<p>Khushwant Singhs Train to Pakistan is a novel based on religious unrest taking place in the border village of Mano Majra. Violence erupts between the people of the village because of all the religious diversity. Partition, which is a euphemism for the bloody violence that preceded the birth of India and Pakistan as the British handed over power in 1947, is the overall theme. Though it is a relatively short book, many characters are introduced, and through using these characters different accounts of life during the time are depicted. The conglomerate of a religious struggle, nation power struggle, and a forbidden love story are what propel Train to Pakistan into a classic.
The story of Englands control over India is one that is slowly being left out of the history lessons in school. Khushwant Singh lived during the era and wanted to give the world an accurate account of what injustices were going on in that corner of the world and how in the 1940s-1950s India was still so culturally different than that of the western world. While using what Singh has seen in real life, he writes a fictional account for readers to get a vivid view of the monstrosity in which Indias religious struggle is. Singh does this by his excessive descriptions of the main characters. He goes into detail about race, religion, spouse, children, and physical attributes. The reason why description is so important to the characters is because they are judged so harshly in the society based off these things, still using a caste system. The two main religions in the village are Sikh and Muslim, which hate each other. The town has managed to stay in relative peace much longer than the rest of the nation of India. Eventually the violence broke out in the town and it was hard for the officials to keep order. Gang violence along with the murder of the towns Hindu money lender, Lala Ram Lal, is the catalyst to the violence. After the violence occurs, the corrupt official system takes over. They have the authority to arrest whomever they please, in which case they do.
Arresting two completely different men for the same murder of the money lender are Juggat Singh and Iqbal Singh, Juggat being the local hoodlum, big and strong whereas Iqbal is someone feminine and educated. These two characters along with the local magistrate, Hukum Chand, are the three main characters of the novel. He uses these three completely different characters to show how the different level of caste live life, yet how in the end they all deal with corruption. Politics were not as much of a factor during this time as people may think. For that reason it is not talked about much in the novel. Yet, another reason why it is not talked about if for the reason that everyone was of equal blame, not just the government. The common folk were the ones who dealt with the moral confusion of the clashes of religion, because they were the ones who created it. Kushwant Singh uses his unique way of using factual accounts into a fictional novel that still expresses the real life issues at hand. Along with the unique style, the descriptions add a feeling while reading the novel that paints a picture well enough to be able to imagine everything that is being read. He does this by how it is set up. It starts up with conflict to intrigue the reader, and then characterize the people being portrayed and then finalizes with a quick climax and an interesting conclusion.
Train to Pakistan is a classic novel in which will enrich the mind of the reader by adding historical input to a fictional book. Khuswant Singh writes in a way that all readers can enjoy and further teach the world about the injustices at the time and how we can use history and the fictional love of 2 forbidden people in opposite religions to help refrain this from happening again.</p>
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