Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.3.Issue 4.2015 (Oct-Dec) http://www.rjelal.com

RESEARCH ARTICLE

A NEW HISTORICIST TRAIN TO : UNDERTONES REAPPRAISED

Dr. POTHAPRAGADA SASI RATNAKER Conduira Educational Services, Guntur

ABSTRACT Unique identity of Train to Pakistan, with an unshorn lure for researchers, purveys continuous reevaluation of authorial intent. Never being a mere narrative of partition gory, it is not a mere lamentation as well. Written in the wake of violence, a thorough grasp of the conditions that precipitated the violence formed the novel’s basis and vehemently discussed from multiple foci. The drama in small village, when extrapolated, is a cross-section of Indian societal dynamics. The author equates Mano Majra to by discussing the dilemma in politics, culture, bureaucracy, ethics and religion along with its decisiveness in public life. India is read through Mano Majra is far from being over ambitious for every pulse of Indianism is

preserved in the characters created. History, when removed from the events and

merely considering the novel for the armchair aestheticism is unyielding, as the grip of the fiction provokes any curious reader to research on reality factor. The lens of history to descry the authorial intention can explain India’s predicament in the miniscule of Mano Majra. Key Words: Partition, New Historicism, Mano Majra, Khuswant Singh

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“The beliefs that I have cherished world. I decided to try my hand at all my life were shattered. I had writing.1 believed in the innate goodness of 1. INTRODUCTION the common man. But the division Envisaging India’s radiant future, the of India had been accompanied by palpable fervor in Jawaharlal Nehru’s debut speech the most savage massacres known in the Indian parliament on the eve of India’s in the history of the country...I had believed that we Indians were independence bore a partition induced disquiet peace loving and non-violent, that concomitant with ebullient political freedom. Indian we were more concerned with English writers left no stone unturned in matter the spirit, while the rest of materializing this aspect: the birth of a new genre the world was involved in the titled ‘partition novels’ with partition and the pursuit of material things. After the related incidents as the main plot. Partition and its experience of the autumn of 1947, aftermath inspired ’s Train to I could no longer subscribe to this view. I became... an angry middle Pakistan, a penetrating and multiple focal portrayal aged man, who wanted to shout of hatred induced violence, its repercussions and a his disenchantment with the medley of public opinion. Distant from being polarized in opinions, the novel opens with

