Partition Literature

Assignment

Submitted by:- Prakhar Dobhal

Roll No : 53

Question: The liminal space that Manto’s protagonist occupies at the

end of Toba Tek Singh constitutes a paradoxical one of precarity and
agency which, therefore, represents both the idea of the trauma of the
Partition and dissent against the logic of the Partition. Critically
comment on the above statement with close reference to the short-
story.

The partition of India saw the biggest migration seen in the history of the world. Around
fourteen and a half million people were uprooted from their birthplace, culture and nation. A
simple line on the map decided by the Politicians divided people and robbed them of
everything. A new nation which was supposed to be the answer to the struggle for
independence since centuries, came with a huge price. Over two million people were
traumatised and suffered the tragedies of the partition irrespective of their gender, caste,
religion or their community. The chaos of losing humanity and becoming bloodthirsty beasts
were captured by the pens of the writers and their stories were tagged under partition
literature. Among many partition writers like Khushwant Singh, Bhishm Shahni, Ishmat
Chugtai etc. Sadat Hassan Manto has placed himself as a prolific Urdu writer during the era.
Manto had a Kashmiri descent and hence was very sensitive about the nation and its division.
His works primarily revolved around the people he used to counter in his life. Prostitutes,
drunkards, maniacs etc would be the protagonists in his stories. He was the true face of
protest as he stood for what he believed. He got in and out of the courts for his works were
often claimed as obscene and indecent.
Manto was greatly influenced by the Russian Revolution and kept tabs on the political shifts
happening around the world. Many of his stories like “Last Salute” and “Dog of Titwal”
bring out the dilemma of the idea of nation and country. The whole humanity is being
questioned in the war ground. In the story “The Last Salute”, friends who fought against the
same enemy are now turned against each other and go down through a nostalgic lane to come
back to the present and cause each other fatal wounds. Humanity takes form of a dog in the
story, “Dog of Titwal”, who has no identity and no nation and thus is killed between the two
borders. Manto’s protest was not only against the division of a country but also to the
butchering of the humanity in form of communal violence, rapes, assaults,
robbing ,murdering etc. Partition divided people geographically and mentally. The religion
was defining the fate of a human life. In the short story, “Open It” or “Khol Do” , Sirajjudin ,
a helpless father cries for his missing daughter Sakina in the midst of a communal attack from
which they were running away. Manto gives a balanced view of the communal violence that
not only the Mulisms but Hindus and Sikhs were equally causing communal hatred and
violence. In the story the daughter, Sakina is gangraped by her own religious protectors
which brings us to question about the image of religious hatred inspired rapes which were
happening. If Muslims were raping Sikh and Hindu women and vice versa then the question
of how could Sakina be gangraped by the people who belonged to her own religion arises.
Manto brings out the barbaric nature of men during partition through the rape stories which
do not only focus on the psyche of the victim but also of the rapist like in the story “Thanda
Gosht” or “ Colder than Ice” where Ishhar Singh falls prey to erectile dysfunction after he
realizes that he has raped a dead woman. Manto who often wrote about controversial subjects
brings out what no one was brave enough to speak out loud, which was a form of protest
against the society and the government. Prostitutes who are often treated as the worms of
street become the heroines of his story. Manto shows the world that they too have similar
emotions as the rest of the people and that partition affected them equally. Manto records the
partition just like a historian does apart from the fact that his stories about partition is not as a
event happened in the history but as a life changing experiences for people like Sakina, Ishar
Singh, Toba Tek Singh, Mozail, Sugandhi etc.(Saleem,2003). Manto wrote in a subtle way
that the reader has to read a story twice to understand all his allegories and hidden messages
which they missed the first time they read. A reader experiences varying strong emotions
regarding the partition even after seven decades of Partition. Manto wrote unabashedly and
therefore he becomes an icon of a protest through language against the superstructures.
‘Toba Tek Singh’ first published in 1953 in an Urdu magazine Savera, as written at a time
‘when Manto’s energies were at their lowest ebb’ in more ways than one. He had migrated to
Pakistan in 1948 and since then had been leading an agonized existence. Constantly plagued
by memories of the past, Manto could never bring himself to feel that he really belonged to
Pakistan. In addition to this, his increasing poverty and failing health drove him to alcoholism
and there came a time in his life when he almost got himself admitted to a mental asylum
because his circumstances coupled with his attitude to life had pushed him into a deep
depression. Manto locates his story ‘Toba Tek Singh’ in a lunatic asylum and thus takes the
theme of Partition to the world of the insane highlighting the political absurdity of the
Partition itself and at the same time lodges a note of protest against the powers that be, who
take such momentous decisions as splitting a country into two, without ever thinking of the
consequences. The story begins in the manner of a historical narration and the opening line
itself places it in its historical context: ‘A couple of years after the Partition it strikes the
government of Pakistan and Hindustan that even as they exchanged ordinary prisoners, so
they should also have an exchange of madmen as well’. The style is that of newspaper
reportage but the tone is mock-serious, dispassionate and somewhere along the line a hint has
been placed about the absurdity of it all when Manto takes the theme of partition to
madhouse. Whether it was right to exchange madmen or not, no one knew, but the decision
made by those who knew best. No one thought of asking the madmen what they wanted as
they were deemed unfit to decide. Only madmen who still had their families living in
Hindustan were allowed to stay and the rest had their fate sealed. As for Hindus and Sikh
madmen, the question of staying did not rise as there were no Hindu families living in
Pakistan so all would have to be dispatched.

