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| Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’ Play |
TOBA TEK SINGH has its deep foundation on the tragic event which India and Pakistan faced before, during and after independence in the form of Partition.
Set in a madhouse it uses madness as a metaphor for sanity that if you were sane enough you would have not gone ahead for such division that has lasting effects. The concept of Binorism can be seen in this short story. It is the distinction between the two extremes; either here or there, no in between. It is a choice between two politics, religion, race and creed. One can’t be in two states at A time, just as, in other modes of social distinction, one can’t have two religions or two color skins. Like Bishan Singh who achieves ultimate marginality by dying on the border between two states, thus opting for neither. TOBA TEK SINGH not just questioning just two-nation theory but also the very idea of nationhood as the basis of ones identity.
The story is set two or three years after the 1947 Partition, when the governments of India and Pakistan decided to exchange their Muslim, Sikh and Hindu, and revolves around Bishan Singh, a Sikh inmate of an asylum in Lahore, who is from the town of Toba Tek Singh. As part of the exchange of Bishan Singh is sent under police escort to India, but upon being told that his hometown Toba Tek Singh is in Pakistan, he refuses to go. The story ends with Bishan lying down between barbed wire: ``There, behind barbed wires, was Hindustan. Here, behind the same kind of barbed wire, was Pakistan. In between, on that piece of ground that had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.
Date & Time: March 2–3, 2013; 7 pm
Venue: Akshara Theatre, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Near Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Delhi,
Tickets: Rs 200
Language: Hindi
Director: Sunil Rawat
Genre: Drama, Play
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