Abstract: This paper studies the geographical and metaphorical borders of the postcolonial nation state through the analysis of two of Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories – ‘Toba Tek Singh’ and ‘The Dog of Titwal’. I investigate current scholarly conceptualizations of nations, borders, and space itself. I posit that the idea of belonging is tied to one’s idea of ‘home’, and distinct from one’s sense of belonging to a nation. I outline the effects of colonial cartography on the formation of postcolonial states and point towards their respective roles in creating fractured national and individual identities. I further posit that the clear division between colonial time and postcolonial time does not translate to lived experience and that the representation of such can be found in stories of forced migration and dislocation during partition.
Keywords: Decolonization, postcolonial literature, migration, dislocation, identity, postcolonial time, borders, nationhood, mapping
In this paper I will analyse two of Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories – ‘Toba Tek Singh’ and ‘The Dog of Titwal’, with a primary focus on the former. My critique will be spatial – I will look at the postcolonial space, its definitions, its associations and dissociations with history and social-cultural-political continuity.
In the first section I will deal with the idea that in the case of the postcolonial nation, space and time are inseparable. The fact that the territories of the newly postcolonial nations were defined in many ways by the very fact of colonization and colonial mapping of territories lends credence to the idea that the postcolonial existence is inherently spatial. It is also temporal, because the arrival of colonial empires and the subsequent freedom from them is situated in a linear historical timeline. I will look at the idea behind the creation of a nation and posit that a nation can be understood as an imagined space. I will also show how the technique of mapping and cartography, and the combined disciplines of geography and history gave rise to the idea of a defined nation-space in the minds of its occupants. I will show how the spatial and temporal connections in the construction of a defined territory spill over in the form of a colonial legacy to help create what is now the postcolonial nation.
In the next section I will do a close reading of Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’, and a supplementary reading of ‘The Dog of Titwal’, showing how Manto’s presentation of the narratives around the partition of India are decidedly spatial-temporal, and how they contribute to identity and selfhood. I will critically analyse the story using specific spatial formations that I will have defined in the first section. In doing so, I will attempt to show that the trauma of partition, and the postcolonial moment as Manto captures it, is defined by the trauma of ‘dislocation’ i.e. a dislocation of the self from spatial identity and belonging as defined by temporality.
The nation “is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willing to die for such limited imaginings.” (Gandhi 2006, pp. 7)
Anderson’s idea of the nation as an imagined community can be extended to include the realm of space as well. While the notion of a common identity, or a “deep, horizontal comradeship” as Anderson terms it, is one of the foundational constructs of the idea of the nation, so is a sense of definitive territorial sovereignty. (Anderson 2006, pp. 7) The nation is defined by specific geographic boundaries; the people within these lines consist the imagined community, while those outside the boundaries have a different locus of belonging. Thus, the nation can also be said to be an imagined space.
In this regard, it is important to note that in the case of the postcolonial nation, time and space are one. The postcolonial nation is born out of the territorialized spaces of the colonizer, after attaining independence – the fact of being ‘post’-colonial lends a temporal dimension that is inextricably intertwined with the spatial. “Thus, the project of becoming postcolonial—of arriving into a decisive moment after colonialism—has usually been commemorated and legitimated through the foundation of independent nation-States.” (Gandhi 1998, pp.110-111) The postcolonial nation attains selfhood through a process of overthrowing the colonial powers and reclaiming or repossessing itself and its sovereignty. In some cases this process involved forging a sense of a unified identity where none existed apart from a united anti-colonial resistance. Hence, the postcolonial nation building exercise was complicated, necessitating the construction of a new sense of national belonging that would be contained within the territorial boundaries, harken to a shared history, and point to a cohesive, future sense of selfhood. This puts the postcolonial nation in position where its time and space cannot be separated – the geographical boundaries define it, as does its birth after colonialism.
