Muslims and Sikhs have lived together in Mano Majra as brothers for generations, and this is in large part due to the moral code by which Punjabis live.
(Khushwant Singh is clear-eyed about endemic Indian corruption and sardonic about incompetence). Unexpectedly, they have a murder to deal with, but it is clear from the outset that justice is unlikely to be done. These reports have brought the presence of magistrate and deputy commissioner of the district, Mr Hukum Chand, and his entourage of armed policemen. They are Muslims fleeing India and Hindus and Sikhs fleeing Pakistan, and there are terrible reports of ‘ghost trains’ carrying slaughtered victims arriving at frontier stations along the line. Only Ram Lal the moneylender is Hindu and his murder at the hands of dacoits (bandits) at the beginning of the story coincides with imminent violence as trainloads of refugees pass through the village. About half of them are Sikh small-holders and the other half are Muslim tenant-farmers. There are only about 70 families in the village. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. 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. In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the new state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people – Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs – were in flight. Written in 1957, it is set during Partition, when the British had departed and hopes of a peaceful transition were in shreds:
Khushwant Singh is a prolific author, and his third novel Train to Pakistan is a classic. Using the Recommendations page at his blog, I set myself up with an Indian-Lit to-read shelf at GoodReads, and Train to Pakistan is the first book in this literary journey. A little while ago I decided that I wanted to redress my woeful ignorance of literature from India, (as distinct from expat Anglo-Indian literature) and I asked my friend Vishy for some advice about what to read.