Nirjhar Choudhary

BA English Honors

Professor Bhardwaj

10 may 2024

“Madness” as a literary device in Toba Tek Singh.

Toba Tek Singh was first published in 1953 in an Urdu magazine Savera, was

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. Constantly plagued by memories of the past, Manto could

never bring himself to feel that he really belonged to Pakistan. His deteriorating health was

the main cause of his drunkenness, and at one point in his life, his circumstances and outlook

on life nearly led to his being committed to a mental institution. Manto brings the issue of

Partition to the world of the insane in his story "Toba Tek Singh," emphasizing the political

absurdity of the Partition by setting it in a mental institution.

The terrible event in the subcontinent's history that divided it into two distinct

geographical regions not only permanently affected the subcontinent's physical borders but

also irreversibly changed the lives of its people. The horror, the madness, the bestiality, the

violence, arson, looting and rape that followed in the wake of the political decision was

unprecedented. It did not merely mark a demographic shift, but also a shift in the

psychological understanding of how we understand the concept of nation and religious

identity. Many of them turned insane, became paralyzed for life, or killed themselves as a

result of the memory of the unspeakable atrocities they had witnessed. The question of

whether the nation state should be favoured above the town or village grew in importance.
 Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’ also falls into this category of stories that deal with the

theme of Partition concentrating on the tragedy of dislocation and exile. The madman Bishan

Singh who hails from a small village in Punjab, Toba Tek Singh, is unable to take in the fact

that the division of the subcontinent requires him to cross the border line and forget his

homeland forever. In the story, we shall see shortly, how the man becomes the place and

Bishan Singh refuses to comply with the orders, preferring to give up his life instead. Sadat

Hasan Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh” deals with the theory of trauma and the subject of insanity

with an open-minded attitude. The story is influenced by the real exchange of the lunatics

over India-Pakistan border in 1949. The protagonist of the story “Toba Tek Singh” Bhishan

Singh speaks gibberish and repeatedly says, “O pardi girgir axe di bedhiana di moongdi dal di

laltain; and his prime occupation throughout was to know whether his village that is “Toba

Tek Singh” is in Pakistan or in India to the extent that people started referring to him as Toba

Tek Singh, his engagement and this recognition by the place’s name is Manto emphasis on

the identity of a person being shaped by their native place. Alter argues, “In many of his

stories, madness is conceived as a metaphor, representing not only the upheaval surrounding

Partition but also the tortured and split identities which emerged”. This sense of ambiguity is

echoed by different characters such as the lawyer or the inmate that climbed the tree and

talked about the matter of India and Pakistan for hours, in the story as none of them knew

about their current state nor they were able to comprehend it.

There is a Muslim madman who has been religiously reading the Urdu daily

Zamindar, there is the Sikh madman who wants to know why they are being sent to

Hindustan when they cannot even speak their language and there is again that Muslim

madman who is overtaken by a nationalist zeal while bathing and shouts ‘Pakistan zindabad’

only to slip and fall and pass out. The madman who climbs a tree to deliver a two- hour

lecture on ‘the most ticklish matter of Pakistan and Hindustan’ lends poignancy to the plight
of those who were now forced to make a choice. Thus, he declares ‘I want to live neither in

Hindustan nor in Pakistan. I had rather live on this tree.’ The fact that he is a Muslim is

revealed only when he is persuaded to come down and hugs his Hindu and Sikh friends

because they would soon be going away. This implies that he must be a Muslim for he will

stay back.

Two things are happening here simultaneously. On the one hand there is a note of

protest in this madman’s declaration that he would rather live on a tree than be forced to

make a choice between two parts of the same country. This protest simmered in the breasts of

most common people who were driven out from their homes when sudden political decisions

were thrust on them. Thus, gradually we see the madhouse becoming a microcosm of the

outside world. We have a similar situation here as that in the world outside A political

decision has been made without consulting the people concerned.

The second noteworthy fact which emerges from the protest of the madman who

prefers to live on the tree, is located in the manner in which he embraces his Hindu and Sikh

friends and begins to cry. At this point Manto writes: ‘his heart grew heavy at the very

thought that they would leave him and go away to Hindustan.’ For him they are still his

friends and it does not matter that they are not Muslims. We might well ask ourselves who in

fact is mad here -- the madmen in the asylum or the sane men outside the madhouse?

Humanity seems to be still intact in this madhouse, in these madmen. Ironically the mad seem

to be saner than the so-called sane predators prowling the streets in the world beyond the

confines of the asylum.

Through the “madmen” Manto is highlighting an important distinction or gap

between the decision makers and the affected people. For the political leaders it was easy to

run a dividing line through the country and have clear cut physical boundaries drawn between
Hindustan and Pakistan. But for the common people the words remained mere territorial

abstractions. For them home was where they had been born, lived and would have died had

history not played such a cruel trick. This hopelessness and this despair is evoked in the mild

protest of the madman who would prefer to live in the tree rather than in Hindustan or

Pakistan and be separated from family and friends in the process. “Two or three years after

Partition, the Governments of India and Pakistan decided that just as there had been a cordial

exchange of prisoners, there should now be a similar exchange of lunatics” (Manto 02). The

setting of madness has allowed Manto to assign into the freedom which insanity grants. He

has brilliantly reviewed Partition of the motherland from a mad man’s viewpoint. From the

asylum to the “no-man’s-land” (Singh 06) belt, Toba Tek Singh (Bishen Singh) represents a

figure who goes beyond all category.

Toba Tek Singh” is such a story that highlights the inner upheaval through the insane

protagonist, Bishen Singh and instil the same among the readers. It has been assumed that

this story somehow can be linked with the real-life experience of Sadat Hasan Manto. Studies

have found that “Toba Tek Singh” which is considered a masterpiece composed by Manto is

inspired by Manto’s own experience during his visit to the mental hospital. With his

microcosmic insanity he wants to stand against and stop the macrocosmic insanity. When

they tried forcibly to send him across, he dug his swollen heels at a point in the middle of the

border...” (Manto 10). These lines clearly suggest that Bishen Singh acts as a bridge with a

desire to reunite both the nations even at the cost of his life. However, he is ultimately

defeated in his attempt which is shown by “lying face down” (10) and it reflects the universal

defeat of all the common mass who fell victims in the monstrous hands of Partition thereby

suffering traumas which ultimately engulfs each and everyone’s innocent lives.

As Sukrita Paul Kumar observes, ‘Toba Tek Singh offers a fine perception of the

thin line between what’s regarded as lunacy and sanity. Is the ultimate resolution only death?
If that is so then what kind of a resolution is it for people who are anyway leading a death like

existence or for those who choose life but are forced into a terrorised and death like existence

in a strange land which remains theirs only in name.’ These are the questions that the ending

of the story leaves unanswered. Partition itself is rejected completely in the protest lodged in

the physical death of Bishan Singh. Madness thus becomes a metaphor for sanity in one sense

and for Partition itself in the other because the incomprehensibility that attends dementia is

the same as the one that was ubiquitous in the division of the two countries. The whole

Partition was an act of insanity which undoubtedly damaged the psyche of the people driving

some to despair while others to rage which blinded them to all feelings of compassion and

kinship. Manto himself went through this experience when he migrated to Pakistan against

his will. Recounting his experience in a memoir he writes: ‘I lived in Bombay for twelve

years. And what I am, I am because of those years. Today I find myself living in Pakistan. It

is possible that tomorrow I may go to live elsewhere. But wherever I go I will remain what

Bombay made me. Wherever I live, I will carry Bombay with me.’