The attitude of Amitav Ghosh and Khushwant Singh on nationalism and partition in The Shadow Lines and Train to Pakistan

Abstract

Nationalism and partition of a nation are very much interrelated on the context of partition novels. Both of these are abstract ideas. While nationalism describes a great or too great love of people for their own country, partition indicates national division out of the nationalism. In both of the partition novels, The Shadow Lines and Train to Pakistan, we find the attitude of two writers regarding the idea of nationalism and partition from different perspective. Though both of them have tried to show the ultimate effect of partition and nationalism but they couldn’t give any proper solution to the end of the novel. Ultimately the tide of nationalism paved the way of partition and led the character to the tragic ending. The present study intended to investigate the attitude of Amitav Ghosh and Khushwant Singh on nationalism and partition in their novels, The Shadow Lines and Train to Pakistan. Both of the writers have expressed their almost same perspective on nationalism and partition but they have shown it by different attitude of the characters of the novels. In The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh has dealt with the theme of partition and nationalism by describing the feeling of the characters as well as portraiying the aftermath of partition. And in Train to Pakistan, we find Khushwant Singh’s point of view through the depiction of contemporary events related to partition directly. In my article, I’ve analyzed the pros and cons of partition and nationalism dealt by the two novelists in their two aforementioned partition novels.