To understand the complex boundaries of the postcolonial nation-state, one must look towards the mapping of colonial territory. In the case of India (or British colonial India and later on – independent India and Pakistan, and even later Bangladesh), the understanding of a geographically defined nation stems from a colonial project of mapping and cartography. “As colonial rulers transformed natural frontiers of the Indian subcontinent into borders, the mapping of their territorial possessions created a clearly discernable state space, and with it, came the desire for a community located within the mapped and bounded space. Century-long mapping and surveying techniques contributed to the institutionalization of the knowledge of geography as a scientific discipline in late nineteenth-century India…Indeed, through mapping and geography textbooks educated Indians became familiar with the geopolitical apparatus of a territorial state which constituted a critical premise of the desire for a nation-state.” (Basu 2009, pp. 62-63) In the Indian context, the sense of a nation defined by specific boundaries did not exist until the introduction of geography by the British. The anti-colonial sentiment among Indians gave rise to the creation of the idea of a more ‘nationalised’ idea of India along the lines of the European nation-state, at times appropriating selectively the coloniser’s discourse to validate the claims. Writing about the creation of an ethno-geographical national identity among Bengali literati in the late 19th century, Subho Basu claims “hierarchization of civilization constituted the yardstick through which Bengali writers adjudicated claims of different Indian communities about their homeland that would later inform the interconnections between nationality and territorial claims of the putative national state.” (2010, pp. 58) The partition of British India in 1947 was based on religious divides which were, in turn, intimately connected to ethnic categories tied to spatial belonging. Underscoring the importance of a racialized, spatialized upper-caste Hindu identity projected by intellectuals to claim inheritance to the land itself, it can be argued that the placement of Hindus (Aryans) as ‘originally’ belonging to the (British colonial) Indian territory was based on the dual logic of historic belonging and exclusion of Others. The Other in this case would include Muslims, lower-caste Hindus, adivasis, et al:
“New notions of distinctions between Hindus and internal ‘Others’ were epitomized through the synthetic category of Aryan or Hindu Caucasians…More importantly, this notion of the Aryan race was increasingly grounded in historical narratives of the past as each geography textbook included a section on history. This past was also territorialized as the term Ayravarta (Land of Aryans) increasingly signified core regions in the Indo-Gangetic plains of north India. Gradually, Indian history textbooks showed borders of colonial territory in South Asia as a given geographic boundary of India…This indicated the beginning of a process of what Poulantzas called ‘territorialization of history and historicization of territory.’ As territorialization of history progressed, the Indo-Gangetic plain of north India was imagined as the centre of Indian civilization, the original habitat of Hindu Aryans…Again, there is an interesting interplay between the colonial adaptation of a Brahamanical discourse regarding Indian space in search of an authentic ethno-spatial identity of the British conquered territories, and the Bengali literati’s selective invocation of that particular aspect of the colonial discourse of space in order to establish the claim that Hindus were the primary citizens of India.” (Basu 2009, pp. 76-77)
Therefore, it can be seen that the idea of India as a defined territorial space consisting of peoples with a homogeneous religious identity borrows heavily from colonial discourse. As Basu shows, the European discipline of geography was appropriated by intelligentsia to forge a sense of belonging to the very land of ‘India’ itself by projecting a racialized claim to the space within the boundaries of the colonial territory. It can also be seen how the creation of this new spatial identity was time-dependent: firstly, it drew from a mythical time to establish itself within the discipline of geography, lending meaning to the land itself, and secondly it depended upon historical time i.e. the coming of the colonisers and their mapping of the land.
It is at this juncture that I must stop to define the terminology that will form the crux of this paper’s argument. This paper attempts to offer a spatial critique of postcoloniality. Now that I have established that space and time are not mutually exclusive categories, and the specific definitions of a space are constructed over time, it is important to distinguish and define the categories of space I wish to discuss here. Firstly, there is Real/Material Space – I define this as the tangible, material space which can be physically occupied, or at least exist in the physical sense. Secondly, there is Symbolic/Social Space – I define this as the lived realities and experiences that a person has connected with certain spaces. The social interactions that the person has had in and associates with particular space(s) are what construct their Symbolic Space(s). It is important to mention here that both the Real and the Symbolic/Social have their roots in reality, in the sense that they are perceived and experienced by people. Lastly, there is Abstract Space which is an idea of a space which cannot be found in the Real or the Social/Symbolic. These categories are similar to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Wright 1906, pp. 132).
