Biranchi Poudyal

Prof Badri Acharya

512. Critical Theory

Roll no : 101

Date of submission : June 19, 2015

Realistic Representation of Partition Violence in Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh”

Taking realistic representation in Partition as theoretical concern , the present paper attempt

to analyses how Saadat Hassam Manto establish his narrative in realistic ground. This story has

its deep ground on the real terrible event which India and Pakistan encounter before, during and

after freedom in the form of „Partition‟. This story published in Maktabah-e-jadid, Lahore in

1955 is timely and telling.

Manto is able to expose realistic picture and as same time make a quite thoughtful

statement about his opinion of the partition, all through short human tale sets in an mental

asylum which was originally in Hindustan and now Pakistan. The Story Present one major

political change that gave new story to the history of India and Pakistan. The partition was

tragically flawed with death and violence. In Toba Tek Singh, through the lunatic character of

Bishen Singh, Manto has tried to depict the real picture how catastrophic event like partition

traumatized people by making them alienated form their state.

Tiwari in her article „Memories of Partition: Revisiting Saadat Hasan Manto‟ appreciate

aesthetic technique of Manto, on the way he successfully embodies the theme of story within

major character itself :

“the metaphor of madness and the theme of identity-crisis recurs often in the

discourse on Partition, whether conventional historiography or fictional

representation. The nationalist leaders were often heard saying, “Our people have

gone mad.” Gandhi appealed to the people not to “meet madness with madness”.

The newspaper editors said so, and so did ordinary men and women. Partition

not only created a “mad” atmosphere but also made its victims “mad”, “insane”,

losing their mental balances due to traumatic experiences.

Tiwar makes broad analysis of Manto‟s story in a sense that apart from fictional events she

also praise Manto‟s craftsmanship on the way he present deep political agenda and real

consequence of socio-political movements on people in his story.

Riyaz views that the main character Bishan Singh in the story "Toba Tek Singh", is the

writer Manto himself as he says:

“It seems that the main character of the short story, a mad person, is no

other than Manto himself. At the time of partition the piece of land,

Toba Tek Singh, fell neither within the boundary of India nor of

Pakistan. Toba Tek Sigh is a piece of land which has no specific

national identity” (205)

forced on him. In this sense Toba Tek Singh is partly autobiographical. On the one hand, Toba

Tek Singh represents a fictional character named Bishan Singh. On the other Manto's own life as

a sane victim of partition. The writer tries to bring his own real life and characters in fiction.

For Devendra Issar, Manto's Toba Tek Singh exposes Manto's identity as "Liminal Zones".

He argues: 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. The asylum and the hospital are apt symbols for life in

such spaces.(186)

The main issue raised by Devendra, in this sense, is the issue of moral values. 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 of helps Manto to establish the inner psychological disturbance

every individual has unconsciously experienced during partition.

Above cited reviews and criticism clearly explains that Toba Tek Singh is realistic

representation of partition violence in ironic way , and also a bitter indictment of the political

processes and behavior patterns that produced Partition. Through the clever and double-edged

use of the metaphor of madness, Manto‟s story offers broad ground for critics. Because of it‟s

setting on mental Asylum and the premise if patient who cannot comprehend reality of partition.

In this regard some critics argue that surrealistic quality in more dominant in this story. „Toba

Tek Singh. „is among the few writing which explore detachment and humanity to take stock of
this tremendous and disturbing eruption of primeval evil, try to understand from all side and put

it in specific viewpoint.

