Manto’s Toba Tek Singh: The ‘insanity’ in the Partition experience

Vandita Bajaj

The trauma of the Partition of India in 1947 is part of the lived experience of our grandparents’ generation, which makes it so much more personal than any other historical event which we read about in textbooks. In the midst of political and ideological clashes, the ones affected most by the events, immediately before and after, the Partition were the ordinary people. People who had to abandon their homes, flee to save their lives, leave everything behind and start afresh. While there is a vast body of literature—both fiction and non-fiction, although the lines often blur— a story that stands out is Sadat Hassan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh. The story is an interesting starting point to explore the way the mentally ill are reduced to “objects” to be divided equally between the newly formed nations, the all-pervasive “madness” of the events and the horrific traumas that shape collective memory.

According to S. Haque Nizame and Nishant Goyal’s (2010) findings, the first documented opening of mental asylums in India is after the establishment of British colonial rule. Initially, they primarily catered to the Europeans who were a long way from home and might have found it difficult to cope with the unfamiliarity of a foreign land. Up until the Revolt of 1857, Indians were not given proper access to institutionalized care for mental illnesses. This means a lot of them were at the mercy of self-styled healers. The deeply patriarchal nature of society at the time must have also meant that there were gross differences in the help men and women received. While Nizame and Goyal (2010) chronologically trace the coming up of various mental institutions, the advancement of therapies in India and the beginning of Psychological Medicine in India, the paper doesn’t touch upon the quality of care which was available or statistics regarding the demographic of people who had access to psychiatric healthcare. However, it is in one such “lunatic” asylum that makes for the spatial setting of Manto’s narrative.

In Manto’s story, the protagonist is Bashan Singh, a Sikh man who owned land in the district of Toba Tek Singh. According to the description, he had an unkempt appearance, didn’t sleep soundly, was unable to recognize his daughter when she came to visit him, has disordered speech; but other than that, he was harmless and had never been involved in a fight over his 15-year stay in the asylum. Problems start when the news of the Partition reached the inhabitants of the asylum. It seems as though the asylum resembles the chaos and confusion of the outside world on a microscopic level. No one knew what was happening and where they were. All Bashan Singh is concerned about is where Toba Tek Singh is, India or Pakistan, but alas no one can tell him. The sheer rate at which people had to process change is nearly impossible to grasp. Even for the protagonist, it all gets too much; he refuses to cross over to the other side for he only wants to go to Toba Tek Singh but no one can tell him where it is.

Sanjeev Jain and Alok Sarin, two leading psychiatrists, found that the story of Toba Tek Singh is not all that fictitious. During the Partition, mental asylums and psychiatric institutions established during British rule were to facilitate the transfer of patients along religious lines. While Manto's portrayal conveys that inhabitants of the asylum had no say in their transfer, neither did other people. Personally, having seen first-hand, the way people in their late old-age, recount the chilling events of the past with extreme detail is fascinating as much as it is disturbing. In their late eighties and nineties when it is common for issues with memory, if not dementia, to set in, hearing people recount the horrors that they saw and have flashbacks of their experiences is in equal parts terrifying and fascinating. My grandfather suffered dementia in his old age and in the last few years of his life, he recalled details of his life in Pakistan, called out names of people he knew from there and had tears in his eyes each time he recalled the journey he took to come to India. My grandmother's sister, in her late nineties, has flashbacks where she fears that members from the Muslim community will attack her and her family. The trauma of crossing over to the other side was suppressed by them, and I am sure that is the case with most people. But these experiences rarely escape the subconscious of a person, especially a child. The magnitude of loss they experienced and the sudden pace at which the events unfolded only added to the "insanity" of the entire episode.

I wonder if people who go through such events, Partition survivors from the past and even the Syrian refugees in the present, ever feel secure? They grow up in hostile conditions that lack any semblance of stability. And while they are eager to rebuild their lives they have seen what it is like to lose it all overnight. The psychological strain that they undergo isn't ever addressed properly, the focus is always to give them material and medical aid but what about their psychological well-being? Their return to normalcy is rushed and only adds up to the tumult that underpins their lives. Maybe its time we think about addressing the "insanity" of it all...

References:-

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/toba-tek-singh

Jain, S., & Sarin, A. (2018). The Psychological Impact of the Partition of India (Kindle Edition ed.). Sage Publications.

Nizamie HS, Goyal N. History of psychiatry in India. Indian J Psychiatry 2010;52, Suppl S3:7-12