To provide an example, a Real Space can be the land a house is built on, its physical surroundings, and the house itself. The Symbolic/Social Space in this case would be the name of the land/neighbourhood/village/city the house is located in, the relative location of the house to its surroundings, the meanings/purposes assigned to the rooms within the house (living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and so on), the ownership (or lack thereof) of the land/house, the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic identity of its occupant(s), the interactions the occupants and their neighbours have within and without the house, etc. The Abstract Space would be the idea of the house – if it is considered a home; if so, by whom, and how; what it represents to those who live in it and those who live outside it, the feelings/emotions it invokes in anyone who comes into contact with the land/house, etc. The Abstract Space can exist in the mind even if the Real and/or the Symbolic/Social cease to exist or become inaccessible.
I will use these categories to analyse how Saadat Hasan Manto represents the trauma of the postcolonial moment – the partition of India – in two of his short stories: ‘Toba Tek Singh’ and ‘The Dog of Titwal’, primarily focusing on the former.
In ‘Toba Tek Singh’, the governments of India and Pakistan decide to exchange the inmates of their insane asylums according to their new religious/national identities a few years after Partition. The Muslim inmates of India who no longer had family in India would be sent to Pakistan, and the Hindu and Sikh inmates of Pakistan would be sent to India. This move proves unintelligible to the inmates of the Lahore insane asylum, who cannot comprehend what ‘India’ and ‘Pakistan’ are, and where they are located. One inmate, Bishen Singh, wishes to return to his hometown of Toba Tek Singh, the government of which has since been replaced with that of Pakistan. This has caused confusion among people regarding where Toba Tek Singh is located now – whether it is in Pakistan or India. Bishen Singh inquires about the current location of Toba Tek Singh but gets conflicting answers from people. On the day of the transfer, he refuses to enter either country unless he can confirm that Toba Tek Singh lies within it. Ultimately, after receiving more conflicting answers from the officials for hours, he collapses in the no-man’s land between India and Pakistan. Manto ends the story – “There, behind barbed wire, on one side, lay India and behind more barbed wire, on the other side, lay Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth, which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.” (2008, pp. 15)
In this story, Manto criticizes the Abstract Space of the new nations being defined by Real boundaries (enforced by demarcating land using barbed wire and armed soldiers). The postcolonial nation-states were superimposed upon already existing Symbolic and Abstract spaces. The concept of these new nations eludes the insane asylum inmates – “One Muslim lunatic, a regular reader of the fire-eating daily newspaper Zamindar, when asked what Pakistan was, replied after deep reflection, ‘The name of a place in India where cut-throat razors are manufactured.’” (2008, pp. 9)
The story also mentions inmates who were not insane, recording their response of confusion as well. “Not all inmates were mad. Some were perfectly normal, except that they were murderers…They probably had a vague idea why India was being divided and what Pakistan was, but, as for the present situation, they were equally clueless…As to where Pakistan was located, the inmates knew nothing. That was why both the mad and the partially mad were unable to decide whether they were now in India or in Pakistan. If they were in India, where on earth was Pakistan? And if they were in Pakistan, then how come that until only the other day it was India?” (2008, pp. 10) The inmates are unsure of their location, unable to fathom the new reality of two nations occupying the Real space of one. The Symbolic Space has changed, and a new Abstract Space has been imagined and imposed on to what was essentially the same Real Space they had been occupying for a long time. In this case, even the Symbolic/Social Space is fractured. While the Symbolic Space the asylum occupied and it the city it was contained within had been assigned a new nationality (I am referring to the Symbol of the Name/Nationality), their Social surroundings had not changed – they continue to interact with the same people, and in all essence have no sense of the world outside the asylum. The Real Space has not changed, but the Abstract Space has – and it has thrown the Symbolic/Social Space into flux, causing a sense of dislocation and alienation.
