CHAPTER - IV. Khushwant Singh s Train to. Pakistan

Transcription

1 CHAPTER - IV Khushwant Singh s Train to Pakistan In the present chapter, an effort is made to understand in crisis of values in the novel Train to Pakistan and also the novelist s technique as well as his achievement in the art of fiction writing. The novel is a combination of various strains. Humour, violence, cruel events and torture all lend it a tinage of

2 the picaresque novel. The anti-heroic elements play a dual role of the creation as well as destruction. The novelist tries to recapture a certain period in history but he does not succeed in giving it the features of a historical novel. Though thrills exctieements and suspense make it a novel of adventure, the horror gives it the appearance of a teeror novel. Predominance is the element of parochialism for which Khushwant Singh chooses a certain locale and the characters inherit qualities particular to that area. The basic purpose of this study is to present, analyse and assess Train to Pakistan as Khushwant Singh s literary achievement. Khushwant Singh is one of India s distinguished men of letters with an international reputation. A brief account of his achievement as a novelist, short-story writer, historian, essayist, sketchiest, journalist and editor are sufficient enough to establish him Indian Writing in English as a versatile genius. He has produced two novels, a considerable number of short stories, an authentic history of the Skihs, biographies of Sikh leaders and many articles which reveal his thought and feeling of a great writer. His presentation of the real and the comic makes him stand as a pillar and peer among modern Indian writers on subjects of concern to contemporary man.

3 As a fiction artist he is famous for Train to Pakistan (1956) and I shall Not Hear the Nightingale (1959). These novels made a liteary reputation with the honour of Padma Bhushan. There are three major factors that shaped Khushwant Singh s personality as a man and an artist. He spent his childhood in the village of his birth in Punjab. He admits: My roots are in the dunghill of a tiny Indian village. 1 Then he went to school in Delhi and Lahore where he graduated: I grew up in the Indo-Anglian atmosphere, of New Delhi, 2 Later he went abroad, first to England and then to Japan, the United States, Canada, and few African countries on different assignments. Khushwant Singh is what his British education made him a cultured humanist. He gladly confesses: I am the product of both East and the West. The Punjab Contryside, Urban Delhi, and the liberal, the sophisticated city of London are the three dominant factors that influenced Khushwant Singh. Khushwant Singh is essentially an orientalist in outlook who has Indian self and individuality of personality. His journey is a ceaseless quest for identity which is reflected through the medium of his literary career and art. His creative urge as a novelist lies in continuous search for self-seeking. Though his

4 mind and personality as a whole have been moulded by western education and culture, he is at heart a Sikh a pure Indian. He values Indian art and culture and is deeply rooted in the soil. His writing has grown out of the grass roots of the social milieu as his experience of rural India is the base of his creative endeavour. He has prortrayed India both as an outsider and insider. Anthony Burgress comments on his art of fiction as: The most notable writer from the Punjab is undoubtedly the Sikh Khushwant Singh; whose I Shall Not Hear the Nighingale is a fine chromile of life in a Sikh community in the period We have here a formidable novelist who writes too little. 3 Khushwant Singh described himself as a writer of history and fiction: I write about the people I detest most, he asserted. 4 On the fundamental quality of Khushwant Singh, V.A. Shahane writes: Alhtough Singh s consciousness appears to range from fiction to Journalism certain basic qualities govern his creative talent and characterize the development of his art. His writing, critical as well as creative, fall into a pattern which emerges from, and is imperceptibly linked with, the primary characteristics of his creative mind. 5

5 For the novelist, comedy is a social corrective. In his fiction the comic is linked with social and moral values. He lashes morals to his objects. His novels have comic inner motivation and an effective source of laughter. It is an affirmative, positive and vital aspect of his comic vision. It was the time of partition which greatly moved him. The harrowing events and turbulent days drastically changed his outlook to life. His faith in the nobility of human race was shattered: The beliefs that I had cherished all my life were shattered. I had believed in the innate goodness of the common man. But the division of India had been accomparied by the most savage massacres known I became...an angry middle-aged man, who wanted to shout his disenchantment wht the world I decided to try my hand at writing. 6 Mano Majra, a small village in the Punjab, serves at the fictional setting of Train to Pakistan, situated on the India Pakistan border; half a mile away from the river Sutlej. Though the frontier area has become a scene of rioting and bloodshed, life in Mano Majra remains to be peaceful. Partition does not even mean much to Mano Majra. No one in Mano Majra even knows