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uneasiness “Muslims said the had planned representation, and above all mimesis. Though and started the killing. According to the Hindus, the indispensable, the inadequacy of these terms in were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed. cultural phenomenon further extends to aspects of Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. contemporary and past culture and Greenblat Both tortured. Both raped”2(1). Dialectics capture locates the ways in which one discursive sphere the febrile apprehension of a political and social transfers material information to another to make it contingency sans precedence. The author’s aesthetic property2 (10). With a unique expression vehemence reveals the bureaucratic mindset, ethos, couched in basic Indian English, as if a report is their alacrity and otherwise tinged with the surge of dramatised, Khushwant Singh eroded the literature - an ideology that was diametrically oppositional to history discrimination. Otherwise a bland narrative, Gandhian non-violence. The generic convention of the author seasoned it with Indianisms,3 to capture history-fiction association fuses fictional the essence of India psyche persistent in the representation with historical facts and with a temperament of the colonized. Little restraint is perspective of reality, the characters and events of evident in Paul Varghese rating the novel as “mere the narrative bear verisimilitude as historical sensational journalism” however, Zoha Alam reflections. Apparently, the author’s appreciation of moderated the same by finding an avant gardist in partition and violence is comfortably devoid of Khushwanth Singh’s attempt to “revolutionize scholarly jargon and wooden expressions of a journalism by moving it into the precincts of fiction” history book and bare journalese respectively. The She exclaims the novel as a new model of journalism novel’s uniqueness is evident in fiction writer- which interspersed reporting and techniques of journalist vantage that is permissive of fiction (26). Alam highlights the ‘expressionist’ sentimentalism coupled with perspicacity. element that stems from a journalist-writer through 2. New Historicism and Train to Pakistan a sumptuous portrayal of reality in allegorical, Veeser notes that New Historicist approach allusive and metaphorical representations. points at the undertones implicit in a narrative and 3. Indian Partition: Multiple Views the first of the four underlying principles of this Of many censorious theories on partition theory embeds every expressive act in a network of and on the concomitant violence, Sumeet Sarkar, material practices. Second, every act of unmasking, Anil Kumar Banerjee and Bipin Chandra inculpated critique, and opposition uses the tools it condemns the British and their ‘divide and rule’ policy with its and risks falling preys to the practice it exposes. The roots in Bengal’s partition. The British widened the third principle makes literary and non-literary texts crevice between Hindu and Muslim that culminated complement mutually and the fourth rejects in the country’s partition. British historians asserted discourse, imaginative or archival as approach roads that partition ramifies out of the chronic discord to unchanging truths or expresses inalterable human between Hindus and Muslims. Godfrey Nicholson nature (ix). Veeser’s espousal to forsake outmoded vituperative against “amazingly flawed plans” of vocabulary, allusion, symbolisation, allegory and Cripps as a “direct invitation to the Muslim League mimesis by New Historicism seeks less limiting to stick to their toes in and hold for Pakistan” and means to expose the manifold mutual interactions the so called “shock” with which Cripps aimed to of society and culture. The discernment of a literary reconcile the warring Congress and League. text with history as foreground and background is Mohammed Ali Jinnah was decried for his problematic since criticism, in its pursuit of fractiousness while Ayesha Jalal lauds his metaphors, narrows its concerns to the devices by confessions of being ‘a staunch Congressman’ and means of which literature reflects or refracts (xii). his repudiation of any ‘love for sectarian cries’. Jalal Stephen Greenblat explains the origin of a certain absolves Jinnah and Muslim League from the terminology [read methodology] in literary criticism ‘reproach of separatism levelled against relating artistic work and historical events with Mussalmans’ which in Jinnah’s words is ‘singularly allusion, symbolization, allegorization, inept and wide of the mark4’. Her solidarity with