Manto writes with sharp cynicism, making a scathing commentary of the absurdity of following the colonial discourse of divide and rule. (Tharoor 2017) The British policy of fanning communal tensions created the sense that Hindus and Muslims could no longer occupy the same land. This ideology was later incorporated and appropriated into the anti-colonial resistance, with the demand for two separate nations-states. Manto’s story points to this idea – to the pitfalls of such postcolonial nation-building. He recognizes the fact that the ‘post’colonial nation must acknowledge the leftovers of colonial legacies, understand and overcome them. Manto’s critique is decidedly postcolonial – his geopolitical, historical, and sociocultural location within this discourse enables him to critique the nation-building exercise itself without criticizing the anti-colonial resistance or the acquiring of independence that preceded it. As Julian Go writes, “The signifier “post” in the term “postcolonial thought” refers to an intellectual stance that recognizes colonialism’s legacies, critiques them, and tries to reach beyond them.” (Go 2016, pp. 9)
Manto shows people completely alienated by the idea of two nations in the space of one; new maps/boundaries/cartographies are rendered meaningless when they are drawn in a manner that is dissociated from the sociohistorical realities of people. In other words, when the Symbolic/Social Space is forcibly changed by assigning new symbols and changing the social formation of it, and a new Abstract Space disjointedly replaces an older one, people’s sense of belonging to the Space is marked by confusion, misinformation, and alienation. To use a linguistic metaphor borrowed from Saussure – the sign changes abruptly, and therefore the signified cannot be immediately associated with its new sign – hence both the older and the new signifier ceases to hold meaning. (Totu and Yakin 2014, pp. 7) Essentially, spaces become meaningless to the people whose abstract location changes even when their physical and social location does not change:
“’One inmate had got so badly caught up in this India-Pakistan-Pakistan-India rigmarole that one day, while sweeping the floor, he dropped everything, climbed the nearest tree and installed himself on a branch, from which vantage point he spoke for two hours on the delicate problem of India and Pakistan. The guards asked him to get down; instead he went a branch higher, and when threatened with punishment, declared, ‘I wish to live neither in India nor in Pakistan. I wish to live in this tree.’” (Manto 2008, pp. 10) This new abstraction of space affects everyone in the asylum. The continued existence of a European ward within the asylum is now questioned by two inmates of the same: “There were two Anglo-Indian lunatics in the European ward. When told that the British had decided to go home after granting independence to India, they went into a state of deep shock and were seen conferring with each other in whispers the entire afternoon. They were worried about their changed status after independence. Would there be a European ward or would it be abolished? Would breakfast continue to be served or would they have to subsist on bloody Indian chapatti?” (2008, pp. 11) Here, Manto emphatically connects space with social reality. For the Anglo-Indian lunatics, their existence in the European ward entailed a certain status. With two new independent nations and the possible abolition of their ward just like the abolition of the old idea of a single nation, their position in the asylum becomes possibly compromised. They worry about the breakfast they will get, implying that they received different treatment simply by living in a different ward than Indians/Pakistanis within the same asylum.
“(Bishen Singh) had also begun inquiring where Toba Tek Singh was to go. However, nobody was quite sure whether it was in India or Pakistan. Those who had tried to solve this mystery had become utterly confused when told that Sialkot, which used to be in India, was now in Pakistan. It was anybody’s guess what was going to happen to Lahore, which was currently in Pakistan, but could slide into India at any moment. It was also possible that the entire subcontinent of India might become Pakistan. And who could say if both India and Pakistan might not entirely vanish from the amp of the world one day?”…Since the start of this India-Pakistan caboodle, he had got into the habit of asking fellow inmates where exactly Toba Tek Singh was, without receiving a satisfactory answer, because nobody knew…The sixth sense, which used to alert him to the day of the visit (of his family), had also atrophied. He missed his family, the gifts they used to bring and the concern with which they used to speak to him. He was sure they would have told him whether Toba Tek Singh was in India or Pakistan. He also had a feeling that they came from Toba Tek Singh, where he used to have his home.” (2008, pp. 10-12)
Bishen Singh’s repeated inquiries about his hometown shows the hopelessness of the situation, where the newly formed boundaries have arbitrarily caused confusion, essentially rendering him a stateless man. His lunacy aside, he is said to have owned land in Toba Tek Singh, which he now does not know the location of – not because he has forgotten (which he may have), but because the boundary lines have changed. In narrating Bishen Singh’s story, Manto criticizes the remapping of the Abstract Space – an action which on the one hand displaces him from the Real Space, and on the other dislocates him from the Symbolic/Social Space. In doing so Manto points to a very particular experience of postcoloniality – that of traumatic spatial displacement that characterizes much of postcolonial identity and nationhood. (Zacharias 2015, pp. 208) Bishen Singh at this point knows – rather, believes – he has a home, but he knows not where it lies. Therefore even though he carries in his mind the Abstract Space of his home, and knows it exists in the Real Space, he can no longer locate it within the Symbolic/Social Space. The creation of new Abstract Spaces of the new postcolonial nations, and the fact that this abstraction has replaced the older one, affects and essentially fractures his Symbolic/Social Space. The new Abstraction has caused his family to migrate from Pakistan to India, so he has lost his connection to society – which, in turn, has severed his connections to the Symbolic Space. The Toba Tek Singh he knew is no longer the same, and will never be the same, even as it continues to exist in the same physical location as before – its Real Space remains the same: “’Where is Toba Tek Singh?’ he asked. ‘Where? Why, it is where it has always been.’” (Manto 2008, pp. 13) He will likely never find it, because the signs and symbols and social connections that pointed him to it have now been lost to the Abstract Space of the new nation.