6 that the British have left and the country is divided into Pakistan and Hindustan. 7 As a story writer, Khushwant Singh follows and practices the art in its early twentieth century mould and narrative form. His stories show a distinct narrative structure and a traditional development of the plot, the action and episode dominante them. His plots are based on the conflict in character and situation and action in sequence. The action unfolds in a series of complications to create suspense and curiosity. Certainly his stories bring out intense human predicament, temperamental, social and marital dissounance. The predominant quality of Khushwant Singh is his comic spirit. He is never attracted to the philosophy of existentialism or any philosophical approach. As V.A. Shahane comments: His stories communicate element of experience in which darkness is distilled into light and in which the comic is creatively transmuted into essence. 8 He is both humourist and a realist. His mild irony makes it more interesting. There is plenty of sardomic wit and knowledge of people and their circumstances irony is his mode of statement and sometimes the total effect of the story is ironic. He succeeds

7 in comprehending and expressing the incongruities and complexities of life. Khushwant Singh is an historian of the Sikhs. He gives out moral, cultural, religions and natonal expressions. The story of Sikhs in India, he writes, is the story of the rise, fulfillment and collapse of Punjabi nationalism. 9 The novel is a testament of national self-expressoin. The partition of India into separate nations gave a severe blow to the Sikhs. Besided large-scale disruption and suffering to the Sikhs, the Sikh culture suffered a lot to preserve its identity. The novel Train to Pakistan was named Mano Majra, is a place and is the centre of the action in the sequence of events which lead to the final catastrophe. The change of the title is after deep deliberation. It is not by chance or causual choice of the writer. The change in the tittle is from static to the dynamic. It is a village and a fixed point in space. Train to Pakistan is a symbol of motion or movement. Thus the changed title is forceful and attractive. The train signifies groups or multitudes of people who are heading for various destinations. At time of partition millions of people from either side were seeking refuge and security.

8 Millions of Hindus from Pakistan sought a passage to India as their land for hope and peace. On the other side millions of Muslims longed for the road to Pakistan. They belived Pakistan is the land of Islamic faith and promise. In this way, the train denotes the movement of vast communities up-rooted from their traditional area of growth to a new place of living. It also shows harrowing process of change, a ghastly experience of human involved in a historical change. This change is impersonal and dehumanized. The train suggests the fate of individuals, the fortunes of the two newly born nations. The partition is a political decision which had given to people the miseries, sufferings and privation. Secondly the train is symbolic of the age abosolutely dominated by science and technology and it devalued humanistic values. The human race finds rootless, lifeless and completely alienated. Thus we find that the novel Train to Pakistan projects with pitiless precision a picture of the bestial horrors enacted on the Indo-Pakistan border region during the terror-haunted days of August The leaders had sowed the wind of communal suspicion, and Partition was the result; like a whirlwing, the mad ace of partition was uprooting cause of humanity, managling

9 them, and throwing them across the border in heap after heap. 10 The riots has become a rout, writes Khushwant Singh; By the summer of 1947 ten million people-muslims and Hindus and Sikhs were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them wer dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror or in hiding. 11 The only exceptions were isolated villages, one of them being Mano Majra, a border village on the banks of the Sutlej, with a railway bridge spanning the river of Mano Majra the novelist writes: Manu Majra is a tiny place. It has only three brick buildings, one of which is the home of the moneylender Lala Ram Lal. The other two are the Sikh temple and the mosque There are only about seventy families in Manu Majra, and Lala Ram Lal s is the only Hindu family. The others are Sikhs or Muslims, about equal in number there is one object that all Mano Majras even Lala Ram Lal venerate. This is a three-foot slab of sandstone that stands upright under a Keckar tree beside the pond. It is the local deity, the deo to which all the villagers-hindu, Sikh, Muslim

