Absence of women in Toba Tek (Parallels with Khol do)

It’s no secret that women are Manto's bread and butter. There are female perspectives spread across his body of work but Toba Tek Singh is one exception in his writing – not because there is a shift of primacy towards partition, but because there is no presence of a female character or perspective in the story.

Manto did write about women after partition. "Khol do" is about a father in search of his daughter Sakina who’s been lost during the partition riots.

But in Toba Tek Singh, he only remarks about women in the words: 

"kaan pari awaaz sunai nhin deti thi…. Pagal auurton ka shor-o-ghofa alag tha." 

Besides this, the story has been filled with descriptions of male characters.

To make sense of this absence, one has to understand Manto’s use of asylum in the story. His treatment of the asylum is ironic and bestows the lunatics with the wisdom and normalcy that was missing in the chaotic, partitioned world outside. So the asylum is the place of empowerment, faculty and freedom that the outside world wasn't. This explains the absence of women in the story because Manto did not view the woman as being in a place of empowerment but one in which she was vulnerable, suppressed and disenfranchised (important to clarify that Manto isn't the source of this pain and hatred but the society. Manto just projects the truth from a point of sympathy).  So he leaves them out of the asylum, because to him it’s not the reality space for women. The asylum was not the microcosm of a woman’s life in subcontinent.

An obvious inference from this is that while he does not see asylum as being fit for the women, by excluding them from the picture, he indirectly places them in the outside world, which in the midst of its partition madness does the worst to them. We do not see this exterior in Toba Tek Singh for it has been left to imagination. But one wonders about the women, like Sirajudeen wonders about his daughter in khol do:

“purey teen ghantay woh “sakeena” “sakeena” pukarta camp ki khaaq chaanta raha. Magar ussey apni jawan, ik-lauti beti ka koi pta na mila….thak haar kar ek taraf beth gaya aur haafzey par zor de kar sochne laga ke sakeena ussey kab aur kahan judaa hui hai.”

The camp is that four walled and closed asylum space where people try to make sense of the absurd outside world. The woman isn't found here. She’s outside, being used and rejected. When Sirajudeen finds Sakeena, she’s been raped and is on the verge of death.