Rudar

One of the issues of partition that Manto raises in his story Toba Tek Singh is the creation of a single identity, which is then forced upon people so as to divide them in to new homelands. Bashn Singh the principal character of the story is a Sikh and thus must be sent to Hindustan even though he affiliates himself with Toba Tek Singh, the place where he grew up and where he owns land. But Toba Tek Sing is in Pakistan after partition, a Muslim domain, and Bashn Singh can no longer reside here. Thus the single identity created upon the basis of religion has come to clash with how Bashn Singh identifies himself, which is more than just a Sikh. The fluidity of his identity is further depicted in his speech, which contains words from Urdu, English, Hindi, and a multitude of other languages. As a Sikh, his language is not automatically just Punjabi or Gurmukhi, similarly being Sikh does not automatically make him a Hindustani. Through his death, at the end of the story, he claims the identity he craves for himself and the author addresses him as “Toba Tek Singh”, rather than his given name.