10 or pseudo-christian repair secretly whenever they are in special need of blessing 12. Ten thousand villages around Mano Majra were at peace and with functional integration where the people lived with peaceful co-existence with no sign of communal strife. But it was unusual in 1947 the air was filled with suspeicion and violence. The novel begins with house-breaking and robbery and the murder of the money-lender, Lala Ram Lal. Five dacoits were engaged in this exploit, and when they go away with the booty, they threw bangles over the wall into Juggut Singh s house-as a taunt for his not having joined the party that might. Juggut or Jugga, however, is not in his house; he is with his girl, Nooran, in the fields, making love to her. Thus the novelist fuses dacoity and murder, roumance and love-making all at about the same time. Hukum Chand, deputy commissioner of the district, who is camping in Mano Majra, is busy getting drunk and pawing the hiered prostitute, Haseena. Hence Murder and romance on the shy, sordid intrigue all this on the eve, as it were, as prelude to the swelling act! The novelist describes the beauty and charm of Nooran through the spearman, a member of party of decoits:

11 She, the spearman said, Nooran, Did you see her at the spring fair? Did you see that tight shirt showing off her breasts and the bells tinkling in her plaits and the swishswish of silk- Hai! 13 The above statement highlights the ultra-modern cultural outlook. A train load of corposes from Pakistan crosses the railway bridge near Mano Majra, refuges pour in and, incidently, a communist named Iqbal Singh also arrives. Some of the refuges raise the cry for reprisals. There is a meeting of the Sikhs, and a few Muslims join them. The latter want to know whether, like the Muslims in other villages, they too the Muslims of Mano Majra should leave for a place of safety: What have we to do with Pakistan? We were born here, so were our ancestor. We have lived amongst you as brothers 14. The Sikh Lambardar (head man) answers: Yes, you are our brothers. As far as we are concerned, you and your children and your grandchildren can live here as long as you like. If anyone speaks rudely to you, your wives or your children, it will be us first and our wives and

12 children before a single hair of your heads touched. But Chacha, we are so few and the strangers coming from Pakistan are coming in thousands. Who will be responsible for what they do? 15 To be on the safe side, the Muslims decide to go. But presently the situation deteriorates still further. A few Sikhs come late at night in Khaki uniforms in a jeep, and the villagers (Sikhs) are thrown into confusion. The leader of the Khaki-clad is but A boy in his teems with a little beared which was glued to his chin with brilliantine. Surveying the scene, the boy asks: Do you know how many trainloads of dead Sikhs and Hindus have come over? Do you know of the massacres in Rawalpindi and Multan, Gujranwala and Sheikhpura? What are you doing about it? You just eat and sleep and you call yourselves Sikhs the brave Sikhs martial class! 16 The lambardar answers: What can we do, Sardarji? It our Government goes to war with Pakistan, we will fight 17 this provokes a diatribe from the boy-leader: Government! You expect the government to do anything? A government consisting fo cowardly banian moneylenders! 18

13 The lambardar hesitantly says: Do tell us what we can do. And promptly the answer comes: For each Hindu or Sikh they kill, kill two Mussulmans. For each woman they abduct or rape, abduct two For each trainload of dead they send over, send to across Certainly it is the savage law or wild justice of an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth. 20 There stand awed silence till Meet Singh the priest enquires: I was goint to say, what have the Muslims here done to us for us to kill them in revenge for what Muslims in Pakistan are doing? 20 It s the still small voice of sanity, of reason and of humanity. Once again he musters strength to say: What breavery is there in killing unarmed innocent people? 21 The boys declaration strikes fire in some of the others, and they are ready to follows him. The boy informs about a trainload of Muslims is to cross the bridge the following day and especially the Sikhs of Mano Majra should see to it that the train holds only the dead Muslims. Even this reminder that the train will carry Mano Majra Muslims also doesn t alter the decision. The Plan is

