Train to Pakistan

Author Khushwant Singh

Country India
Language English
Genre Historical novel
Publisher Chatto & Windus
Publication
date
1956
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 181 pp
ISBN NA & reissue ISBN 0-8371-8226-
3
Train to Pakistan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Train To Pakistan is a historical novel by Khushwant
Singh, published in 1956. It recounts the Partition of India in
August 1947.
Instead of depicting the Partition in terms of only the political
events surrounding it, Singh digs into a deep local focus,
providing a human dimension which brings to the event a
sense of reality, horror, and believability.
It is the summer of 1947. But Partition does not mean much
to the Sikhs and Muslims of Mano Majra, a village on the
border of India and Pakistan. Then, a local money-lender is
murdered, and suspicion falls upon Juggut Singh, the village
gangster who is in love with a Muslim girl. When a train
arrives, carrying the bodies of dead Sikhs, the village is
transformed into a battlefield, and neither the magistrate nor
the police are able to stem the rising tide of violence. Amidst
conflicting loyalties, it is left to Juggut Singh to redeem himself
and reclaim peace for his village.
Contents
1 Social structure and cultural understanding among
the people
2 Moral message and character development
3 Politics
4 Movie
5 2006 edition
6 Notes
7 Sources
Social structure and cultural understanding among the people
In a relatively short book, the reader gets to know a lot of characters in detail. Examination of the varied groups of
people not only increases cultural and social understanding of that time and place, but also shows that the blame
could not be placed on any one group; all were responsible.
Muslims said the Hindus had planned and started the killing. According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to
blame. The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both
raped (1).
Mano Majra, the fictional village on the border of Pakistan and India in which the story takes place, is
predominantly Muslim and Sikh. Singh shows how they lived in a bubble, surrounded by mobs of Muslims who
hate Sikhs and mobs of Sikhs who hate Muslims, while in the village they had always lived together peacefully.
Villagers were in the dark about happenings of larger scope than the village outskirts, gaining much of their
information through rumor and word of mouth. This made them especially susceptible to outside views. Upon
learning that the government was planning to transport Muslims from Mano Majra to Pakistan the next day for their
safety, one Muslim said, What have we to do with Pakistan? We were born here. So were our ancestors. We
have lived amongst [Sikhs] as brothers (126). After the Muslims leave to a refugee camp from where they will
eventually go to Pakistan, a group of religious agitators comes to Mano Majra and instills in the local Sikhs a hatred
for Muslims and convinces a local gang to attempt mass murder as the Muslims leave on their train to Pakistan.
If groups of people are examined on a closer level than their religious attachments, a more detailed social structure
emerges. Government officials were corrupt, manipulative of villagers, and could arrest anyone they chose for any
reason, more often than not for their own benefit. They did just enough in terms of dealing with the dispute so that
nobody could say that they did not do anything. The law enforcement was completely at the whim of the local
government, meaning that in practice, there was no law. Also, small amounts of educated people trickled in and out
of villages, trying to instill in people democratic, communist, or other western ideologies, though the common people
were turned off and confused by their unorthodoxy. When one such educated man was speaking to a villager about
freedom, the villager explained,
Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves
of the educated Indiansor the Pakistanis (48).
To better understand the situation surrounding the partition of India, Singh provides information about both religions
involved. The book sheds light on the various religious practices of both Sikhs and Muslims in rural India. Singh
describes daily life for individuals from both practices. For example, Singh describes the practice of prayer for
Muslims. The mullah at the mosque knows that it is time for the morning prayer. He has a quick wash, stands
facing west towards Mecca and with his fingers in his ears cries in long sonorous notes,Allah-o-Akbar (4) Singh
points out practices of Sikhs as well, The priest at the Sikh temple lies in bed till the mullah has called. Then he too
gets up, draws a bucket of water from the well in the temple courtyard, pours it over himself, and intones his prayer
in monotonous singsong to the sound of splashing water (5)".
[1]
Moral message and character development
In addition to giving an understanding of human actions and pointing out that everyone was responsible, Singh
makes a background moral commentary which bubbles up through main characters in their thoughts and their
actions. Hukum Chand is the regional magistrate, and the most influential character in the story. It becomes
apparent that he is a morally conflicted man who has probably used his power over the years with much corruption.
He is often described with a dirty physical appearance as if he is overwhelmed with unclean actions and sins, and is
just as often trying to wash himself of them, similar to Pontius Pilate after Christ was condemned. Hukum Chands
ethical issues are shown in one of repeated encounters he has with two geckos, which likely represent Muslims and
Hindus in conflict, on the verge of fighting each other. When they start fighting, they fall right next to him, and he
panics. The guilt he gets from not helping when he has more than enough power to do so literally jumps onto him.
