Depiction of Post-Partition Violence in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan

Abstract

After the end of World War II, the British colonial grip loosened, and many independent countries emerged. In August 1947, two countries got their independence: India and Pakistan, which were created on the basis of the religious majority in each part. The following days saw one of the biggest migrations of human history as Many Muslims from India tried to migrate to newborn Pakistan and vice versa. The whole subcontinent fell under fire, and violence erupted in many places. Stories of murder, rape, beating, forced conversion, kidnapping, and property grabbing emerged in various corners, especially in the frontier zones. As a survivor of partition ensued violence, Khushwant Singh describes the mayhem he witnessed, in a fictional term in his novel Train to Pakistan. He modelled Mano Majra, a small peaceful village in the Punjab frontier, as a miniature of the society and showed how the poisonous communal hatred had engulfed the whole place, where people were living in peaceful harmony for thousands of years, and made it a fireball. This paper is going to explore Singh’s picturization of Violence and atrocities in post-partition India through the fictional village Mano Majra