14 to stretch a rope across the first span of the bridge, a foot above the funnel of the engine; when the train passes under it, it will sweep off all the people sitting on the roof of the train. That will account for at least four to five hundred. 22 Already, the local Muslims have been evacuated to a camp; and while the train takes them to Pakistan they are to be set upon and destroyed. But even in this universal madness, humanity or the simple enormous love of a man for a woman-asserts itself and saves the situation. The rough Iugga a self-confessed budmash realizes that the attack on the train must mean danger to his Nooran, and makes up his mind to prevent the attack, if necessary at the risk of his own life. The assembly went down on their knees and rubbed their forheads on the ground, loudly proclaiming: By the Grace of God, We bear the world nothing but goodfwill. 24 Even the abandoned old rake, Hukum Chand, is not devoid of feeling for the girl Haseena. Gushed by the march of events, Hukum Chand gives vent to his spleen and rails against the men in Delhi:

15 What were the people in Delhi? Making five speeches in the assembly! Lond-speakers magnifying their egoes; lovelylooking foreign women in the visitors golleries in breathe less admiration. He is a great man, this Mr. Nehru of yours.. Wasn t that a wonderful thing to say? Long ago we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not whooly or in full measure but very substaintially. Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, you made your tryst. So did many others on the 15 th August, Independence Day. 25 At night, according to plan, the avengers tie the rope stiff asa shaft of steel, and await the coming of the train in tense anticipation as a ghost in silence. But Fugga manages to get at the rope and slash it away: He went at it with his knife, and then with his teeth. The engine was almost on him. There was a volley of shots. The man shivered and collapsed. The rope snapped in the centre as he feels. The train went over him, and went on to Pakistan. 26 It s a fine pensive nightmare with an exciting finish, one closes the novel with a sense of relief; the lie has become the

16 truth, the unbelievable has happened! What is recorded with such particularly was but a speck in the dust-whirt that was the Partition. There is enough evidence to convict both the British administrators who, after a hundered years of trustee-ship, could only prepare for this holocaust, and the national movement led by barristers, thinkers, poets, satesmen, mahatmas and maulanas that could celebrate the baptism of freedom only with mass murder and revolting bestiality. As a piece of fiction, Train to Pakistan is cleverly contrived, and the interior stitching and general colouring is beyond cavil. We begin with Jugga and Hukum, a budmash and a rake; and it is thanks to them. For Hukum sets Jugga free and Jugga snaps the rope-which the refugee train crosses over safely to Pakistan. It could not have been an easy, novel to write. The events, so recent, so terrible in their utter savagery and meainglessness, must have defied assimilation in terms of art. Khushwant Singh, however, has succeeded through resolved limitation and rigorous selection in communicating to his readers a hint of the grossness, ghastliners and total insanity of the two-nation theory and the Partition tragedy. The pity and horror of it all! and the novel adequately

17 conveys them both. Train to Pakistan is also the love story of a Sikh boy and Muslim girl that bridges the age-old obyss of religious hate. Train to Pakistan insrinsic qualities as a fine novel grip the reader. Throughout the novel, the action sweeps one along. The characters are vivid and highly credible, and the novelist keeps them going magnificently on two levels: in their quotidian matrix compounded of their passions of love and revenge, their tremdeous sense of belonging to a village community, and their insolence and heroism; and then again on the wide stage set by the tornado that breaks on their lives in the shape of the catachysmic events of the partition of India in But this is not only a work of fiction wrought with great skill. In addition, it has significant value as a social document that portrays vividly many facets of the great upheaval that accompanied the creation of Pakistan. This novel is a highly relevant piece of writing by a person who, as a Punjabi-whose family was uprooted from its ancestral home, experienced at close quarters the terrible tragedy. Certainly it deserves to be recognized as a classic. Khuswant Singh, an angry middle-aged man, made his debut as a writer more by accident that by choice. For he felt the

