Remembering Toba Tek Singh in the time of Lok Kalyan Marg

With our favourite and intermittent political pastime of renaming places at its peak - in the past year, Gurgaon became Gurugram, and Aurangzeb Road and Race Course Road were rechristened to Dr APJ Abdul Kalam road and Lok Kalyan Marg, respectively - it's rumoured that Uttarakhand is contemplating a name change, inspired by the West Bengal bid to climb up the political roll call. The dialects spoken in Uttarakhand anyway have the linguistic inclination to convert their Us and Vs to Bs. Vikas becomes Bikas and so on, so in a way such a move would be a kind of natural progression.

Against this backdrop, Toba Tek Singh comes as a refreshing surprise. I am not talking about the iconic story penned by Saadat Hasan Manto on the Partition, which had its central character in the eponymous madman. I am talking about the city of Toba Tek Singh - many people familiar with the story may be tempted to think that the name of the place that the madman belonged to was as fictitious as its character. But it's not. The city of Toba Tek Singh, which got universal recognition due to Manto's story, predates the artist's work and is one of better cities of Pakistan.

Toba Tek Singh is a district and city in the Punjab province of Pakistan, with a predominantly Muslim population whose main occupation is agriculture. The area derives its name from the Sikh religious figure Tek Singh. Before the saint came and lodged at Toba Tek Singh, it was a deserted place by a pond (Toba means lake in Punjabi).

According to folklore, Tek Singh, being a kind-hearted and generous man, made it a point to serve thirsty and weary passers-by water and offered them shelter. People started settling in after the British built a canal. Singh's act of charity founded the city. The area and the surrounding settlement eventually came to be known as Toba Tek Singh. In fact, even today, there is a park in the city which has been named after Tek Singh.

After Independence, Toba Tek Singh became a part of Pakistan. Post Partition, while Hindus and Sikhs migrated to India, Muslim refugees from India settled into the district. During the 1970s, many Pakistani cities were rechristened and names given by the British were discarded. Native names or those more acceptable to the local population were adopted, for instance, Montgomery had its name changed to the original Sahiwal.

However, Toba Tek Singh was one of the cities that retained its name, perhaps due to the reputation and social work of Tek Singh. To this day, the city remains a shining light in the desert of hostility and intolerance that seems to have engulfed India and Pakistan.

Changing the name of a place is a political act that has the potential to erase the values and the world view shared by the people inhabiting it. A region's name is a signifier that identifies a collective ethnic, religious, and cultural group. The act of deletion can wipe clean the remnants of individual and collective memory. Especially in these bleak times when relations between India and Pakistan have hit a new low and war mongers on both sides of the border are having a field day, perhaps the immortal lines of Toba Tek Singh or Bishen Singh would be a telling commentary on them:

"Opar di gudgud di anaks di bedhyana di moong di dal di laltain di Hindustan teh Pakistan di phittemoonh."