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History shapes the present and the present constructs the future of a country or an individual. It is often used to mislead and ignore the perspective of the common masses by the powerful few. The creative writers depict real history in an intelligible way with their imaginary characters whereas the historians approach it differently to present what is called as ‘pseudo-history’. Khushwant Singh is one of the finest historians and novelists, a political commentator and a social critic known for his clear-cut secularism and outstanding wit. The barbarities of 1947 made him suffer intensely from disillusionment and crisis of values. In Train to Pakistan, Singh depicts India as a place looking to define itself after colonial rule and struggling to create its own path towards success. The novel illustrates how overcoming rule is merely a task of reasserting control over one’s political destiny but of surmounting the psychological impact of decades of subordination. The novel is based entirely on historical facts and presents it in an unbiased manner by analysing historical facts not as immanent inevitability but as situations intentionally forced for the fulfilment of the vested interests of power hungry people. The novel is set in the fictitious village of Mano Majra on the borders of India and Pakistan in the summer of 1947. Ignorance of the things that were happening outside The village was a kind of a bliss to the villagers as they lived in a religious concord with each other. Singh says,“ I am sure no one in Mano Majra even knows that the British have left and the country is divided into Pakistan and Hindustan. Some of them know about Gandhi but I doubt if anyone has ever heard of Jinnah.”(21)

Gul, S et al (2021) expressed their views on the relationship between India and Pakistan on their various political, social and economic issues. India is remain a country with Hindu majority and Pakistan, a separated country with Muslim majority. India and Pakistan have multiple causes of rivalry such as; disputed related to Kashmir, issues related to water, land issues, communal riots, economic issues and issues related to various international fronts.  This paper also attempt the foreign policy and various other political issues of the both countries.

Joshi, R.D., (2020)  analyze the selected Indian novels on various political issues between India and Pakistan. Author analyze the different angles of these novels and concluded the politicking and other dimensions of these novels.  Author concluded that the affects evoked by the novels, which are mentioned in this paper, are ethically tilted to the notions of community and nationhood of the respective writers. It also analyzes an ideologically biased orientation which results into a prose of demonization and denunciation of whom they have considered the other.

Kumar, J., (2014)  told that Khushwant has emerged as one of the famous novelist in India with articulating the national trauma in his all works. His famous novel has thrown light not only on political but social  and historical life of the India Pakistan Relations. The wounds of the partition are discussed in this novel, which are born by the innocent people of the both country. It is concluded that people can never forget the horrible time and fearful memories of partition thereafter effects.

The revelation of the news of partition and mass killings brought in a tide of hatred and an age old feeling of brotherhood and fellow feelings disappeared just in a few moments. The novel begins with the murder of a Hindu money-lender Lala Ram Lal, and the suspicion falls upon Juggut Singh, the village gangster deep in love with a muslim girl. This is followed by the arrival of a ‘ghost train’ full of dead bodies of Sikhs. This turns the village into a battlefield, and neither the magistrate nor the police are able to stem the rising tide of violence.

The partition of India induces only a little recognition outside South Asia. As the British left India, the largest single immigration in history took place in which more than ten million people crossed the borders and more than a million became the victims of communal violence carried out by the frantic communalists. Thousands of women were abducted and brutally raped. Lacks of children were orphaned and left homeless. The massacre that followed the partition was pitched as the enmity between Hindus and Muslims. Khushwant Singh describes the opening of novel as,

“ By the summer of 1947 when the creation of the new state of Pakistan was finally announced, ten million people- Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs were in fight by the time monsoon broke, a million of them dead and all the northern India was in arms, in terrors or in hiding. The only remaining oasis of peace were a scatter of little village lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.”(4)

The most perplexing question is how the identities turned to ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ overlooking the shared pasts, customs in common, to arrive at a wholly different understanding of themselves. Singh explains. “Muslims said the Hindus had planned and started the killing. According to Hindus Muslims were to blame. The fact is both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and spread and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped.”(3)

The bulk of scholarly literature concerning the vivisection of India, the creation of Pakistan and the accompanying violence attempts to establish who the ‘guilty’ party might have been and how far communal thinking had made inroads into secular organisations and sensibilities. An attention is riveted on the complex negotiations and their minutiae, leading to partition as on the political personalities at the back of the novel. Millions of people lost their lives, their homes and their livelihoods are unknown and unaccounted for. However, despite being a piece of literature, Train to Pakistan brings out the truth that historians and social scientists are either unable to reveal or are ignorant at the cost of furnishing the names of historical and political personalities in the history books. The plight and agony of common people who suffered endless pain is nowhere described in history books as they only equip the records of political change on a superficial level. Walter Allen in Reading a Novel sums up intentions of a good literature writer as:

“In the literature of an age, its conflicts, tendencies, obsessions are uncovered and made manifest to a degree which is continually astonishing; good writers are, so to speak, mediumistic to the deeper stirrings of life of their time while they are still unknown to or at any rate unsuspected by the public, politicians and current received opinion…”(16)

The partition was followed by the most immense bloodbath. The withered women and men liberated from concentration camps were so palpable a testimony to the holocaust unleashed within the sub-continent. This hierarchy of killing and suffering of different communities is interpreted as the paradigmatic experience of genocide in modern history. Khushwant Singh did not aim to target any community or person or political leader of the country, but exclaimed the different facts and reasons for the happening and that everybody was equally responsible. He did not place himself with any community but held himself equally responsible for the carnage. He explains his failed beliefs and humanistic values showcasing the shattered condition of common masses and his own inability to do something good for the country in an interview and says:

“The beliefs that I had cherished all my life were shattered. I had believed in the innate goodness of the common man. But the division of India had been accompanied by the most savage massacres known in the history of the country… I had believed that we Indians were peace loving and non-violent, that we were more concerned with matters of the spirit, while the rest of the world was involved in the pursuit of material things. After the experience of the autumn of 1947, I could no longer subscribe on this view. I became… an angry middle aged man, who wanted to shout his disenchantment with the world.”