18 compulsive inner urge in the wake of inhuman bestial horrors and insane savage killings. The harrowing incicdents had shaken the faithof all the sensitive and thinking people of India in the intrinsic nobility of man, taught by its sages and saints, including Mahatma Gandhi, during various stages of its cultural evolution. They brought great illusiowment and crisis of values in the life of Khushwant Singh also. Train to Pakistan is, however, a classic not only because of the bold, brutal and unselenting realism with which it tears as under the mask of hypocrisy and exposes the sordidness and savageny of human life, but also because of the author s optimistic and affirmative world view that emerges from it, his enduring faith in the values of love, loyalty and humanity and the unconquerable spirit of man in the face of the mighty forces of wickedness and savage cruelties. This heroic spirit of man is revealed in the novel not by men who are considered religious and respectable in the public and supposed to have innate goodness but by a man like Jugga who is treated as a confirmed ruffian. When powerful and potential authority of the land sulks in indifference and inactivity and rational ideologies recoil in fright, it is Jugga, the deviant, who

19 combats the forces of darkness and sacrifices himself selflessly to save innocent lives threatened by the palnned Mano Majra massacre. He is the only character which is entirely fiction. Iqbal, the idealist and rationalist, considers discretion to be the better part of valour and keeps himself away from the fire. But when Jugga learns of the conspiracy and comes to know that the train is carrying his beloved Nooran and other Muslims of Marco Majra, he climbs over the bridge and diverst the attention of the conspirators by cutting the rope meant for killing Muslims. The train of Muslim refuges passes over to Pakistan without any damage but Jugga dies, being shot by his co-religionists. The heroic sacrifice of Jugga, who is treated as a ruffian by the civilized society, poses a challenge to it and unmasks its hypocrisy and duplicity. Khushwant Singh s irony manifest itself here with ruthless bitterness, shattering the pretence of much extolled and highly glorified values of human life. Jugga succeeds in achieving what Iqbal Singh with all his rational ideologies and convictions, Meet Singh with all his religious faith in love and brotherhood and the lambardar with all his silence fellow-feelings fail to accomplish. His satirical portraiture of three characters typical of their three different situations, epitomizing the civilized

20 human life, succeed to suffer the crisis of values. Like Henry Fielding, Khushwant Singh also declares that often most noble act of generosity and self-sacrifice are performed by persons who are looked down upon by the people as immoral deviants. Certainly it is unprecedented human tragedy in terms of values. Jugga s moral stature stands out in strong relief against the hypocrisy, cowardice and shame of these characters. Hukum Chand, the Magistrate and Deputy Commissioner of the district are a worldly wise man of easy morals. His rise from a constable to his present high position owes to his sycophancy. Meet Singh, the religious man describes him: nar admi and clever. He is true to his friends. He is however, lascivious and carries on a liaison with a Muslim do mening girl Haseena. His fatalism has made hi face and buffets of destiny with equanimity. It all came from his belief that the only absolute truth was death. The rest love, ambition, pride, values of all kinds was to be taken with a pinch of salt Occasionally joined in parties, arranged for singing and damining and sometimes sex- but he was not immoral. 27 Hukum Chand is however terribly shocked when he sees the heaps of dead bodies of men, women and children huddled in

21 a train from Pakistan. His all emotions a dead and his official duty compel him to save the lives of people under his charge. However his interest is not motivate by humanitarian considerations and is only concerned about the maintenance of law and order: We must maintain law and order. If possible, get the Muslims to go out peacefully. we must not let there be any killing or destruction of property. 28 Later when he feel utterly broken by the increasing incidents of arson and looting, he lapses into inactivity and wants just to maintain a pretence of having acted responsibly. Meet Singh a peasant who has taken to religion as an escape from works neither learned in the scriptures nor having any faculty of conversation, but he is a man of peace and goodwill and sincerely believes: Everyone is welcome to his religion 29 He argues against the incitations to Mano Majrans, what have the Muslims here done to us for us to kill them in revenge for what Muslims in Pakistan are doing? Only people who have committed crimes should be punished. 30 But in action against imminent danger to Muslims, he recoils in timidity.