Hukum Chand felt as if he had touched the lizards and they had made his hands dirty. He rubbed his hands
on the hem of his shirt. It was not the sort of dirt which could be wiped off or washed clean (24).
Alcoholism is another tool Hukum Chand uses in attempt to clean his conscience. He feels the guilt of his actions by
day and relieved of them by night, when his alcohol is able to justify visits with a teenage prostitute the same age as
his deceased daughter. In all his conflictions, he is able to acknowledge that what he is doing is bad, but is still
unable to promote good.
The two other main characters that are given a lot of attention are Nobal Iqbal Singh bhinder and Juggut Singh, and
are likely meant to be contrasted. Iqbal is described as a slightly effeminate, well-educated and atheist social
worker from Britain who thinks politically (and cynically). Juggut is a towering, muscular, and uneducated villager
who places action over thought and is known for frequent arrests and gang problems. As if to warm them up for
comparison, they were both arrested for the same murder they did not commit, and were placed in adjacent cells.
Upon their release, they learned that a gang was planning to attack the train taking Mano Majras Muslim
population to Pakistan. They each had the potential to save the train, though it was recognized that this would cost
their lives. Juggut, nevertheless, acts on instinct after he found out about the fiasco that was going on, he then
sacrifices his life to save the train. Iqbal spends pages wondering to himself whether he should do something,
exposing a moral paradox on the way:
The bullet is neutral. It hits the good and the bad, the important and the insignificant, without distinction. If there
were people to see the act of self-immolationthe sacrifice might be worth while: a moral lesson might be
conveyedthe point of sacrificeis the purpose. For the purpose, it is not enough that a thing is intrinsically good:
it must be known to be good. It is not enough to know within ones self that one is in the right (170).
The questions of right versus wrong which Singh poses throughout the book are numerous, including those of what
one should do when one has the opportunity to prevent something bad, when an act of goodwill is truly worthwhile,
and how much importance is the consciousness of the bad. Train to Pakistan, with its multiple gruesome and explicit
accounts of death, torture, and rape for the public to read, makes the case that people do need to know about the
bad.
As for the understanding Kasarla tries to implement more and more about the regional issues like nativity and with
integration it is an understanding of human elements for the development of human civilization.
Politics
Khushwant Singh does not describe the politics of the Partition in much detail. This is mostly because his purpose is
to bring out the individual, human element and provide a social understanding, two aspects of historical events
which tend to be either ignored or not covered effectively in texts. In the Partition, the major change was political;
Britains splitting of India into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The effect of the change, however, was significant
and as Singh has shown, frighteningly, social, as religious groups rearranged and clashed violently. Singh makes it
clear that many people played a part in this chaos and everyone was equally worthy of blame, all while integrating
examples of the sheer moral confusion which arises from trying to make sense of an event as momentous as the
Partition.
Movie
A movie based on this novel and having the same title Train to Pakistan was released in 1998. It was directed by
Pamela Rooks and this movie was nominated in Cinequest Film Festival, 1999 in the best feature film category.
Nirmal pandey, Mohan Agashe, Rajit Kapoor, Smriti Mishra, Divya Dutta, Mangal Dhillon were the main cast of
this movie.
2006 edition
Roli Books in New Delhi published a new edition of the novel together with 66 of Margaret Bourke-White's
photographs of the violence. In late 2006, Roli was hoping to find an international distributor for the edition at the
Frankfurt Book Fair (in October, 2006).
[2]
TRAIN TO PAKISTAN has also translated into the Tamil language as
same titled by Raman Raja
Notes
1. ^ Singh, Khushwant (1956). Train to Pakistan. Penguin Books. pp. 45.
2. ^ Sengupta, Somini, "Bearing Steady Witness To Partition's Wounds," an article in the Arts section, The New York
Times, September 21, 2006, pages E1, E7
Sources
1. Sengupta, Somini, "Bearing Steady Witness To Partition's Wounds," an article in the Arts section, The New
York Times, September 21, 2006, pages E1, E7
2. Lance Truong, "Character Development" An excerpt from A writing assignment, St. Paul College,
September 16, 2006
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train_to_Pakistan&oldid=613683374"
Categories: Indian novels 1956 novels Historical novels Partition of India in fiction
Indian novels adapted into films Chatto & Windus books
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