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Summary: A glimpse at what was
Review: A well written novel of a little town caught between receiving train loads of corpses and understanding what the partition meant to them. At times, meandering about, but by and large, I found the novel to be good reading.
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Summary: Train to Pakistan: Breaking the Cycle of Revenge
Review: Ethnic conflict has been a staple of cross-cultural contact for as long as more than one race and religion have tried to co-exist. In the border between Pakistan and India, the theme of revenge killing calling for ever more revenge killing has found a clear voice in TRAIN TO PAKISTAN by Khushwant Singh. Nearly everyone in the novel is flawed to some degree with the effects and aftereffects of ethnic cleansing. There is no clear cut hero although a criminal named Jugga comes closest. Jugga is a Sikh thief who happens to take a Moslem woman as a lover. Their illicit relation is a microcosm of all that is terribly wrong when the cut of a person's beard counts more than the content of his soul. Jugga is far from an angel, but he slowly grows in stature from the baseness of his profession to one who is forced to contemplate the consequences of his own role in the ongoing cycle of killing between Sikh and Moslem. He is used as a pawn in the Sikh's killing of innocent Moslems, and his choice is the same that all men of revived conscience have had to face in similar such times: should he participate willingly even eagerly in the proposed slaughter of a train of deported Moslems shipped unceremoniously to Pakistan or should he speak out against the insanity that is insane only to him? The various flaws of all the characters of the novel--their vicious caste system, their willingness to demonize other races, their unwillingness to question even the most fundamental elements of their dogma--all stem from the cycle of killing that did not begin with the trainload of Sikh corpses that entered the sleepy town of Mano Majra in India. This mass killing is simply a sociological given: its root cause goes back uncounted centuries of strife between Moslem and Sikh yet it is hailed by Sikhs as 'the' reason to replicate the slaughter of Moslems on yet another train headed to Pakistan. Khushwant Singh portrays a society of confused, angry villagers who see no way out of the ongoing cycle of killing except to perpetuate that killing. Singh suggests that the men of good conscience who try to make even token attempts to bring this insanity to a halt are few and far between. The events of clashes between Sikh and Moslem that have occurred since this book was first published in 1956 further suggest that such men of good conscience have grown fewer in number.
Rating: 
Summary: Hats off - this one's a classic
Review: Khushwanth Singh writes convincingly. He doesn't waste words, he doesn't mince them. Every character is firmly etched out; the descriptions are vivid; the emotions are real; the writing is objective and evocative. Khushwanth Singh's is a journalist's view; an objective view - he doesn't take sides, even while dealing with hugely complex issues of religion, violence and ideologies. One empathises with each one of his characters - each one of them seems real. His best character (in my opinion) is Iqbal Singh, the Western-educated Communist trying to bring about a Socialist Revolution in the village. You don't know whether to like him or loathe him till the end, and even then, you empathise with them. The strong first chapter has you 'hooked', the tension is maintained throughout bursting with savage force in the final chapters. For someone belonging to a generation of Indians who haven't experienced at first or second hand the horrors of the partition, this is an eye-opener. Train to Pakistan's greatest triumph is the dialogue - with liberal doses of Punjabi and Hindustani, and appearing to be translated from the Urdu or Punjabi. The effect - an air of authenticity about every word uttered. For all his economy, Khushwanth Singh is wonderfully visual, evocative writer. You can hear the sound of the train, you can smell the monsoons, you can see the village - alive in all its rural glory. This one's a classic - realistic, riveting, hard-hitting.
Rating:
Summary: "Exquisite piece of literature!"
Review: Khuswant Singh has depicted an accurate and nostalgic picture of the 1947 partition. This book is a must read, and excellent in despcription and detail.
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Summary: Freedom and its price
Review: Of all the books portrayed the turbulance time of pre-independence days, this book is the best. Most of the happenings is in a village but you see the entire India inside that village during those turbulent pre-independence days. The author portrays the unforgiven history through a limited set of characters and with the stunning climax he proves though the human being can be divided by the religion, the humanity always prevails. I always admired Singh's writing style. Eventhough the characters react depends on the situation his writing always hits the point without emotion. And I always liked his "short story-like" ending and in this book also he didn't disappoint me. Worth reading and definetly a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Freedom and its price
Review: Of all the books portrayed the turbulance time of pre-independence days, this book is the best. Most of the happenings is in a village but you see the entire India inside that village during those turbulent pre-independence days. The author portrays the unforgiven history through a limited set of characters and with the stunning climax he proves though the human being can be divided by the religion, the humanity always prevails. I always admired Singh's writing style. Eventhough the characters react depends on the situation his writing always hits the point without emotion. And I always liked his "short story-like" ending and in this book also he didn't disappoint me. Worth reading and definetly a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant Story of the Worst Communal Outrage.