22 Iqbal Singh is the England-educated young man of communist learnings. No other character in the novel is subjected to such an ironic and brutal exposure as he. He is very forthright, rational and logical in his criticism of social evils: Where on earth except in India would men s life depend on whether or not his foreskin hand been removed? It would be laughable if it were not tragic. 31 He has all the theories but lacks the courage to put them into action in time of crisis. Iqbal Singh s moral inadequacy comes under the bantering ridicule of the author when he shows him funking at the threatened attack on Mano Majrans. Replying to Meet Singh s ironical remark: When you came you were going to speak to them about something? What don t you tell them now? 32 Iqbal Singh says, Bhaiji, when a person go about with guns and spears you can only talk back with guns and spears. If you cannot do that, then it is best to keep out of their way. 33 Instead of resorting to bold steps to avert the tragedy, had drowns himself in pegs after pegs of whisky and muses over the futility of any action in the present situation.

23 Jugga, a robust and tall Sikh condemned as a bad character, can be constrastd against the above moral decrepits honoured by the civilized society. He has no pretensious and conferses before Iqbal. I am a Budmash. All governments put me in jail. But he is self-sacrificing and humane. He shows his mettle on several occasions. His silence about the cause of his absence from his house on the might of Salnukar s murder reminds us of the Italian novelist, Ignazio Silone s The Secret of Luke. Like the peasant Luke, he also courts imprisonment to protect the honour of the girl he loves. His heroic self-sacrifice to save the lives of Muslims of his village make him put to shame all those time servers whose rescourse, power, learning and prestige, falter and vacillate to take a decision. There is rare grandeur and singular nobility of character about his heroic resolution. The hoor, accompanying the transfer of population as a sequel to the independence and partitioin of India, has been the major theme with Indian English writers. Mulk Raj Anand, K.A. Abbas, B. Rajan, Balwant Singh Anand, Atia osain, Manohar Malgonkar, Raj Gill and Chaman Nahal in their full-length novels of artistic excellence, The Dark Dancer, Cruel Interlude, Sunlight on a Broken Column, A Bend in the Ganges, The Rape and Azadi

24 respectively. But none of these works approach Khushwant Singh s Train to Pakistan in extraordinary power and unrelenting realism. It still remains the most forceful and exquisite of the creative works born out of the agonized torments and travails of body and spirit endured by the sacred soil of the five rivers. Train to Pakistan is an interesting fusion of violence, humour and sex. The reasons why Train to Pakistan is an interesting novel it to be sought in the fact that there is a brilliant depiction of religious animosity caused by the division of the country? Partition of the country brought in its wake an atmosphere of violence and bitterness. Khushwant Singh has tried to recapture the period when Sikh-Muslim autogenism reached its climax with the division of Punjab. The novelist used the tragic irony in the statement of the Magistrate to the sub-inspector of police: Gift to Pakistan. With such horrifying facts, Khushwant Singh tries to recreate the harrowing days of recent Indian history. The novel deals with the personal impact on the writes because as a young boy of eleven, one such unknown train took him to an unknown destination. He was uprooted from our habitat because he had heard that such gifts were also being sent from Pakistan.

25 The title of the novel has great significance as it symbolizes flux and instability. Mano Majra was changed into Train to Pakistan as something static to dynamic significance. People in Mano Majra used to measure their time but these trains become the symbol of man s intrumanity to man. Infact, the some train, a symbol of joy earlier, now becomes the symbol of mystery. We have a haunting description of the arrival of a ghost train. The arrival of the ghost train in broad day light created a commotion in Mano Majra. Khushwant Singh has also created weak characters without flesh and blood. He has projected them like caricatures. Like Jugga, Iqbal also appears to be Maverick. The peculiar greatness lies in its use of symbolism and imagery. Of course, the partition of India was a political catastrophe in nature ran parallel to the human catastrophe. Khushwant Singh seems to suggest that catastrophe with haunting symbolic overtones. Another interesting feature of this novel is the poetic use of the bird imagery. The frequent reference to birds is supposed to provide an ironic contrast to the cruel world of dacoity. The novelist seems to suggest that the romance in nature runs parallel to the romance of man.