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Jinnah’s glorifies the League as a, “great communal A medley of affairs precipitated the organization [was] rapidly growing into a powerful partition holocaust that coupled weirdly with factor for the birth of United India.(7). Hodson freedom; chaos with parochialism aiming for a carpe however absolves Mountbatten saying “it certainly diem; a helpless submission of authority to anarchy; can’t be said that it (Mountbatten’s Plan for surge of disruptive, anti-social, sectarian violence partition) was imposed without the fullest and the excesses of the power mongering elements consultation with India’s political leaders or that it and a nothing like the cloud of uncertainty and was contrary to the ultimate consensus of their disinformation to flare up mutual hatred and views. It may certainly be said that it was not he, but cynicism. Iqbal envisages a proletariat revolution the Indians who divided India5” (247). Emotions that can be possibly forged out of the communal stirred from all directions and every emotion was strife if and only when the unprivileged were incited equally strong and heedless of its counterpart. on lines of economics than religion (54). Like a Amrik Singh evaluates with sobriety, the partition primoparous mother, ambivalence reigned with and the related incidents as, “the climax of a certain freedom induced ecstasy alongside a chaotic pain of process which had been at work for almost two partition smiling faintly at visitors reviewing the centuries.” He incriminates every group and party as features of the new-born while the stupor is waning not being “blameless” and with a palpable distrust slowly hinting the imminent post-natal afflictions. for “saviours” who eventually and possibly Instances highlight the context discussed when the stigmatized by the “misled” (xix). bureaucrat Hukum Singh and other officials worried 4. Mano Majra: Khuswanth’s India about the chaos after their indulgence and The outcome of this chaotic big picture is prejudices had their way. Khushwant Singh employs encapsulated in the incidents of a non-descript the metaphor of nature at the break of summer and hamlet, Mano Majra. The author never politicizes onset of monsoon - the change of old order and any historical or political event or decision yet, in his new unwieldy aspects launched in the transition – a coarse expressions, the facts of partition are perfect recipe to let loose anarchy: ‘With the perspicuous in the garb of incidents and characters. monsoon, the tempo of life and death increases. A microcosmic, allusive version of the pervasive Almost overnight, grass begins to grow and leafless nation-wide dialectics is presented and revealed trees turn green’; ‘Snakes, centipedes and scorpions objectively. The novel is a fictitious representation are born out of nothing. The ground is strewn with of the historical, political, cultural and administrative earthworms, ladybirds and tiny frogs. At night, conditions of the period. The paper relates the myriads of moths flutter around the lamps’; ‘They incidents in the narrative foregrounding historical fall in everybody’s food and water. Geckos dart versions and highlights the author’s objectivity in about filling themselves with insects till they get projecting the historical facts through the events heavy and fall off ceilings.’; ‘Inside rooms, the hum that transpired in Mano Majra. Viscosity of drama is of mosquitoes is maddening. People spray clouds of achieved as emotional dichotomies like compassion insecticide, and the floor becomes a layer of and hatred, trust and cynicism, benevolence and wriggling bodies and wings.’; ‘Next evening, there avarice mutually countervail to evoke contingencies are many more fluttering around the lamp shades in social integrity. In an era when media wasn’t able and burning themselves in the flames (98) to penetrate into the drawing rooms of every house 5. Representation of Violence in India, Khushwant Singh, through his Train to Grujic explains the nuances that associate Pakistan could have served as a powerful torch with the words persecution, pogrom, massacre and bearer for the facts of the partition with his riveting genocide. The first he says is an “isolated or irregular narrative skills and skilled interspersion in not maltreating of a definite group of people” while forsaking reality from the melodramatic affects of pogrom appears as a “stronger form of persecution fiction. with killing or banishing”. He calls “accidental massive killing, in sense not preconceived” as a

