‘Toba Tek Singh’ by Gulzar talks about Bishan Singh who is from the town of Toba Tek Singh,

now in Pakistan. Bishan

Singh is the main character of Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story “Toba Tek Singh” published in 1955. Gulzar is deeply
touched by the agony of Bishan Singh as well as the partition pangs described in Manto’s story. So he directly adopts the
title and adapts the story through his poetic imagination. He has something more to tell Bishan Singh about what
happened even after the official partition of 1947.

‘Toba Tek Singh’ by Gulzar begins with the poet’s urge to meet Bishan Singh at the Wagah border. He is still there, lying
in the no man’s land ruthlessly clinging on the edge where Manto has ended his story. The poet has to tell him what has
happened with others just like him. They were either butchered or wandering like a lunatic in their homeland. However, it
was no more their country. Everything had changed overnight. The partition changed the political map of undivided India.
Moreover, the poet has to tell Bishan Singh’s friend Afzal about the deaths of his dear ones. At last, the poet reiterates the
infamous quote of Manto that ironically made the Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’ dear to the readers.

Structure of Toba Tek Singh

‘Toba Tek Singh’ by Gulzar consists of eight stanzas. There are two major sections according to the subject matter of the
poem. The first section presents a preliminary sketch of Bishan Singh and the second section contains the main idea of the
poet. Moreover, the translated text is in free verse. The absence of rhyming in the poem depicts the horror of partition.
Apart from that, the contraction of lines in between the stanzas breaks the flow of the poem. However, the poem doesn’t
contain any metrical scheme. There are occasional spondees accompanied by the iambic meter.

Literary Devices in Toba Tek Singh

‘Toba Tek Singh’ by Gulzar begins with an allusion to “Toba Tek Singh’s Bishan”. Manto’s story is based on the life of
Bishan Singh. In “He’s god”, the poet presents a metaphor. Here, the poet metaphorically compares Bishan Singh to god.
There is also an irony in this line and the line following it. Moreover, the poet uses the word “partition” as a pun. At first,
it refers to the amputation of body parts. Secondly, it refers to the political event of geographical segmentation that
occurred in 1947. In the line, “Their heads were looted with the luggage on the way behind”, there is a metaphorical
reference to Pakistan. At last, the poet alludes to the mutterings of Bishan Singh. This quote represents how the partition
caused havoc in his mind and others like him.

Lines 1–5

I’ve to go and meet Toba Tek Singh’s Bishan at Wagah

I’m told he still stands on his swollen feet
Where Manto had left him,
He still mutters:
Opad di gud gud di moong di dal di laltain

‘Toba Tek Singh’ by Gulzar presents the main character of Manto’s story in the first line. At the end of Manto’s story,
Bishan Singh lies in the no-man’s-land at Wagah having refused to leave his motherland during partition. Gulzar finds him
still there. His swollen feet remind the poet of his mental agony. Moreover, the poet refers to his incoherent muttering,
“Opad di gud gud di moong di dal di laltain”. The verbatim meaning of this line doesn’t portray a complete sense.
However, it is just a reference to the boiling of lentils. It seems that the line refers to the political turmoil during the
partition and how it impacted a commoner like Bishan Singh.

Lines 6–9

I’ve to locate that mad fellow

Who used to speak up from a branch high above:
“He’s god
He alone has to decide – whose village to whose side.”
This study source was downloaded by 100000847662719 from CourseHero.com on 06-08-2022 23:29:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/127085181/7-Toba-Tek-SIngh-Gulzardocx/
 Thereafter, in ‘Toba Tek Singh’, Gulzar says he has to find “that mad fellow” somehow. He used to speak up from a
branch from a higher branch of a tree as if “He’s god”. Moreover, the poet says he has to decide which village is in
Pakistan and which one belongs to India. Through this line, the poet ironically refers to the politicians who acted as if they
had lost control over their minds. They weren’t different from “that mad person” who sits on a branch of a tree thinking
himself to be a god. Here, the higher branch of a tree is a symbol of political power.

