Question

Explain the major socio-political issues that are addressed in ‘Toba Tek Singh’. 700-750 words ​

Answer 1

Two or three years after Partition, the governments of Pakistan and India decided to exchange lunatics in the same way that they had exchanged civilian prisoners. In other words, Muslim lunatics in Indian madhouses would be sent to Pakistan, while Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistani madhouses would be handed over to India.

I can't say whether this decision made sense or not. In any event, a date for the lunatic exchange was fixed after high level conferences on both sides of the border. All the details were carefully worked out. On the Indian side, Muslim lunatics with relatives in India would be allowed to stay. The remainder would be sent to the frontier. Here in Pakistan nearly all the Hindus and Sikhs were gone, so the question of retaining non-Muslim lunatics did not arise. All the Hindu and Sikh lunatics would be sent to the frontier in police custody.

I don't know what happened over there. When news of the lunatic exchange reached the madhouse here in Lahore, however, it became an absorbing topic of discussion among the inmates. There was one Muslim lunatic who had read the newspaper Zamindar1 every day for twelve years. One of his friends asked him: "Maulvi Sahib! What is Pakistan?" After careful thought he replied: "It's a place in India where they make razors."

Hearing this, his friend was content.

Answer 2

Answer:

Major socio-political issues that are addressed in ‘Toba Tek Singh

Explanation:

Toba Tek Singh is a famous short story written by Saadat Hasan Manto and published in 1955. It is based on the lunatics of a madhouse in Lahore during the partition of India, and critics have described the story as a "powerful take on India-Pakistan relations" over the past 50 years. At the time of partition in 1947, the governments of India and Pakistan reached an agreement to exchange each other's Hindu-Sikh and Muslim lunatics. In the asylum of Lahore, there was a Sikh maniac named Bishan Singh who was a resident of the city named Toba Tek Singh. He was deported to India with the police squad, but when he came to know that Toba Tek Singh had not gone to India and went to Pakistan in the partition, he refused to go. Bishan Singh at the end of the story. depicted lying, dead, or dying among barbed wires on the border between the two countries.

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