Toba Tek Singh : India's broken piece
Toba Tek Singh : India's broken piece
Fences created to seek peace left a scar in his heart.
T M Naveena
1 BCOM D
20SJCCC358
This report
is based on the creative expression used to address Toba Tek Singh as a place,
a historical subject that has great relevance in creating a sensitive image of
the situations or consequences people faced during partition and the years that
followed in the mind of the reader. This topic can be considered as a mirror
that reflects the madness of the outside world through the inmates of asylum.
Newspaper
article, which gives more of an objective approach and a digital painting were
used as the mode of creative expression, where news article of two different
time periods has been used which gives insights into both aspects of partition.
In the 1st article of the year 1949, I have used a brown rusty background as it
represents the setting of that time period, I have talked about a young man, Bilander
Singh who gets to know about this extraordinary man, who didn’t sit or lie down
for 15 years, Bishan Singh and goes to the mental asylum to interview him with
the object of knowing him better, later he gets to know that he doesn’t speak
in one particular language making it difficult to understand him and thus takes
the interview of an employee about him, who works in that asylum. This article
consists of events and conversations which took place while conducting the
interview. In the 2nd article of the year 2021, I am portraying myself as a
journalist who came across this article of the year 1949 through a newspaper
archive, where I am using this 1st article as a reference and reimagining
history with a digital painting. I have also created a box named “Our story of
history”, where I have briefed about the 1st article events, it gives me a
platform to compare both timeline. I have also expressed my modern views and
thoughts about the whole event.
Creative
mode of expression is significant in historical reimagination, as it helps to
grasp people’s attention, as most of the youngsters are not interested in
history. Modern and creative ways need to be incorporated in order to grab mass
attention, with just plain writing about the history, people won’t be able to
grasp the whole concept or different ideas behind it, it’ll give the same point
of view to different people whereas creative presentation like film, poem, and
radio sound bites can give a different perspective to different people, with
the use of visual representation such as a digital painting, it plays a key
element to convey historical knowledge, also the idea and thought behind it, as
the digital painting itself have different outlooks, the simplest of pictures
or drawings can speak a thousand words. Here, I have drawn a person, trees on
his head, birds flying away from it and India’s map on the right side, and
Pakistan’s map on the left side, where I am assuming that the person in the art
is Bishan Singh and the tree-like brain on head represents his insanity from
where the birds are trying to fly away, to get freedom from the insanity of
partition. It is engrossing while creating curiosity in people’s minds. They’ll
try to connect the history with present ideology.
I have
chosen two time periods, 1949 and 2021 in order to show two different angles
and sides for the same incident, the standpoint of people during the partition
and to show how people nowadays have different propositions about it. I have
chosen the year 1949 to address Bishan Singh in the asylum, its the time period
between partition and exchange of the lunatics so that I can add their point of
view about the partition. People back then were blinded by religion and as a
result witnessed screams, blood stained hands which was even harder to clean,
government officials as puppeteers holding their strings left them helpless. But
I want to convey Bishan Singh’s opinion about the partition. He was way ahead
of his time and didn’t care whether he lived in India or Pakistan as long as he
was in Toba Tek Singh. Nowadays, people have widened their horizons and have started
to think about what could’ve been done differently in the past and how they
could’ve avoided the violence in the name of religious differences and that we
as humans should seek peace and harmony.
The people
involved in my article are Bishan Singh, also known as Toba Tek Singh, an
interviewer from 1949 named Bilander Singh who wanted to know about this man,
who didn’t sit or lie down for 15 years and an employee from the asylum who
didn’t have much knowledge about the partition. The journalist from 2021, wants
to reimagine history and erase the picture of war and maintain peace by keeping
the article from 1949 as a reference.
Now, if I’m
asked what could have been different, I can’t help but wonder what would’ve
happened if there was no partition. I feel that if there was no partition, Bishan
Singh’s family would’ve come to visit him more often, his daughter and family
wouldn’t have separated from him. But at the same time, people would’ve revolted
and it could’ve been much worse. Had the partition been more organised, it
could prevent the bloodbath that it turned out to be. The partition could’ve
had both negative or positive outcomes. We can either choose to believe that in
the end Bishan Singh gets to Toba Tek Singh, his homeland or you could also
believe that he died in the asylum, with his unfulfilled wish of returning to Toba
Tek Singh.
In
conclusion, I think Toba Tek Singh and Bishan Singh are just symbols of the
mental trauma and illness brought onto the people during partition because of
human displacement and so many other losses like lives, property, and even
identity. Coming to think of it, maybe the inmates of the asylum were the sane
ones after all.
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