In Nisar Ahmed’s novel “Tunn”, Ghulam is called a mad man for refusing to sell his land; this resistance is outlined in the powerful phrase, “Am I mad? Why should I die when I am Ghulam? I’m not interested in dying. You are all staring at my land, and I know it. I will never sell it, and it is a challenge to all of you (Tunn, p. 48). This invented resistance is a reflection of a real-life cultural experience.
On a similar event in Turbat city;
In this story, a man sees a wealthy landowner’s property as a sellable goods and approaches him to buy it. The landowner responds by asking if the buyer has a mother. “If the buyer wishes to sell his mother, he is ready to buy her,” the landowner replies after the buyer confirms that his mother is still alive, and not sellable. The landowner makes it clear that, like a mother, land is an identity that needs to be preserved rather than a piece of property to be sold by making this perceptive comparison.
This idea strongly connects with Frantz Fanon’s declaration where he writes that, “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” (Fanon 1961).
Both Ghulam’s fictional uprising and the real man’s response emphasize the same cultural reality: land is more than just soil or money; it is survival, dignity, and ancestry. What society calls foolishness is actually a conscious unwillingness to abandon one’s roots.