Border Issues in Saadat Hasan Manto's Short Story "Toba Tek Singh"

Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh” is based on the miserable plight of lunatics at a Lahore mental asylum. It shows the dire consequences of the cataclysmic partition between India and Pakistan in 1947. It depicts how millions of people lost their general course of living and were, displaced during the partition. The story witnesses a hideous geographical change that made the condition completely adverse and tumultuous. The partition shook the whole continent. The story begins with both the Governments’ decision to exchange the psychopaths on the basis of their religious orientation. Bishan Singh, the protagonist, emblematizes the border, finds himself dislocated as a subaltern limbo. The pangs of Bishan’s displacement still haunt history. The partition caused such a topsy-turvy that none can find out Bishan Singh’s village Toba Tek Singh. Nobody knows whether it is in India or Pakistan. Bishan Singh is mercilessly victimized and traumatized by the horror of partition. Partition is the prime cause of his existential angst. Indeed, the story satirizes the absurdity of such elusive and farcical demarcation of national territories. The current paper attempts to reexamine the border issues created by the partition in Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story “Toba Tek Singh.