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massacre and defines genocide as a “systematic hands (156-58). The perpetration of uniformed extermination of a well defined sub population in a personnel is asserted by Pandey quoting Mayaram’s wider region for the reasons which are not under record of an army officer’s confession of a ‘counter the control of the subjects of persecution” (165). action’ to “contain the violence”. The army officer From the definitions above, the plight of the asserts, “I was the ADC to HH Tej Singh, the ruler of refugees during partition suffices to be rated as a Alwar *…+ It had been decided to clear the state of combination of all the above. In the tonga, the Muslims *…+ The killings of Hindus at Noakhali and police man accompanying Jugga and Iqbal mentions had to be avenged. All the Meos from of the Muslim police in Pakistan opening fire on Firozpur Jhirka down were to be cleared and sent to people6 (71) while the hurried evacuation of Mano Pakistan, their lands taken over. [Because] the Majra by authorities is not far from banishment of refugees from Pakistan were coming in (179-81). the docile Muslim folks. Contextually, the author 6.1. Britain’s Role describes‘genocide’ in the train loaded with This anarchy reminds the vested interests butchered refugees and ‘massacre’ suffices in the of the imperialists behind their abrupt withdrawal. imagery of the corpses afloat in the deluge. From Adrian Fort clarifies that the World War II the harangue of the boy in an khakhi shirt and disastrously weakened Britishers to forgo their revolver in his holster, Brass’ quotes on Grimshaw’s tenacity over the subcontinent. Fort discusses the definition of Genocide and democide (58) by politico-economic agenda in the relinquishment of ascertaining the partition violence as ‘retributive India by Britishers to impress USA for grants which genocide7’(72) shall suffice. preferred to see Britain “take its troops out of these 6. Systemic Failure trouble spots and leave them to their [Indians] The author laments the inefficacy and independence”. Fort further asserts “As the desperation of the state’s machinery8 in containing imperative for Indianisation gathered force, it the violence through the discussions of Hukum brought a concomitant increase in difficulty of Chand and the Sub Inspector (163-64). Historian recruiting Europeans. Recruiting had ceased in 1939 Nirad C. Chaudhari compares the systemic failure of and by 1946 the Indian Civil Service could boast a 1946 to that of 1729 when was on mere 500 British soldiers; there were only 500 decay and the riots ensued “In India, when empires British policemen and the Indian Political Service *…+ decline, such things inevitably happen. In 1729, In India’s fast changing conditions 1,200 men, when the Mogul Empire was breaking up and however wise and just, were no longer enough for Muhammad Shah was Emperor, there was a administration of the country of more than 1.5 notorious Hindu-Muslim riot in Delhi *…+ but all he million square miles, containing 400 million people could do was to stand helplessly near the north of 300 different ethnic groups. Fort quotes Prime gate, while even the men of the Imperial artillery Minister Clement Atlee: “We do not consider that a joined in the fray (843). Chaudhuri analogizes reversal of our policy and pledges to India and showing the “Complete ineffectiveness of the state. reassertion of United Kingdom authority by force It could not resist foreign invasion, put down would, *…+, be likely to lead to any solution of Indian internal rebellions, suppress Hindu-Muslim riots, problem or it may be desirable from the point of could not ensure efficient administration and was view of our international reputation. *…+ We do not not successful in any project it initiated”; “The effect think opinion in this country would support the of the decline of the power of the state on the measures necessary, or be prepared to shoulder the masses was twofold. It made one part predatory and costly burdens of responsibility in Indian under such the other panicky.”; “Lastly, there grew up a habit of conditions for another fifteen years. Apart from this, tolerance of anarchy and corruption, or at all events the necessary troops are not available” (401-03). resignation to them” (859-60). The boy in uniform Britain is aware the undesirable Communist Russia’s lambastes the failed government machinery and influence and despises the idea seeing Russia as preaches self defence by taking law into one’s own

