Train to Pakistan
Author Khushwant Singh
Country India
Language English
Genre(s) Historical novel
Publisher Chatto & Windus
Publication date 1956
Media type print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 181 pp
ISBN NA & reissue ISBN 0-8371-8226-3
The most well-known work brought forth by the multi–faceted Khushwant Singh, “Train to Pakistan ” addresses as it’s central theme the mindlessness and the futility of communal hatred and violence.
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”.
Set in the year 1947 in an Indian village –Mano Majra–along the Indo–Pakistan border, the Novel shows how a communal wedge of distrust is drawn between the peaceful Hindu and Muslim denizens of the village. The Hindus of the village are incited to murder their Muslim neighbors and friends to send a Train full of Muslim corpses to Pakistan, as an act of retribution to a similar mass murder performed by Muslims on there other side of the Border.
However, the Love of a village Rogue, Jugga, for his Muslim Beloved Nooro, finally, motivates the Rogue, who is a Sikh of the village, to save the lives of the Muslim Refugees aboard the Train from a planned Hindu assault.
Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis”.
The Novel describes how peaceful villagers are forcibly drawn into the vortex of communal violence, and, how futile this violence ultimately proves to be in front of their traditional Brotherhood.
N S VAITHEESWARAN
