Train To Pakistan

Published Jan. 8, 2009 by Penguin India.

(1 review)

“In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people—Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs—were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.”

It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to …

“In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people—Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs—were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.”

It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.

1 edition

Sean Bala reviewed Train To Pakistan by Khushwant Singh

Review of 'Train To Pakistan' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

"Train to Pakistan" by Kushwant Singh is an amazing book. It is all the more amazing for the fact that it was written a mere nine years after the Partition of British India into India and Pakistan, an event which led to the largest population movement in history as people fled each newly created country born in an orgy of violence. This bloody birth is one that India and Pakistan continue to wrestle with and have not fully come to terms with. The book is special because it takes the drama and complexities of partition and brings it down to the ground beyond the grand rhetoric. He famously writes on the first pages "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" …

"Train to Pakistan" by Kushwant Singh is an amazing book. It is all the more amazing for the fact that it was written a mere nine years after the Partition of British India into India and Pakistan, an event which led to the largest population movement in history as people fled each newly created country born in an orgy of violence. This bloody birth is one that India and Pakistan continue to wrestle with and have not fully come to terms with. The book is special because it takes the drama and complexities of partition and brings it down to the ground beyond the grand rhetoric. He famously writes on the first pages "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). Singh sets the story in a small village in North India named Mano Majra where the population is divided equally between Sikhs and Muslims, who have lived together in relative peace for as long as anyone can remember. But circumstances, and the irrationality of masses motivated by instigated hatred, would tear the community apart. There is a sadness in the book beyond the obvious violence - the fact that a community could be pulled apart against its will raises questions about the kind of nation being brought into existence. The book reminds me of E.M. Forrester's "A Passage to India" in one sense. Just as Forrester succinctly captures the tensions and contradictions of colonialism in India, Singh does the same with partition. A short book that pointedly raises questions about the wound of Partition that continues to fester today. It does not necessarily provide solutions but mourns the loss of community that Partition brought about. Towards the end of the novel, as police go through the village, they remark casually "This village looks quite dead." One might say the same for many broken communities across the whole subcontinent. This is a great introduction to modern Indian literature in English and I think it accessible to people who are not intimately familiar with India (though a little knowledge of the basic history couldn't hurt).

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