Train to Pakistan
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| Author | Khushwant Singh |
|---|---|
| Country | India |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
| Released | 1956 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 181 pp |
| ISBN | NA & reissue ISBN 0-8371-8226-3 |
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.
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[edit] The Partition
Indian advocates of independence had a deal with Britain that would allow India’s independence if the country supported Britain in World War II against the Axis Powers. In August 1947, Britain, following through with its side of the deal, declared India an independent country.
Not long afterwards, Britain split the country into a Muslim Pakistan and a technically secular, though mostly Hindu and Sikh, India. In doing so, the British drew borders based both on geography and the fact that most Muslims were on the Pakistani side and most Hindus were on the Indian side. However, the fact that many villages in the area had multiple coexisting religions within them was not considered, so the split caused a period of disunity and border fights as Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs scrambled to get to “their own side”. This resulted in the death of one million people and the displacement of ten million people.[citation needed] Because India was declared independent before the actual Partition, Britain was gone, and the new governments were faced with the impossible task of dealing with a crumbling law and order alone.
[edit] Point of View
Singh’s version of the Partition is a social one, providing human accounts in a diverse, detailed character base where each person has unique points of view, pointing out that everyone is equally at fault and that placing blame was irrelevant. Interwoven with this point are the subtle questions of morality which Singh asks through his characters, such as whether or not the bad needs to be recognized to promote the good, and what constitutes a good deed.
[edit] Social Structure and Cultural Understanding
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 predominately 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). In spite of their seemingly strong attachments, however, the Sikhs eerily turn against the Muslims, dividing “Mano Majra into two halves almost as neatly as a knife cuts through a pat of butter” (120) almost in the instant after they are evacuated. A group of religious agitators had instilled in the local Sikhs a hatred for Muslims and convinced a local gang to attempt mass murder as the Muslims left 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 Indians—or the Pakistanis” (48).
This is a startling point of view which reveals to what extent the uneducated were not benefiting at all from England’s leaving India. The majority, the uneducated people, were forced into this confusing mess, and it is not hard to see how easily influenced their opinions were and how susceptible these groups were to placing blame.
[edit] 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 Chand’s 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 Iqbal Singh 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 Majra’s Muslim population to Pakistan. They each had the potential to save the train, though it was recognized that this would cost their lives. At this crucial point, Iqbal spends pages wondering to himself whether or not 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-immolation…the sacrifice might be worth while: a moral lesson might be conveyed…the point of sacrifice…is 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 one’s self that one is in the right” (170).
Iqbal becomes too entangled in his own moral crisis to act, and Juggut acts on instinct after he found out about the fiasco that was going on, he then sacrifices his life to save the train. 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.
[edit] Politics
Khushwant Singh does not go into much detail on the politics of the Partition. 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; Britain’s splitting of India into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The effect of the change, however, was largely 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.
[edit] A new edition, 2006
Rodi 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, Rodi was hoping to find an international distributor for the edition at the Frankfurt Book Fair (in October, 2006).[1]
[edit] Notes
- ^ 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
[edit] 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 exerpt from A writing assignment, St. Paul College, September 16, 2006