When the time for the transfer comes, Bishen Singh becomes adamant about wanting to go to only Toba Tek Singh. He refuses to enter either India or Pakistan unless he has confirmation that whichever place he will go to will contain Toba Tek Singh within it:
“(Bishen Singh) asked the official behind the desk, ‘Where is Toba Tek Singh? In India or Pakistan?’ ‘Pakistan,’ he answered with a vulgar laugh. Bishan Singh tried to return, but was overpowered by the Pakistani guards who tried to push him across the dividing line towards India. However, he wouldn’t move. ‘This is Toba Tek Singh,’ he announced…Many efforts were made to explain to him that Toba Tek Singh had already been moved to India, or would be moved immediately, but it had no effect on Bishen Singh…There he stood in no-man’s-land on his swollen legs like a colossus.” (Manto 2008, pp. 14)
Through the stubborn disobedience of Bishen Singh, Manto captures the postcolonial nation-building exercise and its trauma, the postcolonial ‘moment’ – carving out two new nations from the singular colonial territory, and the attempt to give these imagined spaces meaning. Bishen Singh’s memory of Toba Tek Singh, the social associations he has with it, the fact that he calls it his home, has no bearing upon the new nation-state and its new Abstract Space. It is utterly dissociated from the latter, which is exemplified by Bishen Singh’s refusal to enter a nation that is not signified by his homeland. The colonial space-time has been thus disconnected from the social space-time, fracturing his sense of self. His new national identity is conflated with his religious identity, which is disconnected from his spatial identity. By this measure, Bishen Singh is dislocated not only from his homeland, but also from his own self. The older Bishen Singh who lived in Toba Tek Singh, and even the one who lived in the asylum before the partition was not concerned with this particular conflict of identity, as there was none. His older Abstract, Symbolic/Social, and Real Spaces were contained within the larger Symbolic/Social and Abstract Space of the colonial territory. The new imagined space of the nation defines its constituent imagined community by creating an Other; Bishen Singh refuses to be Otherised – he wants to belong, to cling to his spatial-social-national selfhood. The new Abstraction distances Bishen Singh from himself – he is dislocated from the symbolic value of belonging. His Abstract Space is no longer cohesive with the new Symbolic/Social Space, the Abstract Space of the Nation, nor the Real Space without material boundaries. This is cemented by how Manto ends the story:
“Just before sunrise, Bishen Singh, the man who had stood on his legs for fifteen years, screamed and as officials from the two sides rushed towards him, he collapsed to the ground. There, behind barbed wire, on one side, lay India and behind more barbed wire, on the other side, lay Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth, which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.” (2008, pp. 15)
The fact that Bishen Singh had stood on his feet without ever sitting or lying down for fifteen years can be read as a metaphor for the older India; his collapse is therefore doubly meaningful. Not only does he, the person, collapse – the idea of a wholesome, united nation, also falls with him. The trauma of partition, which dislocated and dispossessed millions of people (Tharoor 2017), is represented in this one moment of Bishen Singh’s fall. Manto writes the last line almost as if to confuse the man with the space – Bishan Singh collapses, but Toba Tek Singh lies on the no-man’s-land. His spatial identity having been completely removed from his self, Bishen Singh can only rest in his home – in the absence of a definitive Space, his home becomes the absence itself – Toba Tek Singh is nowhere.
