Toba Tek Singh is a short story written by Saadat Hasan Manto in 1955. The story is set in the backdrop of the Partition of India and the ensuing horrors and traumas that people had to go through. The story begins a few years after the Partition, with the governments of India and Pakistan deciding to transfer the Sikh and Hindu inmates of a mental asylum in Lahore to India. The story is a very powerful satire on the horrors of the Partition.

Tracing conflict

Conflict exists and unfolds on various levels in the story. The overarching theme is of course the Partition. The story is set a few years after 1948, and it builds on the trauma of the people separated from their homeland.

A very subtle issue of conflict that I couldn’t help but think of is how the story addresses questions of sanity. In a world that’s still struggling to understand mental illness, Toba Tek Singh gives us a glimpse not just into how wars affect the mentally ill, but also how people are labelled as mentally ill in the first place. Who gets to decide what sanity is? Are these inmates ‘mad’ or just misunderstood? What gives us the right to label people and shut them in a facility that only ostracizes them? Building on this idea, I think the story is an ironic take as it is the prisoners of the asylum who are the ones who appear to be behaving most rationally. The higher powers vested with decision-making, are supposedly the ‘sane’ ones who have decided to partition millions of people overnight and were now attempting to transfer the mentally ill. Who controls their fate? What is the power struggle here? These aren’t questions that I can answer yet, but the story presents them to us in a way that’s impossible to ignore.

The most central area of conflict in the story is Bishan Singh’s character and the decisions of the state being imposed upon him. A Sikh inmate who belongs to a district called Toba Tek Singh in Pakistan; refuses to be moved to India. He fears a loss of his identity, his legacy, and his family if he were transferred. It is this struggle between the individual and the state that I will focus on.

Personal liberties v/s state decisions

The story opens with the news of the transfer of inmates reaching the asylum in Lahore. It has been a couple of years since the Partition, and yet it seems like the inmates have absolutely no idea of what has transpired outside the boundaries of the facility. They have no idea what Pakistan is, let alone aware of their reality.

The first inmate seems to think Pakistan is a place in India where razors are manufactured. Two Sikh inmates are shown to be confused about why they’re being sent to India even though they don’t know their language. On the surface, these seem like mundane and trivial questions, but the implications run very deep. These are people who have no contact with the outside world, no idea how their family is (if they are even coherent enough to remember their family), and they certainly have no idea about the wars brewing outside these walls.

The story further tells us that not all inmates were ‘mad’. There were sane ones as well, and though they had some idea about the partition, even they were clueless about the foreseeable future. All the inmates collectively couldn’t decide whether they were in India or Pakistan. If they were in India, where was Pakistan? And if they were in Pakistan, what would happen to the place called India? One inmate in the story who was so fed up with the entire debate, climbed a tree and declared that he wished to stay in neither India nor Pakistan. He would live in this tree.

Through the eyes of these insignificant characters, people that history chose to forget, Manto brings out the sheer terror, trauma and confusion that guarded people’s minds in those turbulent years. The decision to Partition in India and Pakistan was made by a few. The repercussions were felt by more than 15 million people. Identities were lost overnight, livelihoods and homes destroyed, families killed in communal violence, women and children raped and abducted, smuggled across borders and a complete breakdown of human values in the absence of a state that could contain the extent of the unfolding violence. The men in the high castle consolidated their own power, built their political legacies and gave speeches, while the common man lost all that he had in one night.

The central character in the film is a Sikh inmate Bishan Singh. The rumour in the asylum is that he’s been in there for 15 years, and hasn’t slept a wink in all that time. He keeps muttering gibberish to himself that the others can’t understand. Recently he has been listening closely to conversations around India and Pakistan and keeps asking whether Toba Tek Singh (his village) lies in India or Pakistan. Days go by with him having no idea where Toba Tek Singh is, and his character becomes more troubled by the day. On the day of the transfer, he gets to know that Toba Tek Singh is in Pakistan and he refuses to move to India. He couldn’t go back to Pakistan, and so there he stood, between the two borders, until he finally collapsed. The last line of the story is: “There, behind barbed wire, on one side, lay India, on the other side, Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.” The story ends on a very sudden and horrific note. Bishan Singh’s fate as a man with no identity is juxtaposed beautifully with Toba Tek Singh as a place without a country.

Why do we need more stories like Toba Tek Singh?

Manto portrays the horrors of the partition from a lens that tells us how events like wars and political turbulence trickle down and affect people even at the periphery of society. History remembers the people who died and suffered as statistics. In an attempt to understand the realities of what happened, historical studies and surveys have been conducted, but they’ve become mere facts. It is only when we engage with art created in these events-films, music, dance, paintings, theatre, etc.- that we allow ourselves to feel, and empathize with the people who suffered. While a history lesson is important too, it is only through art that the human race understands what it is to be human and to feel.

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Archisha Rai is pursuing an MA in Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Her research interests include migration, labour, urban studies, and the modern nation-state.