Zakir vs Bashan Singh

Zakir’s silence and lack of activism in “Basti” is remarkable. Throughout the first six chapters of the novel, we see a distinct lack of a reaction on Zakir’s part to the turmoil around him. Before, and in the aftermath of the partition, Zakir does not utter a single opinion regarding this cataclysmic event which uprooted his entire family and rendered him homeless (one can argue that Zakir never really takes to his new home in Lahore, refer to Jamal’s post).

Zakir’s silence contrasts sharply with the outspokenness of Bishan Singh in Toba Tek Singh who, though, often uttering complete nonsense, manages to make his feelings about the partition perfectly clear. The juxtaposition of the two protagonists’ diametric personalities lends an interesting insight into the two authors’ differing approaches to dealing with the partition. Manto, a former member of the Progressive Writer’s Association tackles the issue of the partition head-on in TTS, conveying the absurdity of the situation and his own views on it effectively. The final image of Bishan Singh dying on no man’s land and therefore choosing neither Pakistan, nor Hindustan as his final resting place is a powerful one. Compare this to Intizar Husain’s approach, who avoids dealing with the issue of partition directly in “Basti”. Zakir, despite being questioned repeatedly about his views at several points in the novel, displays nonchalance towards the whole issue. The timeline followed by the narrator has a break where the partition is supposed to have taken place and the protagonist fails to recall a single event from his migration. This is because Husain is more interested in looking at the effects the partition had on entire communities and how it has rendered Zakir homeless.