‘The Dog of Titwal’ narrates the story of a dog caught in a warzone between India and Pakistan. The dog is found by Indian soldiers who question its nationality and tie a makeshift collar around its neck, naming it ‘Jhun Jhun’ and declaring it to be an Indian dog. The dog wanders to the Pakistani side the next day, where the soldiers suspect the words on its collar to be a code or a threat. They tie another collar on it, naming it ‘Shun Shun’ and declaring its nationality to be Pakistani. They tell the dog to go over to the Indian side to investigate. When the dog is seen by the Indian soldiers to be descending down the Pakistani hill, they suspect it and shoot at it. The Pakistanis shoot at the terrified dog, egging it towards the Indian side in retaliation. This leads to more shooting back and forth, aimed near the dog, who gets more and more scared and tries desperately to find shelter. The Indian side shoots at its leg, injuring it, and soon after shoots it dead. In a style similar to ‘Toba Tek Singh’, Manto ends this story, “Subedar Himmat Khan sighed, ‘The poor bugger has been martyred.’ Jamadar Harnam Singh ran his hand over the still-hot barrel of his rifle and muttered, ‘He died a dog’s death.’” (2008, pp. 197)
In this story, Manto’s spatial imagination points to the futility of the partition. He sets the scene to point to the absence of difference between the two postcolonial nations of India and Pakistan – “The soldiers seemed to be getting tired of this indecisive war where nothing much ever happened. Their positions were quite impregnable. The two hills on which they were placed faced each other and were about the same height, so no one side had an advantage.” (Manto 2008, pp. 193) There is only a valley dividing the two hills.
‘The Dog of Titwal’ makes a statement in the title itself. Similar to how Bishen Singh in ‘Toba Tek Singh’ wishes to return to his homeland, and does not care about the specificities of which nation he must inhabit in order to do so, the dog in this story does not understand the concept of Abstract, or Symbolic/Social Spaces. Being a dog, its perception is likely limited to the Real Space, so it can move freely between the Indian and Pakistani sides. That is, until the soldiers on the two sides decide to assign the dog a nationality – Indian first, and then Pakistani. This symbolism does nothing for the dog aside from causing its death. Manto makes no attempt to present his stance on the partition softly – he first presents the image of a happy, social dog who is loved by both sides – as long as they are unaware of the dog’s wanderings on their respective enemy sides. Once the dog is assigned the conflicting nationalities, its made into a tool for both sides to play a macabre game – terrifying and threatening it with stones and gunshots in the valley between the hills. The dog’s incomprehensible horror ends in a tragic death, a victim of the abstraction and symbolization of the spaces it occupied. Despite being assigned nationalities, no one knows where the dog originally came from. Manto points to its origin/home in the title – ‘The Dog of Titwal’.
The armies study maps of the sector of Titwal, whereas the dog merely lives there – it has no concern with the Symbolic/Social or Abstract definitions of space via boundaries, it only knows the absolute Real Space. The absence of the Abstract and Symbolic knowledge on the part of the dog is what causes its death. Just like Bishen Singh, the dog of Titwal also dies in no-man’s-land. Despite dying in Titwal, it still dies nowhere in terms of the Abstract Spaces of the nations warring in it.
As can be seen, Manto pointedly writes about the meaninglessness of these abstractions when they are disconnected from Real and established Symbolic/Social Spaces. There is no historical and social continuity to this new postcolonial geographical definition, which leads to death and trauma.
The construction of a postcolonial nation-state according to European geographical ideals, defined by specific territorial boundaries was, in the case of India and Pakistan, an extension of colonial legacies. The land to be divided was defined as being contained within the boundaries of the British colonial territory, which did not have historical continuity in itself. The racial-spatial-historical mythmaking of a unified cultural space, while systematically and selectively creating marginalized Others within this Space, was appropriated heavily from the ideologies behind European nation-states. Thus the creation of the postcolonial nation from the ashes of erstwhile empire required an informed acknowledgement of this colonial legacy. Through his stories Manto criticizes the adherence of the ideologies of postcolonial nationhoods to that of colonial imperial ideologies of difference and hierarchies. He paints a dismal picture of the postcolonial moment – one characterized by dislocation, disarray, and death. I have focused mainly on the dislocation of the person from the space and by extension, from their self, due to the forces of partition. It is important to note that Manto’s criticism does not apply to anti-colonial struggle, or to the need for a postcolonial nation itself. It focuses squarely on the fragmented ideology that forms the foundation of the imagination of the postcolonial nations of India and Pakistan. He recognizes the leftover colonial legacies, and critiques the fact that the extension of these legacies have caused trauma in the postcolonial moment – instead of being a moment only of emancipation and independence, it is also fraught with conflict, loss, and the trauma of dislocated identities.
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