The Fear of Losing Identity in Manto’s Toba Tek Singh

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Ever since the beginning and the development of human race, mankind has known the value of identity and individuality. The quest for identity and the fear of losing it has been most prominent factor in most of the historic wars and fights. All the wars, intrusions and slavery have been the result of man’s desire of establishing his superiority over others and making his name known to more number of people. For accomplishing this desire, mankind has migrated, emigrated, immigrated and even intruded various foreign places, hence increasing the reasons for disturbances and the countries like India, which are the land of religious and cultural diversity, became more prone to the problem of communal and religious disturbances. This land has witnessed many riots and uproars at the name of religion and identity, the largest, renowned and major cause of riot has been “Mountbatten’s Plan of Partition- 1947”. The chaos and the confusion of the times have been represented by many authors. Many pens have scribbled the pain of their holding hands and minds on the piece of paper. Punjab, being most affected by the partition, made the authors of partition, out of them Sadat Hasan Manto is one name to be underlined. He brings alive the most traumatic episode in the history of the subcontinent, he brings into light the confusions prevailing at the time of separation. His many stories are partition oriented however, this paper analyse Toba Tek Singh for understanding the fear of lost identities at the time of forced mobility. Keywords: Partition, identity, dilemma, mobility, migration, desire. Introduction: Migration has been the part of human history since time immemorial. Humans have been migrating from their native and known lands to alie... ... middle of paper ... ...viding one nation into two. If it was actually a problem of common man to have a separate nation then there would have not been even a drop of tear shed at that time. People lost their houses, lives, respects, possessions, properties and the identity, the one who gained was the political powers Works Cited 1. Sadat Hasan Manto. “Toba Tek Singh”. Selected Stories.Trans. Khalid Hasan. Penguin Books: London.2007.9-17. 2. Weinreich, P and Saunderson, W. (Eds) (2003). "Analysing Identity: Cross-Cultural, Societal and Clinical Contexts." London: Routledge. 3. Weinreich, P. (1986a). The operationalisation of identity theory in racial and ethnic relations, in J.Rex and D.Mason (Eds). "Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 4. Spear, Percival. 1958. "Britain's Transfer of Power in India." Pacific Affairs, 31(2):173–180.

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