Love and Sacrifice in the Time of Partition: A Study of Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan

Abstract

Apart from being one of most unfortunate and bloody religious clashes in India, the partition of India and Pakistan is a highly debatable event. The decision of partition was taken in a hurry and the interests of the masses who were directly going to be affected because of relocation were not taken into account. There was no plan as such to effectively uproot people from the places where they had spent their entire lives and to establish them in an alien place. They were not given even enough time to make preparations for the journey they had to take. There were no arrangements to maintain law and order in a highly charged atmosphere of religious tension. Vandals freely looted the masses and killed people belonging to different religions. Girl and women were raped and killed brutally. There was chaos all over and everybody was struggling to survive. Humanity seemed to be dead. But amidst this atmosphere of communal frenzy, there were people who retained their human values and did not take part in killing or vandalism. They went up to the extent of going against their own community in saving the lives of people belonging to other religion. The paper deals with one such character named Juggut Singh in the novel Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the lives of migrating Muslims. Unlike other partition novels, the major focus of the novel is not the killings and vandalism. It is the feelings of love and compassion that we find on the pages of Train to Pakistan. Khushwant Singh by his fine narration transforms “the horrendous raw theme into a fine fiction that is steeped in human compassion and love” (Kumar 38-39).