26 Khushwant Singh is able to make a multi-facted use of the bird imageny. There is an underlying paradox throughout the novel that, after all, there was no partition for birds that human beings suffer sordid religious tensions whereas birds are free from them. They have no such labels as Hindu or Muslim. Khushwant Singh is a happy blend of provincial and metropolitan culture. He has his deep Sikh roots, but with this, he combines rare humanism. His cosmopolitan fervour arises from the fact that he has spent most part of his life in England, Canada and America. It is for this reason that Iqbal is the prototype of the novelist. His very name has certain cosmopolitan flavour and association about it. The novelist seems to suggest that the name could be either Hindu or Muslim or Sikh. The name is characteristic of the rootlessness of the person. He is a sort of Trishanku. The idealistic trait in Hukum Chand s character is contrasted with the hedomistic side of his personality. Khushwant Singh almost seems to suggest that the life of percil has to be paid in pleasure. This is shown in Hukum Chand s romance with Haseena.

27 The typical gift of the novelist is that he combines the topical with the general. His style is marked by extreme clarity and directioness. His dictum is well known semantic: our thought sould be directed towards things. But it is a paradox that Khushwant Singh writes occasionally like a well-bred, Oxford-educated, cultured, cosmopolitan writer, but occasionally he writes like, rustic Punjabi. In his effort to give local colour to his writing, he occasionally uses startling swear words. His use of diction brings out the hierarchical nature of Indian society. His dialogues show the gravitational pull of the mother tongue. The metaphors are borrowed from the Punjabi or Urdu usage. While Iqbal is referred to as your honour, Hukum Chand is referred to as government or Sarkar, are Characteristic expressions of the old, feudal heritage. Occasionally, the novelist indulges in flafgrant Indianism. In portaying the small world of Mano Majra, Khushwant Singh has provided the macrocosm of the whole country at the time of partition. His essential humanism can be seen from the fact that he gives Jugga heroic dimensions at the end. The final act of sacrifice The train went over him and went to Pakistan is

28 a masterly stroke because it elevates the dacoit like Jugga, who finally lays down his life for the women he loves. The greatness of this novel lies not only in realistic depiction of the horrors of partition. It is also lies in his subtle artistry. Professor V.A. Shahne has rightly said: Khushwant Singh s art is revealed in not merely probing ddep into the real but in transposing the actual into symbol and image. His art of realistic portrayal cannot be described merely as an exercise in the book-keeping of existence; in effect, it is a creative endeavour of transcending the actual, asserting the value and dignity of the individual, and finally, of expressing the tragic splendor of a man s sacrifice for a woman. 34 Obviously, the grace of the novel is to be sought not only in its brilliant symbolism and bird imagery but also in its stark realism. No other novelist held the mirror upto the brutal reality of partition as frankly as Khushwant Singh did. He writes for the reader, not for himself. Defactor, Khushwant Singh ranks among India s distinguished men of letters who have attained an international

29 reputation. He is known for the extraordinary power, evocative prose, and universal implications. Reference 1. Khushwant Singh s India, Bombay, 1970 (Part of Noranda Lectures, Montreal, 1967). 2. Ibid. p Anthony Burgress, The Novel Now, New York, 1967, p The Time of India, Bombay, Monday, Dec. 1, 1969, p V.A. Shahane: Khushwant Singh, Twayne Publishers, Ine, New York, 1972, p. 21.

30 6. Extract from the transcript of a talk for the Australian Broadcasting Commission Guest of Honour Programme, 5 th Apri, Khushwant Singh: Train to Paskisan, Times Book Internation, New Delhi, 1981, p V.A. Shahane, Khushwant Singh, Twayne Publishers, Inc., New York, 1972, p Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, Vol I, , Princeton, 1963, p K.R.S. Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1985, p Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan, Times Books International, New Delhi, 1961, pp Ibid., p Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan, p Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistah, p Ibid. 16. Ibid., p Ibid. p Ibid. pp Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan, p. 149

31 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., p Ibid. p Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan, p Ibid. p Ibid. p Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan, p Ibid. p Ibid. p Ibid. p Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan, p Ibid. p Ibid. 34. Shahane, V.A.: Khushwant Singh, T. Wayne Publishers, NY, 1972.