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India’s strategic ally and of course, ventures of own desperation with that of another; diplomatic Russia is evident in the role of Iqbal in the novel. enough to acquiesce to a Muslim daughter-in-law. 7. Personification of Indian Muslim Predicament Khushwant Singh presents a medley of prejudices, Novic observes, “To understand something sentiments, sympathies, desperation and economics historically ‘is to be aware of its complexity, is to see and communalism is only like a kite tied to many it from multiple perspectives, to accept the strings. Religious differences do not estrange ambiguities, including moral ambiguities, of common people invariably and they hardly erode protagonists, motives and behavior” (3-4). Jugga’s humanism in people is espoused by the author. affiliation with Nooran clarifies his distance from “There are only about seventy families in Mano sectarianism. Jugga’s depiction as a hideous criminal Majra, and Lala Ram Lal’s is the only Hindu family. forces an anti-climax in Jugga martyrdom. Nooran The others are or Muslims, about equal in desperately visits Jugga’s house at night and she number. The Sikhs own all the land around the was disparaged by Jugga’s mother and latter village; the Muslims are tenants and share the tilling commiserates to the plight of the girl. Nooran’s with the owners” (2). Social and economic inter father hoped of Hindu-Muslim compatibility. The dependence hardly allow communalistic concerns. two families have a boy and a girl where faith In peaceful situations, faith was not decisive to separates them while love binds them: a symbolic of alienate them. Paradoxically, while public emotions the tenuous Sikh-Muslim unity. Nooran and Jugga are spurred to draw swords against each other, the affair though a sub-plot, Khushwant Singh has much same drew them closer with remorse replacing their to tell from this love pair and their families. When instincts towards the end. Nooran yields to Jugga by staking her honour, Jugga-Nooran’s pairing clarifies Khushwant clouds of partition, unseen until then, suddenly Singh’s appreciation of Hindu-Sikh-Muslim relation. appear to cause separation. People before and after Nooran is impregnated by Jugga and it is partition had no mutual ill-will bred with faith as a unthinkable for her to reveal her illegitimacy in reason. Apparently, an expository of Hindu-Sikh- bearing Jugga’s child. She fiercely refuses the forced Muslim unity can extrapolate to a more complex exile: “I will not go to Pakistan” (136) while her cross-section of Indian society without ignoring the father reprimands her defiance. Nooran symbolically subtlety in Sikh-Muslim relations. represents the predicament of Muslims in India Frank Lentricchia observes that the prime during partition about their property, business and anti-humanistic assumption of Historicism replaces honor. Uncertainty rules in their sudden demise of original self of idealism explaining all cultural and belongingness. Nooran’s love and honor in her social phenomenon as effects of ‘imperious agents’ submission to Jugga symbolizes the age old of causality comprising cultural traditions, attachment and assimilation which Muslim brethren institutions, race, ethnicity, relations of gender, fostered in the political, social, economic and economic and physical environments, dispositions of cultural fabric of the land. Nooran’s reluctance to power (231). When Nooran informs Jugga’s mother depart doesn’t merely simply thicken the love plot, of the affair, the latter berates, “Get out you bitch. but alludes to every true Indian Muslim’s You a Muslim weaver’s daughter, marry a Sikh identification with Indian spirit: an undilemmatic peasant! *…+ Go to Pakistan! Leave my Jugga alone” rejection of sectarian prejudices. Nooran’s (138). Jugga’s mother however softens yet, her resistance is subdued by her father, a dilemmatic, compassion can be reasoned by the poverty induced insecure Muslim cleric despondent of state’s failure bleakness in fetching Jugga a bride. Jugga’s mother to assure the safety of Muslims willing to remain in presents a dilemma where a Sikh woman detests the India. Pervasive feeling about a separate new land idea of a Muslim daughter-in-law and her designated to Muslims strengthened the notion of sympathies are not far from her shrewdness. Three out of place status for Indian Muslims in India. In aspects are interspersed in one context: a Dilli ki Bipta, Ahmed Dehlavi laments on the ruined prejudiced Sikh woman; a woman who identifies her fate of Indian Muslims who were forced to leave