Lines 10–15

When will he move down that branch

He is to be told:
“There are some more – left still
Who are being divided, made into pieces -
There are some more Partitions to be done
That Partition was only the first one.”

In this section of ‘Toba Tek Singh’ by Gulzar, the poet talks about what he has to say to Bishan Singh. When he will
descend from the tree, the poet can tell him about the climax of the partition-story. According to the poet, Bishan was not
the only person whose mind was divided into pieces as well as the body. Others were going to be killed and amputated
sooner or later. At last, the poet ironically refers to the partition of 1947 that led to a series of continuing partitions. The
meaning of the second partition is different though.

Lines 16–20

I’ve to go and meet Toba Tek Singh’s Bishan at Wagah,

His friend Afzal has to be informed –
Lahna Singh, Wadhwa Singh, Bheen Amrit
Had arrived here butchered –
Their heads were looted with the luggage on the way behind.

In this stanza of ‘Toba Tek Singh’, Gulzar says he has to tell Bishan’s friend Afzal about the deaths of his dear ones
namely Lahna Singh, Wadhwa Singh, and Bheen Amrit. They somehow managed to escape from Pakistan but in the end,
they were butchered. Bloodthirsty men not only displaced their heads but also looted their belongings. This line refers to
the ruthlessness of men during the partition.

Lines 21–28

Slay that “Bhuri”, none will come to claim her now.

That girl who grew one finger every twelve months,
Now shortens one phalanx each year.

It’s to be told that all the mad ones haven’t yet reached their destinations
There are many on that side
And many on this.

Toba Tek Singhís Bishan beckons me often to say:

“Opad di gud gud di moong di dal di laltain di Hindustan te Pakistan di dur fitey munh.“

In the last section of ‘Toba Tek Singh’ by Gulzar, the poet refers to the nameless killings of thousands of humans.
Moreover, they didn’t even leave a little girl, here referred to as “Bhuri”. Her parents might have been killed and only she
survived. But, they thought what was the meaning of keeping that girl alive and the rest is history. The girl who grew “one
finger” height every year. After her death at the hands of nationalistic men, her dead body got shortened each year. This
imagery refers to the brutality of partition.
This study source was downloaded by 100000847662719 from CourseHero.com on 06-08-2022 23:29:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/127085181/7-Toba-Tek-SIngh-Gulzardocx/
 Moreover, the poet says there were a lot of mad people like Bishan who had yet to reach their destinations. They were
standing on either side of the newly-drawn border between India and Pakistan. At last, the poet again quotes the
mutterings of Bishan Sigh. But this time there is an addition. The last part of this quote, “Hindustan te Pakistan di dur
fitey munh”, means “India and Pakistan go to the bloody hell”.

Historical Context

‘Toba Tek Singh’ by Gulzar refers to the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The overall poem is based on Saadat
Hasan Manto’s short story “Toba Tek Singh”. This 1955 short story depicts the brutality and horror of the partition. People
like Bishan Singh and Afzal collectively represent the inhabitants of India who suffered due to the political turmoil of that
period. However, the partition has given birth to many stories, ironically to the sad and heart-wrenching ones.

This study source was downloaded by 100000847662719 from CourseHero.com on 06-08-2022 23:29:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/127085181/7-Toba-Tek-SIngh-Gulzardocx/
 Translating Trauma Into Sublime Gulzar’s Response To Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh”

Mujhe Wagah pe Toba Tek Singh wale ‘Bishan’ se jake milna hai. (Gulzar, “Toba Tek Singh”)

Based on Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story “Toba Tek Singh”, Gulzar’s Urdu poem of the same name, rendered in
English and with the same title by Dr. Anisur Rahman (Rahman 2001), creates a new ground for what Manto had referred
to as ‘no man’s land’ in the end. In the poem, Gulzar endeavours to totalize a cultural narrative schema in explaining the
heart-rending Partition experience that makes its tremors felt in the human hearts of the Indian sub-continent to date. As a
microcosm of the partitioned reality, the poem lampoons the absurd division and the crude exchange of property and men
in the wake of Partition. “Toba Tek Singh” is indeed the idea of a profound space, both, in the story as well as in the poem,
where insanity, which is actually the protagonist Bishan Singh’s hyper-sanity, is misread by the clinically sane. Bishan
finds final and true asylum neither in India, nor in Pakistan, but in a ‘no man’s land’, occupied by none. His sense of
belonging is best obtained and realized since this (im)possible space is free from politico-territorial claim.

