Wagah border, refusing to budge,
babbling incoherent mumbo-jumbo - beyond the reach of reason and all authority.

The story highlights the trauma, misery, resistance and memories associated with the horrors of
partition. However, what draws the attention of the readers is the deliberate juxtaposition of the
names of the protagonist and his place of birth; Toba Tek Singh. At several points, Manto refers
to Bishan Singh as Toba Tek Singh and it becomes the name by which he is known in the
asylum. By mixing up the name of the character and place, the individual and the land, Manto
emphasizes the relationship between a person's home and his identity. He also uses the main
character's madness to exaggerate the sense of separation, the distorted loyalties, and the
dislocated self. The phrase, "lay Toba Tek Singh", refers both to the man stretched out on the
ground and to the piece of the ground itself, which has become for him "the homeland" Toba Tek
Singh, where he most wants to be. Gilmartin comments, "The desperate attempt to maintain the
linking of place, ancestry, sanctity, and, moral order was cast against the backdrop of a fixed
Partition of territory that symbolically torn these linkages asunder."
Riyaz views the protagonist, Bishan Singh, as the reflection of Manto himself as he points out
that Toba Tek Singh's identity allegorically represents Manto's forced identity. The heart-
wrenching story is partially autobiographical in this regard. Toba Tek Singh symbolises the
fictional character, Bishan Singh, on the one hand, and on the other, the life of Manto as a sane
victim of partition. The author attempts to include his own life and people in his writing.

There are many other instances that voice out the trauma of the lunatics who resisted partition.
To cite some, in the initial part of the story, the speaker mentions a lunatic who is a regular
reader of the newspaper and is asked by one of his allies about Pakistan ("where is it?"). The
answer to this question was, "A place in India known for manufacturing cut-throat razors." Thus
Manto suggests how the lunatic resisted this whole idea of a Pakistan. That probably, creation of
Pakistan, led to the devastation of Muslims and Hindu brothers. In the course of the story, a Sikh
lunatic questions his comrade, "Sardarji, why are we being sent to Hindustan? We can't even
speak their language." Thus, we see how linguistic components act instrumental in the sense of
belongingness. Similarly, threats of a foreign language threatened that Sikh lunatic and made
him feel the horrors of alienation. But he resisted this threat by putting a straightforward question
that showed his resistance to not going where he was about to be sent (India). A Muslim madman
while taking a bath suddenly shouts, "Pakistan Zindabad" with a sudden zest of passion because
of which he stumbles and falls unconscious. Through this, we see a sort of negative patriotism
that does no good to an individual.

The asylum and the inmates allow Manto an opportunity to indulge in the kind of black satire
that is his trademark. He attacks the politics and religious dogmatism of the period, through the
eccentricities of the lunatics. One of the inmates proclaims himself to be Mohamed Ali Jinnah,
the founder of Pakistan. Others declare themselves to be Hindu and Sikh politicians and a
tremendous row ensues. One lunatic believes that he is God and when Bishan Singh inquires of
him about the location of Toba Tek Singh, he replies, "It‟s neither in Hindustan nor in Pakistan.
In fact, it is nowhere because I have not taken any decision about its location." He got angry and
told him, "You don't answer my prayers because you are a Muslim god. Had you been a Sikh
god, you would have been more of a sport." Through their frenzied shouting of slogans, erratic
behaviour and stripping off of clothes Manto mirrors the irrationality of society outside the walls
of the asylum. This inversion of reality, where the characters inside the asylum take on the roles
of those outside, while the people outside behave in irrational and inhuman ways, underscores
the irony which is so much a part of Manto‟s fiction. Madness becomes an entirely relative term
which defines the political and social upheaval of Partition, with all its inherent ambiguities.
Walls and borders lose their meaning and a character like Bishan Singh embodies the
contradictions and divided loyalties experienced by those people who were uprooted on either
side.

Devendra Issar says that Manto's stories often take place in liminal spaces where borders are
erased, and consciousness loses its bearings, where sanity and insanity, health and sickness,
moral goodness and sin cease to be sharply demarcated. He might be indicating that there lies
humanity where borders are erased and consciousness loses. Asylums and hospitals can be such
liminal spaces where issues of nations become minor and all the victims are seen through the
perspective of human values. Such spaces are free from politics. And such liminal projection
helps Manto to establish the inner psychological disturbance every individual has unconsciously
experienced during partition.

The striking end of this short story can be considered a masterpiece in partition literature. In the
end, a piercing cry arises from Bishan Singh and he gives away his standing posture and lies on
the ground which is a No man's land. He over there finds a place for him. "On one side, behind
barbed wire, stood together the lunatics of India and on the other side, behind more barbed wire,
stood the lunatics of Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth which had no name, lay Toba Tek
Singh." Thus, the land that separates India from Pakistan, the land that was alienated by India as
well as Pakistan, embraces Bishan Singh. Bishan Singh as well embraces the land that shared a
fate like his.

To conclude, Manto made the insane people his mouthpiece to show his resistance to partition.
The lunatics resist partition in many ways. They act or show what they feel which probably a
sane human would have failed to do. They try to somehow make space for themselves by
refusing to 'fit in' in this newly created cartographical land. Thus, infusing madness with identity
crisis gave Manto a perfect blend of resistance which was what he probably wanted to express
through his work.

Bishan Singh finally finds his identity and embraces his sense of belongingness in this deserted
land. Thus, he eventually succeeds in discovering his Toba Tek Singh.