critical analysis of train to pakistan by khushwant singh

The priest obliges and asks the young man for his name, which is Iqbal. The young man goes to the gurdwara and asks Meet Singh if he can stay for a few days. His manners suggest that he does not belong in the village. From the other end of the train, a young man steps out.

When the train from Delhi to Lahore arrives, twelve armed policemen and the subinspector disembark. The next morning, the railway station is crowded. While Chand is alone with her, he hears one of the gunshots from the dacoity. That evening, an old woman and a young girl wearing a black, studded sari arrive at the rest house. Chand asks if arrangements have been made for him to have a prostitute that evening, and the subinspector assures Chand that he will have his entertainment before returning to the police station. When Chand then asks if there are any bad characters in the area, the subinspector mentions Jugga, but says that Nooran keeps him out of trouble. Some know who Mahatma Gandhi is, but the subinspector doubts that anyone knows of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Mano Majrans may not even know that the British have left or that India has been partitioned. He asks the subinspector of police if there has been any trouble between the religious groups and the latter assures him that there have not been any “convoys of dead Sikhs” as there have been in a nearby town.

Hukum Chand, the magistrate and deputy commissioner, arrives to Mano Majra the morning before the dacoity. Jugga recognizes one as Malli-the gang’s leader. While the couple lays in the dark, they see the five robbers pass on their way to the river.

Jugga, meanwhile, is having a tryst with Nooran when they hear the shots fired during the dacoity. While fleeing Ram Lal’s house, the robbers pass by the home of former robber Juggut Singh, known as the most dangerous man in Mano Majra and often called “Jugga.” One of the robbers throws stolen bangles into Jugga’s courtyard to implicate him in the crime. A tiny place with only three brick buildings-a gurdwara, where Meet Singh presides as its resident bhai a mosque led by the mullah and weaver Imam Baksh and the home of the Hindu moneylender, Lala Ram Lal-Mano Majra becomes the site of a notorious dacoity, which results in Ram Lal’s murder. Northern India is in turmoil, though the isolated village of Mano Majra remains, for now, at peace. In the summer of 1947, ten million Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs flee from their homes on each side of the new border between Pakistan and India.

Critical analysis of train to pakistan by khushwant singh