Gulzar’s poetic lines about ‘Toba Tek Singh’ firmly reaffirm the existence of the land / space that Manto had given to
Bishan Singh when he was seen at the end of the story. Gulzar confidently begins saying –

I’ve to go and meet Toba Tek Singh’s Bishan at Wagah,

I’m told he still stands on his swollen feet
Where Manto had left him …

Gulzar is confident that Bishan’s ‘no man’s land’, even if it could not be located on Partition maps as Toba Tek Singh,
must be there in essence, since that is where Bishan fell to live and die with the spirit and sense of belonging to ‘One
Nation’. He embodies the stretch of land that lies like him between the two Nations and becomes co-equable to his long
lost Toba Tek Singh which he finds (and founds) there. He becomes Toba Tek Singh. No wonder Gulzar is confident that
he will find the protagonist where Manto had left him, since, ironically enough, the Partition will remain, and so will the
‘no man’s land’, Bishan and Toba Tek Singh.

The “swollen feet” on which Gulzar’s Bishan stands is the outcome of the post- Partition Everyman’s never-ending and
anxious and traumatic standing spree even prior to the Partition, perhaps sceptical about the idea of “two nations in the
main”. It clearly suggests this Everyman’s previous anxiety for the approaching Partition, which, he knew, was inevitable.
In real life, at the asylum, that Bishan never slept and never sat for fifteen years is reportedly true, and his apparently
lunatic but actually superconscious sense of belonging, and condemnation of the ‘two-nations’ theory, resurface in an
oblique way as Gulzar portrays the sanity of the insane. Even though Toba Tek Singh insanely mutters the seemingly
gibberish “Opad di gudgud di moong di dal di laltain” in sheer desperation against lunatic political times, it is actually a
form of protest and resistance. His confinement in the asylum is less stringent than his being confined between the very
ideas of two separate Nations, the whimsical preparations of which spanned over forty years with a handful of selfish
politicians decisively contributing to the ill-fate of millions.

As death, distress and disquietude heighten the pathetic related to the Partition, Gulzar has agenda enough on hand, for he
says,

I’ve to locate that mad fellow

Who used to speak up from a branch high above:
He’s god
He alone has to decide – whose village to whose side.

Gulzar clearly identifies the madness of the inmates, equates it obliquely with the coarse political madness that stood in
favour of two nations, and addresses the plight of the homeless. He re-iterates the incident when ‘Bashan’/ ‘Bishan’ in
Manto’s story had repeatedly questioned another mad man who feigned to be God, that of the two countries in which
country Toba Tek Singh (Bishan’s hometown) actually was. The whole aspect of the idea of nationality is beautifully
reiterated thus by Gulzar, by re-visiting the conversational space and the camaraderie between the lunatics, which is
seemingly saner than those of the controversial spaces of antagonism between architects of the ill-fates of the two nations.
This study source was downloaded by 100000847662719 from CourseHero.com on 06-08-2022 23:29:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/127085181/7-Toba-Tek-SIngh-Gulzardocx/
 Diplomatic manipulations, misleading, betrayal etc. were common from bureaucrats and politicians, and Gulzar simultaneously equivocates and identifies
them too as lunatics “who used to speak up from a branch high above”. Their space too is not at all differentiated from any asylum, only in their cases, their
separate asylums are more dishonest and corrupt, and reminds the post-Partition generation as to how Nehru and Jinnah had both played the roles of soi-
disant pseudo-gods in the blistering history shared by the two nations. Toba Tek Singh, the sublime locale for Bishan, is lopsided in the cases of politicians,
for they shall never understand the essence and sublimity of Toba Tek Singh, the locale, as ‘Bishan’ would. ‘Bishan’ and ‘Toba Tek Singh’ stand for each
other and are interchangeable, but such can never be the case with power-mongers who ravish their motherlands with a ‘Zero Line’ .