Review: The recent communal carnage in the state of Gujarat, India and the ongoing controversy over the Hindu temple to be built in Ayodhya have created a lot of stir and helped to focus public attention on the unending hostilities among religious groups in India. This seems a perennial problem in the Indian subcontinent, the land of the great apostle of nonviolence Mahatma Gandhi. Khushwant Singh's "Train to Pakistan" deals with this issue at its worst during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. He tells the poignant story of the innocent men and women of a border village called Mano Majra on the river Sutlej. The large-scale massacre of millions during the exodus after the partition impacts the simple folks in this village in a terrible way. The story of the agony of this village is told convincingly with graphic detail and hideous force. This book will always remain an excellent classic among historical novels.
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Summary: A harrowing journey to the inevitable...
Review: The summer of the Partition of India in 1947 marked a season of bloodshed that stunned and horrified those living through the nightmare. Entire families were forced to abandon their land for resettlement to Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. Once that fateful line was drawn in the sand, the threat of destruction became a reality of stunning proportions. Travelers clogged the roads on carts, on foot, but mostly on trains, where they perched precariously on the roofs, clung to the sides, wherever grasping fingers could find purchase. Muslim turned against Hindu, Hindu against Muslim, in their frantic effort to escape the encroaching massacre. But the violence followed the refugees. The farther from the cities they ran, the more the indiscriminate killing infected the countryside, only to collide again and again in a futile attempt to reach safety. Almost ten million people were assigned for relocation and by the end of this bloody chapter, nearly a million were slain. A particular brutality overtook the frenzied mobs, driven frantic by rage and fear. Women were raped before the anguished eyes of their husbands, entire families robbed, dismembered, murdered and thrown aside like garbage until the streets were cluttered with human carnage. The trains kept running. For many remote villages the supply trains were part of the clockwork of daily life, until even those over-burdened trains, off-schedule, pulled into the stations, silent, no lights or signs of humanity, their fateful cargo quiet as the grave. At first the villagers of tiny Mano Majra were unconcerned, complacent in their cooperative lifestyle, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and quasi-Christian. Lulled by distance and a false sense of security, the villagers depended upon one another to sustain their meager quality of life, a balanced system that served everyone's needs. There had been rumors of the arrival of the silent "ghost trains" that moved quietly along the tracks, grinding slowly to a halt at the end of the line, filled with slaughtered refugees. When the first ghost train came to Mano Majra the villagers were stunned. Abandoning chores, they gathered on rooftops to watch in silent fascination. With the second train, they were ordered to participate in burying the dead before the approaching monsoons made burial impossible. But reality struck fear into their simple hearts when all the Muslims of Mano Majra were ordered to evacuate immediately, stripped of property other than what they could carry. The remaining Hindus and Sikhs were ordered to prepare for an attack on the next train to Pakistan, with few weapons other than clubs and spears. The soldiers controlled the arms supply and would begin the attack with a volley of shots. When the people realized that this particular train would be carrying their own former friends and neighbors, they too were caught, helpless in the iron fist of history, save one disreputable (Hindu) dacoit whose intended (Muslim) wife sat among her fellow refugees. The story builds impressive steam as it lurches toward destiny, begging for the relief of action. In the end, the inevitable collision of conscience and expediency looms like a nacreous cloud above the hearts of these unsophisticated men, a mere slender thread of hope creating unbearable tension. I was impressed with the power of Singh's timeless narrative, as the characters are propelled toward a shattering climax, as potentially devastating as any incomprehensible actions of mankind's penchant for destruction. I was struck also, by the irony: how the proliferation of a rail system that infused previously unknown economic growth potential to formerly remote areas, also became the particular transport of Death. Only a few years earlier, a rail system in another part of the world carried innumerable Jews to Hitler's ovens, another recent barbaric use of Progress, originally intended to further enrich the potential accomplishments of the human race.
Rating: 
Summary: Do not waste your time
Review: This book is a complete waste of time. The author shoud have this book a fiction and it would have worked.
Rating:
Summary: Do not waste your time
Review: This book starts out a little slow and gains speed like a boulder going down a mountainside. Great discriptions really make you feel the Punjab. Emotional ending leaves you with tears in your eyes. May be my favorite book of all time. I can never keep this book at my house because I'm always giving it away to people and urging them to read it.
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