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India and the return of their hope when riots in couple altogether victimizing them for reasons Dehli subsided. They wrote to their people who fled unknown. to Pakistan “There is peace now, and no danger of 8. Socio-Communal Discontentment: Outcome of riots… You should come back” (147, 180). This Partition explains Indian Muslims’ bondage with the land The spite of a youth of Mano Majra unflinched by the duress induced migration as the towards the Muslims is neutralized the resolve of cord of relation remained intact. Hukum Chand the village community to save its Muslim dwellers wonders: “I suppose they will come back when all (131-33) which times with the rumors of violence. this blows over?’ ‘Maybe,’ the sub inspector This medley of opinions reflected the prevalent answered. ‘There is not much for them to come back volatility which some pressure groups had to. Their homes have been burned or occupied. And capitalized. In the unanimity to protect Muslims, if anyone did come back, his or her life would not be some sporadic despise is palpable against Muslim worth the tiniest shell in the sea”. Hukum Chand presence in Mano Majra. This ambivalence marks with a false note of hope in his voice says: “It will that Muslims were neither completely abhorred nor not last forever. You see how things change. Within favored. This mosaic of opinions led to massacre on a week they will be back in Chundunnugger and the both side while contrarily, humanism broke the ill- Sikhs and Muslims will be drinking water out of the will when one community offered shelter and same pitcher.” (165) But the false note of hope protection to the other in the maelstrom of could have been true for many who fled from India, violence. But Sikh-Muslim antagonism was not but many Muslims couldn’t foster the same hope. exclusively religion centered: the economic loss that Sardar Vallabhai Patel stated: “whatever the ensued with the partition plan and the economic definition may be, you can rest assured that the crises10 it is bound to inflict India. Brass quotes his Hindus and Sikhs of Pakistan cannot be considered interview with Master Tara Singh whom he as aliens in India9.” Pandey explains the statement interviewed expressed his opinion to level the as “ the Hindu and Sikh communities were natural ground of economic imbalance caused by partition. citizens of India, wherever they might live and Brass infers from the words of Tara Singh that he whatever the constitutional definitions of citizenship meant to “attack violently Muslim population in East might turn out to be in the two new nation-states” Punjab to force them to migrate west so that the and observes: “If Hindus and Sikhs were ‘naturally’ entire Sikh population in west Punjab would able to ours, and Muslims ‘naturally’ theirs, as in the migrate east to replace them and take their lands circumstances of Partition they were commonly and property in exchange for what they lost in the declared to be, the hostile conditions *…+ The west11 (77). Siddiqui mentions of the 77% of land poignant history of abducted women (read people) that India received after partition with an addition caught on the wrong side of the new international burden of 82% of population (270). But, such border illustrates some of the tragic consequences political decisions neither had the accord of every of this curious collapsing of religious community into Hindu-Sikh on Indian side nor that of every Muslim natural nation (164). Not much is discussed about in Pakistan. Restraint in the hearts of people like Jugga’s bond with Nooran in the initial sections of Meet Singh tries to forestall the sabotage plans. This the novel, but as the story unfolds, his passion for restraint emanates from the perspicacity in the girl strongly evident in his rage against Mallis’ understanding religious truth. Meet Singh says: derogation of Nooran and Jugga relation. Equally, “What bravery is there in killing unarmed innocent the driver of the horse coach is scorned by Jugga for people? As for women, you know that the last Guru, the former’s derogation of Nooran (73). Jugga- Gobind Singh, made it a part of a baptismal oath Nooran’s separation is the symbolic of division of that no Sikh was to touch the person of a Muslim Indian sub continent where the division of the woman. And God alone knows how he suffered at country represents the absurdity of fate. The the hands of the Mussulmans! They killed all his four unreasonable circumstances that separated the sons” (157).