Saadat Hassan Manto, being a writer of that decade, not only witnessed the

horridness of partition but also realized how that separation of 1947 traumatized people by

making them homeless and identity less. Toba Tek Singh is this same phase of confusion that

Manto tries to depict through his short story , where he not only questions the border between

India and Pakistan, but also has skillfully criticizes the evil consequences of partition upon

society. In this regard, Jules-Français Champfleury opine that, „ Realistic representation aims

to reproduce "objective reality", and focused on showing every day, commonplace activities and

life, primarily among the middle or lower class society, without romantic idealization or

dramatization‟. Though the setting in mental Asylum is not commonplace stuff but the situation

it present was very common and realistic at that time of partition. Besides, instead of searching

realism directly we can peruse realism here in ironic level. Manto here didn‟t focus on physic

entity rather he try to present exact condition of peoples inner psychology thorough those mad

characters. And the mental asylum also represent the foolishness of the then leaders who force

partition to people.

Through the free play of madness, the narrative throws up many disturbing and heart

wrenching picture of reality. What appear initially before us in ironically twisted at the end of the

story. That insane man turns out to be patriotic figure . With the setting of own world ( mental

Asylum) and madness as a backdrop Manto taps into the liberty that madness provides. He gives

account of twelve mad inmates hailing from Hindu/Sikh and Muslim faiths, to review the

Partition of the homeland through the perspective of the insane. In same theme, Lukas‟s
argument here is that the goal of the “artistic reflection of reality” (p.59) is to provide a picture of

reality in which the contradiction between appearance and reality, the particular and the general,

the immediate and the conceptual, is so resolved that the two converge into a spontaneous

integrity‟

As state by Salma Ruside “This strange business of what it is to be a writer is this

increasingly insane world in which we live, in which surrealism, it seems, is the new realism”.

Though the story is set in lunatic asylum, Manto‟s aesthetic touch provides the asylum a

symbolic meaning. Manto has deliberately chosen the lunatic asylum as the setting of his story

for his aim is not only to show how the partition of India and Pakistan cultivate violence but also

to highlight the fact that the decision of partition was not even acceptable for the lunatics in the

asylum. The residents were unaware about all happening, and they don‟t understand the cause of

the division of India into Pakistan, and can‟t figure out how the country they knew can now be a

different place. All Singh wants to know is where does he belong now , and keeps babbling

nonsense, “Where is Toba Tek Singh?” At last when he knew it is in Pakistan, at the same time

he was being taken to the border with Hindustan, he deny to cross border and leave his home.

The story ends with Bishen Singh‟s death in the border between the wire rail separating Pakistan

and Hindustan.

Thus, Saadat Hassan Manto Manto‟s characters come from a fallen class, the class of

people who have been rejected by society under the assumption that they are somehow morally

degraded. Through this story Manto implicitly criticize collective madness of the then leaders

whose misdeed invites apocalypse future .

Selden, Raman. "Art and Objective Truth." The Theory of Criticism. 1990 ed. Vol. 1. New York:

Longman Group, n.d. 40-78. Print.

-Bodh, Prakash. "Nation and Identity in the Narratives of Partition". Postcolonial India: History,

Politics and Cuture. Eds. Vinita Damodaran and Maya Unnithan Kumar. Delhi: Manohar, 2000.

1220. PDF

-Issar, Devendra." Manto: The Image of the Soul in the Mirror of Eros." Tr. M. Asaduddin and

Alok Bhalla Conference; Life and works of Saadat Hasan Manto. Ed. Alok Bhalla. Simla: Indian

Institute of Advanced study, 1996. 184-190. PDF

-Riyaz, Tarannum. "Saadat Hasan Manto: Ideology and Social Philosophy." Tr. Riaz Punjabi.

Conference: Life and works of Saadat Hasan Manto. Ed. Alok Bhalla. Shimla: Indian Institute of

Advanced Study, 1996. 201-214. PDF

Panthi, Dadhi Ram. "Moral Condemnation of Partition Violence in Manto's Toba Tek Singh."

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN 2356-5926

2.3 (2015): 700-09. PDF

Zargar, Nafisa. "The Identity Crisis in Saadat Hasan Manto‟s Short Story “Toba Tek Singh."

GRA Global Journal For Research Analysis 3.6 (2012): 101-02. PDF