Trauma in Train to Pakistan

Abstract

Trauma being a terrifying up shoot of memory, especially memory that dwells in the deepest realms of human psyche, literature written with reference to such memories becomes a manifestation of the violent and the grotesque. India as a nation, too, has undergone this pain and suffering when the British declared the partition of the land into two parts-India and Pakistan. The trauma of partition is often associated with loss and grief, owing to the umpteen numbers of deaths, loots, rapes, riots, massacres, and displacements that occurred during the partition of the Indian subcontinent. This catastrophic event has earned the notoriety of being one of the most painful events in recorded history of India. Khushwant Singh, as someone who has lived through partition, portrays his disturbing encounter with the historical event in the novel Train to Pakistan in its ghastly details. This paper intends to focus on the impact of trauma on the psyche of the twin nations, namely India and Pakistan by making a definitive study of the characters from Khushwant Singh’s 1956 novel Train to Pakistan from a postcolonial point of view. It aims at highlighting the evolution of the fictional characters in the backdrop of death, carnage and bloodshed that occurred during the partition of India and Pakistan.