Informing about the present post-Partition situation and about the essence of “Toba Tek Singh”, Gulzar, in a prophetic bid,
warns the lunatic inmates of both the countries and the lunatic, fundamentalist political systems alike, that:

There are some more – left still

Who are being divided, made into pieces –
There are some more Partitions to be done
That Partition was only the first one.
Like Jacques Lacan, Gulzar puts the subjective ‘self’ at the centre, where it is alienated from its own history, formed in and through otherness,
and is inserted into an external symbolic network. “Toba Tek Singh” becomes a ‘faction’ (fact + fiction), or even a paradoxical (mis)conception,
born of a misrecognition that masks a fractured and unconscious desire of the Antithetical New for reunification with the Old Primary.

In this, it may be said that the characters and their identities get dislocated, blurred and superimposed elsewhere
simultaneously. The familiar is defamiliarized and vice versa, as it is in the case of ‘Bishan’ / ‘Bashan’ or ‘Toba Tek
Singh’. The post-Partition readers naturally ask themselves the paradoxical question: “‘Toba Tek Singh’ – more place than
person, or more person than place?” As for meeting “Toba Tek Singh’s Bishan at Wagah” (the no man’s land), the Wagah
border itself becomes a new and antithetical Toba Tek Singh, and only there can the old primary ‘Bishan’ be met.

Finally, Gulzar rattles off the names of characters that Bishan and his friend knew, and endeavours to report what
happened to them (once he reaches the locale Toba Tek Singh and the persona of ‘Bishan’) thus:

His friend Afzal has to be informed –

Lahna Singh, Wadhwa Singh, Bheen Amrit
Had arrived here butchered –
Their heads were looted with the luggage on the way behind.

and that the unfed girl (much allusive of the sordid predicament of the post-Partition, cross-border daughters and perhaps
Bishan’s own daughter)

who grew one finger every twelve months,

Now shortens one phalanx each year.

With these lines Gulzar intends to heighten the pathos in the very essence of Toba Tek Singh (both locale and persona) by
presenting human beings who actually belonging to nowhere, yet some are butchered and others in excruciating pain
accruing from the Partition. In utter despair he flings a scathing sarcasm on the dividedness of the people and politicians
on either side of the border, saying:

It’s to be told that all the mad ones haven’t yet reached their destinations
There are many on that side
And many on this.

Gulzar shows courage of hopelessness in his search for Toba Tek Singh, and perhaps wants to say that what he advocates
is not the process of democratic self-purification by means of which we get rid of the dirty water (abuses of democracy)
without losing the healthy baby (authentic democracy and human resource). The task is rather to trans-value the
(politically determined) values themselves. The “dirty water” of a political system that compels millions to bear the brunt
of wanton, arbitrary decisions must be cleared out to look for radical ways of reformation.

Thus, the sublime essence of the real ‘Bishan’ or the true ‘Toba Tek Singh’ can hardly be ascertained or realized in this
post-Partition
This study source waspolitical scenario
downloaded which actually
by 100000847662719 translates to
from CourseHero.com everything
on 06-08-2022 unconstructive,
inconclusive, remains blurred, and
23:29:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/127085181/7-Toba-Tek-SIngh-Gulzardocx/
 is resignedly dubbed as largely gibberish. So, ‘Toba Tek Singh’ and / or ‘Bishan’ / ‘Bashan’, in a bid to revolt, “ …
beckons … (the poet) often to say:“Opad di gudgud di moong di dal di laltain di Hindustan te Pakistan di dur fiteymunh.”

This study source was downloaded by 100000847662719 from CourseHero.com on 06-08-2022 23:29:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/127085181/7-Toba-Tek-SIngh-Gulzardocx/
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)