The omniscient narrator gives us a short glimpse into the past telling us about the inly times
when Bishan Singh, our protagonist, would almost as if wake up from his general stupor to
prepare for his “visitors” i.e. his family members and friends who would come once a month
to inquire about his well being, bringing him sweets and fruits from home. This was the only
time when this “frightful looking” Sikh would clean and scrub himself, oil and comb his hair
nicely and would wait for his visitors all dressed up. With the Partition of the country,
however, their visits had come to an end and the narrator tells us that now it was as if the
voice of his heart which had earlier signalled their visits to him had fallen silent. From the
general, the focus now shifted to particular and individual. Manto highlights the trauma of
dislocation and exile through the anguish of this one man, he creates a basic desire to know
which side of the dividing line one’s place of origin now existed. So the need to know where
Toba Tek Singh was insentifies in the heart and mind of the mad Bishan Singh. He now waits
for his visitors especially because he is certain that they would be able to tell him where Toba
Tek Singh was for he was sure they themselves hailed from that place. Gradually this need to
know drives Bishan Singh to a madman in the madhouse who calls himself ‘Khuda’. Bishan
Singh’s question only makes the Khuda laugh with a loud guffaw and say that Toba Tek
Singh is neither in Pakistan nor in Hindustan, for we haven’t passed out orders yet!. Bishen
Singh, the principal character of the story, is an instrument for Manto through which he
exposes the cataclysmic consequences of partition that devastated the lives of so many
innocents of the time. He is an epitome of Manto’s criticism of the contemporary political
decision that was meant for nothing. The decision brought nothing change in common lives
except making them homeless, penniless. It played a significant part in drawing the
unbridgeable barrier between India and Pakistan, between Hindus and Muslims. The question
that haunts Bishen Singh, that is, “Where is Toba Tek Singh?” is actually the question that
traumatised Manto for not being able to resolve the confusion between India and Pakistan.
Bishen Singh exemplifies a world without the bars and boundaries, who wants to live his life
neither in Pakistan nor in Hindustan. These national boundaries are identities that have been
attached with him without seeking his consent that is why he keeps on resisting; he wants to
go back to Toba Tek Singh, form where he belongs and which gives his identity. Manto , thus
proclaims the lunacy of the splitting the nation on the basis of religion, through his
mouthpiece Bishen Singh, who would rather prefer to die in no man’s land than make a
choice between Hindustan and Pakistan. Thus, the death of Bishan Singh at the wagah border
stands as a metaphor of doom and curtains for both the nations.” Partition was the major
event that gave new shape to the history of the subcontinent. Manto, being an eyewitness of
the cataclysmic event, has depicted the impact of it with utmost intensity. The trauma, from
which Bishen Singh was suffering from, was in fact a contagious disease that dispersed after
partition. It is this disease that Manto has exposed through the character of Bishen Singh,
who understands nothing except Toba Tek Singh. In other words, in a story like Toba Tek
Singh, through the character of Bishen Singh, he has tried to show how a catastrophic event
like partition traumatised people by putting them nowhere.

Through the character of Bishen Singh Manto has successfully portrayed the trauma caused
by partition, it was not just manto’s protagonist but millions who were left clueless in the
aftermath of partition. Like Singh through the course of time many lost the hope to see their
family and friends who were separated during the partition. The thought of not seeing their
loved ones again drove many “mad” leaving families in abyss, longing in hope dealing with
trauma.

Manto in the story has highlighted the unpredictability of the political decisions which affect
millions of lives. For the decision makers who remain unaffected, it is simply a matter of
saying a few words, but these few words can turn the lives of some people completely upside
down making them vagabonds and aliens in the land which till then had been their home.
Manto is being intesnsely ironical when he makes this madman call himself “Khuda”. There
is a similar appropriation by the political decision makers, the self styled godmen who hold
the strings of millions of lives in their hands. When Bishan Singh is not answered by this
khuda about where Toba Tek Singh was he immediately launches into gibberish which
interestingly includes new words in it. The narrators tells us that he probably means ‘this God
was the God of the Musalmans and would surely have heeded him had he been the god of the
Sikhs instead’. The significance of this lies in the fact that even in the madmen’s
consciousness the realization of new boundaries is filtering in.

Manto is able to paint an incredibly realistic picture and simultaneously make a quite
profound statement about his opinion of the partition, all through short, unusual and very
human tale of a man in an insane asylum in what was originally Hindustan and now Pakistan.
The residents don’t understand what is going on, and they don’t understand the basis of
partition. They cant fathom how the country they knew can be a different place entirely. All
singh wants to know is,’’ where is Toba Tek Singh?” when he finally learns it is in Pakistan,
at the same moment that he is being taken to the border with Hindustan, he refuses to cross
and leave his home. Chaos of the asylum and the exchange of residents symbolize Manto’s
opinion of the lack of care, oversight and understanding that went in to the partition of India
and Pakistan.

Singh was only concerned with his home. He couldn’t understand why no-one could tell him
where he belonged, and he had no sense of discrimination of other residents of the asylum
based on religion. The emphasis is that Toba Tek Singh was known for and died for his
refusal to cross a border, to leave a place he thought was his home, but in reality this home
was the name a country, of a place that meant nothing to him.
The story ends with Singh’s daughter traveling back once again to visit the asylum, this time
to place a sign where he dies, labelling that unnamed patch of land ‘’Toba Tek Singh”. The
place of his death is finally given meaning.

Through Bishan Singh’s character Manto portrays his confusion reagarding the partition and
how to him it did not make any sense just like it made no sense to Singh. Manto impressively
paints the current situation at the time of partition as a ‘’madhouse’’ by placing the story in a
mental asylum where the people cannot make sense of the partition but are forced to move
like him and millions others.