Train To Pakistan (published in 1956) is one of Khushwant Singh’s best novels. The novel recounts the
partition of India in August 1947. Singh does not go into much detail on the politics of the
partition, which resulted in the creation of Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. He has managed to convey the
horror of the partation with great clarity and venom. Singh makes it clear that the victims of the horror, Sikhs and Muslims, played an important part in the chaos and conflict. He uses his characters to give account of the violence that caused the Sikh and Muslim communities to implode. The stories of the local bad boy, Juggat Singh, and a party worker back from England are woven into the fabric of tragedy and terror. The trains in the novel are at the centre of the message as they carry refugees back and forwards past a little Punjabi village by the banks of the Sutlej river.