Revered as a one of the finest and best-known renditions of the Indian tragedy of partition, Train to Pakistan embodies more than a fictitious community. Although the small village is fictional, it is important to note the historical significance this village, its people, and the time period represent in the novel. Their work, like Singh’s, often deals with corruption, the caste system, and the complexities of religious life in India.Book Review: Train to Pakistan Khushwant Singh opens his novel Train to Pakistan in a seemingly peaceful village on the countryside of Punjabi. Narayan, who was mentored by the British author Graham Greene, as well as contemporary authors such as Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Rohinton Mistry. Well known Indo-Anglian writers include the previously mentioned V.S. The movement began in the 19th-century but gained in popularity in the 1930s. Singh was also a contributor to what is sometimes called Indo-Anglian literature, or Indian literature written in English. Naipaul’s Mystic Masseur (1957) and A House for Mr. Popular works from this movement include Aimé Césaire’s essay Discourse on Colonialism (1950), Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), and V.S. Postcolonial English Literature used the language of the former colonizer, which had once been an instrument of obedience, to critique and undermine imperial values. also became the assumed protector of Western democracy during the Cold War and thereafter.Ī Train to Pakistan was published after the Second World War and at the beginning of India’s decolonization, alongside other literary works that featured the voices of former colonial subjects. In its place, the United States became the most powerful Western nation, vying with the Soviet Union for international influence. This action greatly diminished Britain, causing it to lose its status as a superpower.
Great Britain had to relinquish some of its colonies, including India, to finance the war effort.
Marshall, provided more than $15 billion to help rebuild war-ravaged cities, industries, and infrastructure in Western Europe. The Marshall Plan, a restructuring proposal organized by U.S. The years after World War II resulted in the restructuring of many nations devastated by the war, as well as a realignment in the international order. An estimated 14 million people were displaced by the Partition, which aimed to divide the nations along religious lines and initially led to widespread chaos and violence. Singh died at the age of 99.Ī Train to Pakistan takes place in 1947, the year in which India gained independence from Britain and the new nation of Pakistan was created from the Partition of India. They had two children-a son named Rahul, and a daughter, Mala. Singh married his wife Kaval, who died some years before him, in 1939. He received many honors for his work in journalism and fiction, including a lifetime achievement award for his contributions to Indian literature. In addition to Train to Pakistan, Singh is also known for his two-volume work A History of the Sikhs, 1469-1964 (vol. He discontinued his support for the prime minister, however, after Indian troops attacked and killed hundreds of Sikhs at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. From 1980 to 1986, he served in India’s upper house of parliament and was a supporter of Indira Gandhi’s government. The following year, he began a career as a journalist with All India Radio and spent the next two decades working as an editor of leading publications in India while continuing to publish fiction. He published his first short story collection, The Mark of Vishnu, and Other Stories, in London in 1950. During his four years in the foreign service, he took posts in London and Ottawa and also started to write fiction. He started his law practice in Lahore on the eve of the Second World War and practiced until the Partition of India in 1947, at which point he moved his family to Delhi and took a position with the Indian Foreign Service as a press attaché. Singh earned a Bachelor of Arts from Government College in Lahore in 1934 before obtaining his law degree from London’s King’s College in 1938. Later, he would become a prolific translator of Urdu poetry. His native tongue was Punjabi, but he was also fluent in Urdu and grew up reading the work of Urdu poets. Khushwant Singh was born to an affluent Sikh family and grew up in the Muslim-majority village of Hadali, then part of British India.