The description of incidents in the novel are so realistic that they appear to be vignettes developing before the eyes. The beastial cruelties are shown with objective analysis of the consciousness of people during the partition. The clever way in which the emotions of people are roused by the petty rumours spread by both communities about the barbaric deeds of each other, is described through the mounting tension between Sikhs and Muslims who had hitherto lived in amity in Mano Majra. Due to the division of the village, Sikhs and Muslims form separate groups and talk about the inhuman savagery of each other. Here, Khushwant Singh goes deep into the heart of the matter and provides the basic and genuine reasons why the communal riots take place in a peaceful village which till a few days ago was ever so ignorant of the departure of the British from the country. It was more heresy that converted the love into hatred and more obviously the lack of concern of the newly formed government. It is made clearer in the text as:

“They had heard of gentlewomen having their veils taken off, being stripped and marched down crowded streets to be raped in the market place. They had heard of mosque being desecrated by the slaughter of pigs on the premises, and of copies of the holy Koran being torn by infidels.”(141)

Train to Pakistan recounts the sufferings and catastrophe of Partition through the tales of its characters that were experienced by Singh himself, his relatives and acquaintances. The novel helps the facts to meet fiction with conviction. The treatment of atrocious carnage committed on either side of the border is characterised by artistic objectivity and detachment without any exaggeration. The true account of division of the country with utter realism and disgust is shown using every possible little detail. P. K. Singh in his book The Novels of Khushwant Singh: A Critical Evaluation, acclaims Singh’s art and realism in the novel and says:

“The quality of realism in Train to Pakistan deserves acclaim for highlighting the real incidents through the real people. The accurate presentation of incidents and characters exhibit Khushwant Singh’s genuine faith in humanistic ideals… It is really Khushwant’s own deep and ethical moral values that governs his portrayal of the real and actual.”(56)

The riots proceeding after the partition were not only brutal but also senseless as it made people justify their wrong thoughts and actions in the fit of anger and emotional excitement, reckless decisions made by frantic like Mali and his associates in the novel, for their own profits the whole village had to pay. The description of speeches given by Sikh refugees depicts,”women jumping into wells and burning themselves rather than fall into the hands of Muslims.”(142) It is further added that those who did not commit suicide were paraded naked in the streets, raped in public and then murdered. In other sign of human cruelty, the river Sutlej becomes choked with human corpses. Adding to the bloated carcasses of bulls still yolked to the carts, dead bodies of men, women and children constantly poked by kites and vultures hovering over them. These incidents invariably accounted for the lack of faith in fellow religions and thereby resulting in mad decisions.

“For each Hindu and Sikh they kill, kill two Mussulmans. For each woman they abduct or rape, abduct two. For each home they loot, loot two. For each trainload of dead they send over, send two across. For each road convey that is attacked, attack two. That will stop the killing on the other side. It will teach them that we also play this game of killing and looting.”(130)

The impact of partition is seen by everyone who lived in India and Pakistan but the riots that followed are termed as inevitable in histories as they are aggravated by the emotions of the people. Politics can be considered even more responsible for recording the happenings but it never tried to peep into the lives of the people that actually suffered. There was more concern about the compulsions of the national heroes at the political front. Expressing the inability to stop the communal riots, people of Mano Majra rail against the government,”Where was the power? What were the people in Delhi doing? Making five speeches in the assembly?” It is the plight of the nation that the political decisions are enforced on the public though they are said to be living in democracy. Their rights are least secured and are forced to follow the rules even if they are hazardous to them. People were forced to leave their homes, their motherland, their friends and their businesses due to partition.

In the end of the novel, Jugga, the confirmed rogue turns out to be saviour, while the so-called educated and responsible citizens do nothing significant. In the mayhem, almost everyone is against other religions, but a young man sacrifices his life to save others from doomsday.

1. Allen, Walter. Reading a Novel. Revised. London: Phoenix House, 1963. 16. Print. 2. Alexander, Suja. "Personal Concerns Go Public in Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan." The Fictional World of Khushwant Singh. Ed. Indira Bhatt. Ist ed. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2002. 3. Gul, S Citation: Ishfaq, U., and Ashfaq, K.(2021 (2021). Pakistan-India Rivalry: An Analytical Perspective of Balance of Power. Global Political Review, VI(II), 33-44. https://doi.org/10.31703/gpr.2021(VI-II). 4. Joshi, R.D., (2020), Politics of affect in Train to Pakistan and Tamas, Contemporary Research An Interdisciplinary Academic Journal 4(1):59-75. 5. Kumar, J., (2014). 1947 Partition: A Boomerang Trauma as Reflected in Khushwant Singh’s Novel Train to Pakistan History, PARIPEX - INDIAN JOURNAL OF RESEARCH, 3 (10), 59-61. 6. Singh, Khushwant, comp. The Collected Novels. Ominous ed. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1999.3. Print. 7. Singh, Anita. "Inscriptions of the Repressed: A study of Delhi." Khushwant Singh: The Man and the Writer. Ed. R K Dhawan. 1st ed. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2001. 8. Singh, P K. (2005) The Novels of Khushwant Singh: A Critical Evaluation. Jaipur: Book Enclave.