On Train to Pakistan

This is an outstanding work of South Asian fiction, dealing with partition and communal violence. From the outset, there seem to be three main characters: Iqbal Singh, a Communist agitator; Jugga Singh, professional dacoity; and Hukum Chand, the magistrate responsible for the area around Mano Majra. I disagree with the characterization of these three as the main characters. Instead, the main character is the village of Mano Majra as a whole. The tension in the story rarely comes from the three characters I name above, but about debates about what to do as a community. First, a train filled with Sikh corpses comes from Pakistan; then, numerous corpses are seen flowing down the river; and finally, a second train of Sikh corpses arrives in Mano Majra. After each of these events, the villagers—both Sikh and Muslim—debate what is to be done about the Muslims there. Should they be evacuated in case violence breaks out against them? Should they be murdered in their sleep? Should the status quo be maintained?

There are a few figures who call for moderation, but most of the village is quite mutable. Under the leadership of Meet Singh, the man running the Sikh temple (is he a Guru or does he have another title? I don’t know enough about Sikhism), the village agrees to evacuate the Muslim population to a refugee camp and then board them on a train to Pakistan. After a stranger visits in a jeep, the villagers generally disregard Meet Singh’s views and agree to murder all of the Muslim refugees on the next train—which notably includes their own townspeople. Most aggressive is a dacoity band from a neighboring (?) village. This band plans to make a taut rope over top the train, killing everyone on top and bringing the train to a stop so everyone else can be murdered. The story ends with an unknown man climbing up to the rope and sacrificing himself to break it down.

The big question is: Who did this? Was it Jugga Singh, looking to protect his beloved Nooran? Was it Iqbal Singh, protecting the good of all people? Or was it the apathetic Hukum Chand, looking to save a prostitute who had stayed with him the week prior? Each of these characters have weaknesses: Jugga Singh only wants to kill the leader of the dacoity band, so it seems unlikely that he would cut the rope and die without laying a finger on that guy. Iqbal Singh, for all of his celebration of the unity of mankind, is more bookish. He often protests but he’s slow to act, claiming that he is not a leader. Finally, there’s Hukum Chand who attempts to stay out of the communal violence and allow it to solve itself.

If I had to pick one of these figures, I would say Hukum Chand was the one responsible for cutting the rope, but it may also very well be Meet Singh, who is less influential of a character. But, in truth, this question doesn’t really matter at all, because the book is more about the deliberation leading up to violence. It does not matter who saved the Muslim refugees, what matters is the question of “How did India wind up in a position where refugees even needed to be protected in the first place?” I think Khushwant Singh shows this to us quite well.