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9. Disruption from Within huge mass of Indians waged against themselves. Gangster Malli with his accomplices Pandey views that the saga of revenge and support the cause of the juvenile boy and says: “My aggression raise questions about the constitution life is at your disposal” which implies his intention to and reconstitution of ‘us’ and ‘them’. He says that if regain the prestige lost in the hands of Jugga (159). the violence that erupted is not short of a state of Dehlavi’s laments that violence spared none except war, where the ‘enemy’ has in many instances been “for those who were carried away by a religious completely annihilated. But the annihilation of the madness and, one might add, those who were enemy brings not only a note of celebration, but of carried away by the desire for loot and property, apology and shame as well. He says: This shame too and political advancement, too” (146). The author is related in part to the effort to reconstitute postulates that communalism alienates people, but community – to rethink the ‘us’ of the story in the cannot cloud their consciousness for the plight of fragile moment when a new idea of community people of other faiths and also the author hints at collides with the breakdown of earlier senses. the economic aspect of their relations. The Sikh Statements of revenge are already statements of officer, evacuates the Muslim of Mano Majra and defensiveness; and the idea of revenge depends on when the former protest about their belongings the that of ‘betrayal’ – and hence of ‘community’ (197). officer says, “It is all settled, I have arranged that 10. Peace Bought with Bloodshed: Gandhi-Jugga these people from the next village will look after the Parallel cattle, carts, and houses till it is over. I will have a list The novel ends with the death of Jugga and made and sent over to you’ (144). The officer’s the character consummates with his sacrifice. colleague understands and smiles sardonically. The Jugga’s death signifies the bond between the Sikh usurpation of the Muslim’s houses and the loot and Muslim sections as asserted by Khushwant perpetrated by Malli and his accomplices record the Singh. If Train to Pakistan has to be a history based heinous and avaricious exploitation of the situation. fictitious document, authorial intention is evident in Pandey censures the valorisation of violence and the design of the climax. The train of refugees leaves forced eviction with similar stories of segregation of unharmed. Jugga’s redemption is through his death “us” against “them” which he complies from the and the author makes him a martyr. In history, one narratives of village communities with general person to who was the only beacon of hope as the proposition of ‘peacefulness’ and ‘harmony’ from redeemer of this scourge, it was Gandhi. This ray of which Muslims were largely, if not entirely driven hope did all it could to enlighten the fanatics. His out in 1947. He is little sceptical about similar death petrified the nation and dramatically ended all reprisal on the ‘western’ causing the exodus of the pervading violence. Balrevi says that the death refugees (196). Violence was devoid of full of Gandhi suddenly doused the fire of sectarian conviction and was not remorseless concerning strife that raged for months and died down as if people on either side. When the boy spoke, the such strife never occurred. Overnight, such calm was author registers the response of the people as: The established, such a peace that no one could villagers felt very uncomfortable. The harangue had dreamed of a few days earlier. The Muslims of Delhi made them angry and they wanted to prove their felt secure now and returned to their normal manliness (158). At the same time Meet Singh’s occupations and routines” (119). When Jugga the presence made them uneasy and they felt they were one who never visited the Gurudwara, approaches being disloyal to him. Meet Singh represented the Meet Singh for some soothing words from religion rationality and humanness inherent in every one. and Meet Singh says: “What have you to do with This humanness was snubbed by an instinctive meaning? It is just the Guru’s word. If you are going provocation to even the odds and this slowly to do something good, the Guru will help you; if you aggravates. This is evident from the interviews of are going to do something bad, the Guru will stand the people of the older generations who abhor to in your way (183). Gandhi’s response to the reminiscence the ghastly violence. It is the battle a assassinate him has a stoical resignation of a great

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soul: “The man who exploded the bomb obviously signs and interpretative procedures-but it must be thinks that he has been sent by God to destroy me… supplemented by an understanding that the work of He had taken it for granted that I am an enemy of art is not itself a pure flame that lies at the source of Hinduism. When he says he was doing the bidding of our speculations12”. Greenblatt defines work of art God he is only making God an accomplice in a as “product of a set of manipulations, some of them wicked deed” (279-81). A parallel can be drawn our own most striking in the case of works that were between the above two contexts as Jugga emerges not originally conceived as "art" at all but rather as as the savior of Muslims and with his death, the something else-votive objects, propaganda, prayer, story ended with a note of peace. Khushwant Singh and so on”. He rates work of art as a product of hints at peace after the martyrdom of Jugga and negotiation between ‘creator’ and ‘class of creators’ analogizes it with peace after Gandhi’s death. equipped with ‘a complex, communally shared Gandhi and Jugga who refused the fanatical frenzy repertoire of conventions, and the institutions and sent their message of peace that God helps only the practices of society’. To negotiate, “artists need to benignity in human beings and shall not assist in create a currency that is valid for a meaningful, their wicked deeds. mutually profitable exchange” this involves the “not 11. New Historicist Appreciation of the Novel: simply appropriation but exchange, since the Validation existence of art always implies a return, a return Bakthin observes the entanglement of the normally measured in pleasure and interest”. novels object in “someone else’s discourse” about it Greenblatt clarifies that “I should add that the and heteroglot perception conceptualizes and society's dominant currencies, money and prestige, evaluates the object of dispute which the novelist are invariably involved, but I am here using the presents this “already qualified world” in an term…currency" metaphorically to designate the internally dialogize heteroglot language. Historical systematic adjustment, symbolizations and lines of dimension of the novel is inseparable of the object credit necessary to enable an exchange to take and language (330). When Khushwant Singh wrote place. The terms "currency" and "negotiation" are this book quite much time has passed after partition the signs of our manipulation and adjustment of the and violence. There were divergent views on this relative systems” (12). Greenblatt’s convictions issue and it would be unacceptable to believe that appear pertinent in Somini Sen Gupta’s narration of the author is insulated of these opinions. The novel author’s recollection of the ghastly experience he pronounces all the possible voices in that period as had in August 1947 when in the outskirts of Delhi, the author maneuvers the story to bring up the facts he encountered a jeep full of armed Sikhs who masked as narrative. The novel bears a few boasted of slain a village full of Muslims. This instances that do not allude to historical reality and incident put off all his hopes of returning to his appreciating Train to Pakistan distancing oneself homeland and refers to ‘a chilling echo of what he from historicist approach undermines the efforts of had heard on the other side of the soon-to-be the author-witness who witnessed the holocaust border, except that there Sikhs and Hindus were the both from the perspectives of a journalist and an victims’. Palpable serenity in the opening pages of individual. World acclaims Khushwant Singh as a Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh endorses the staunch supporter of secularism bitterly vehement autobiographical element and a nostalgic of the ruinous communal forces that offend Indian reminiscent of the idyllic tranquility in the erstwhile secularism. undivided Indian subcontinent. Singh’s words 12. A Portal to Khuswant’s Secularism echoes the yearning for the same that partition has Stephen Greenblatt explains the application removed. In Truth, love and a Little Malice: An of New Historicism where “methodological self- Autobiography, Khushwanth Singh narrates his visit consciousness is one of the distinguishing marks of to his native village and the rapturous welcome he the new historicism in cultural studies as opposed to received with garlands of silver and gold tassels, the a historicism based upon faith in the transparency of burst of joy in fireworks and the shower of rose

