Khuswant Sing’s Train to Pakistan as a Partition Novel

The most horrific and shocking incident in the history of India’s independence is certainly that of partition of the land. It brought in its wake communal conflict and havoc on a large scale. This prompted writers galore in different languages to study the theme in perspectives completely different from those of historians, political analysts and social scientists. Being a close witness to the catastrophic events resulting rampantly from the partition, Sing could not but focus on the theme by way of censuring the havoc that was stalking large in the contemporary India in the name of partition. In this novel, the novelist foregrounds the issue of the partition through the love story of Jugga and Nooran. My objective here is to show to what extent the novel explores the partition theme.