Sa‘adat Hasan Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh”
Manto wrote “oaba oRk Si_g^” in , just after the partition of India
and Pakistan in . It is about the exchange of insane asylum inmates
following Partition—Hindus and Sikhs on the Pakistani side of the
border were to be exchanged with Muslims on the Indian side. The story
is set in an asylum in Lahore and gradually focuses on one elderly Sikh
inmate named Bishan Singh, although he is more often called Toba Tek
Singh because he had been a landowner in a village by that name. This
story is one of several stories written by Manto about Partition, and it has
received wide acclaim in both South Asia and the West for its realistic
25Ibid., pp. –. In addition, Todorov states on pp. - that themes of
the other are based on “excessive” acts linked to sexual desire. In “ Li√≥f,” one
might also note the excessive amount of massaging that occurs throughout the
story.
26Gayatri Gopinath, “On Fire,” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies,
. (), p. .
K ML •
depiction of that experience. In fact, Gyanendra Pandey argues that this
story is so clearly a social realist story that it may even be regarded as
historical writing. Pandey argues that histories since the nineteenth
century have been largely national histories, and have therefore tended to
wipe out many signs of struggle and violence that marked the way to their
own success. By regarding stories like “oaba oRk Si_g^” as historical
writing, Pandey argues that we can frame histories in order to allow a
place for the bodies that carry the marks of everyday struggles, and which
thereby constitute the “larger” events and processes of History.27
The first paragraph of this short story questions the sanity of the
decision to exchange “insane” Indians and Pakistanis:
Two or three years after Partition, it occurred to the governments of India
and Pakistan that along with the transfer of civilian prisoners, a transfer of...