The Worst Partition In the History

I still remember it today, and you must remember it too
When, together, we murdered our mother.
My childhood was killed with the murder of my mother
And its cold corpse was left behind in your place.
Even now, I become quiet when I remember that
And lose myself in the thoughts of that half-a-body that was your share.

When the little child breaks the vial of oil,
She incurs your wrath as if it were an act of despoil…
What about the many ways in which
you petty man-children have broken up India, so verdant and rich
What about that? 

I have chosen poetry as my creative expression. I feel my poetry by its means signifies and defines Partition in a better manner. If I justify it I would say the poetry I have defined is perfect meaning to partition as it explains when a mother(India) was murdered because of political reasons when mother was murdered and divided into two parts (India and Pakistan), the murderers never about the future they did it for their personal well-being. A creative mode of expressions is equally important for historical imagination, Now if we look according Toba Tek Singh’s story we feel was Partition necessary? Could it be avoided. Everyone of us express it in different way some feel Partition is the reason why today India and Pakistan are fighting, some say Partition was the right decision as both Hindu and Muslims have their Identity, their nation. Because if today you reimagine the Partition we feel different opinions. I have chosen transfer of lunatics from asylum as my historical context. 

"Toba Tek Singh" is surely the most famous story about Partition, and very possibly the best one. I'd argue that it is in fact the best, and that most of the other good candidates are also by Manto. This story was one of his last ones; it was published in 1955, the year of his death. Every reader at once realizes that it's a powerful satire, and also a bitter indictment of the political processes and behaviour patterns that produced Partition. But the author's brilliant craftsmanship lies partly in the fact that there's not a single word in the story that tells us so. The story presents itself as a deadpan, factual, non-judgmental chronicle of the behaviour of certain lunatics in an insane asylum in Lahore.

The story is told by a reliable but not omniscient narrator who speaks as a Pakistani, and seems to be a Lahori. The narration is for the most part so straightforward that the narrator's voice seems even naive. The narrator reports to us with apparent matter-of-factness a series of events that are not quite as straightforward as they appear. The time frame, for one thing, is oddly jagged. The first two paragraphs take us to the Wagah border itself, where the lunatics are described as having already arrived. Then we drop abruptly into a very long flashback: we return to an earlier time, when the inmates in the Lahore asylum first learn of the proposed exchange. We follow their reactions and behaviour, until at the very end of the story we once again arrive at the time and place of the first two paragraphs.

A much greater oddity is that the whole story, as we're told in the first sentence, takes place "two or three years after Partition," so it seems highly implausible that not only the lunatics, but the people around them as well, can't figure out where Toba Tek Singh is; the district isn't even anywhere near the border, so after "two or three years" there could hardly be any confusion. But it's a tribute to Manto's narrative skill that on the first reading, this question doesn't even occur-- and perhaps not on the second or third reading, either. We don't meet the main character until well into the story, when we've gone through an illustrative sequence of other lunatics. The narrator reports that everyone calls the main character "Toba Tek Singh" (though in the whole course of the story we never actually hear anyone doing so); but the narrator himself always refers to him by his full name, Bishan Singh. Does he do this pointedly, as a sign of respect, and to differentiate himself from the others? 

Whatever the reason, the narrator's carefulness in this respect enables him to set up a wonderfully elegant, haunting, ambiguous conclusion. After Bishan Singh gives a single loud shriek and collapses, the narrator locates him in a no-man's-land between the two new nations' barbed-wire borders. "In between, on that piece of ground that had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh." We know of course that the person Bishan Singh lay there. But since the narrator never calls this person by that name, he's able to force us to the additional reading that the real location of the village Toba Tek Singh is between the two new states' sharply demarcated borders. But if the village is there, then in what sense exactly, and in whose eyes? Is Bishan Singh sane or mad, conscious or delirious, alive or dead? With wonderful subtlety and literary restraint, the author allows us and thus also forces us to invent our own ending.

Now if we look according Toba Tek Singh’s story we feel was Partition necessary? Could it be avoided. Every one of us express it in different way some feel Partition is the reason why today India and Pakistan are fighting, some say Partition was the right decision as both Hindu and Muslims have their Identity, their nation. Because if today you reimagine the Partition we feel different opinions.  

Now in future (present) if it is still undecided, Partition would never be the answer because the Partition not only divides the nation but it also divides the people on this basis of their religion, caste. In this Future secularism is moto behind the equality. So to conclude I would Partition is never the option. the way Manto’s satire “Toba Tek Singh” has different ending for everyone.

                                                                                                                        Thank You

                                                                                                                        Ronak U Jain

                                                                                                                        20SJCCC347

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