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petals. Khushwant censures, “Who was the author Hariharan’s quote of Reverand Martin Niemoller of the perfidious lie that Muslims and Sikhs were from In Times of Siege echoes his anxiety to dispel sworn enemies? No animosity had soured relations the public impertinence and complacency induced between the Muslims and Sikhs of Hadali. Muslims by false sense of security. had left the Hindu-Sikh Dharamsal untouched In Germany, They first came for the because it had been a place of worship of their communists, and I did not speak up departed cousins” (10). Sadia Dahlvi recollects because I was not a communist. Then they Khushwant Singh’s confession that once in his came for the Jews, and I did not speak up childhood days Singh bore some prejudice towards because I was not a Jew. Muslims but his friendship with Lahore’s Manzoor Then they came for the trade unionists, and Quadir “cleansed him of all his biases”. Dahlvi claims I did not speak up because I was not a trade that the symbols of Islam in Khushwant Singh’s unionist. house testify his tributes to his closest friends (125). Then they came for the homosexuals, and I In Malicious Gossip Khushwant Singh envisages to did not speak up because I was not a organize India on through secular lines with the homosexual. common economic interests – farmers, weavers and Then they came for the Catholics, and I did factory workers as basis and that would end the not speak up because I was a Protestant. canker of communalism in one stroke and bring Then they came for me … but by that time fruits of development to the people (110). The same there was no one left to speak up (27). note continues in Absolute Khushwant to “openly Notes: challenge and take on the men who are creating 1. Khushwant Singh’s words at “Guest of trouble and destroying the country” and musters his Honor Talk.” The Australian Broadcasting hope in the present generation to “totally reject Commission’s Guest of Honor communal and fascist policies” (133). Programme. Broadcast on 5th April, 1964. 13. Conclusion Gyanendra Pandey quotes Sikh histories Train to Pakistan is not a mere effusion of written three and a half decades later Khushwant Singh’s musings. Simplistic, it would be continue this glorification. “In March 1947, to consider author’s passionate response to writes one historian, “The sledge hammer incidents after a decade of their occurrence as of Muslim violence fell most disastrously on aesthetic dramatization of partition when one the Sikhs in Rawalpindi division. In the rural overlooks the authorial response to the direst areas, where they were severely moments of the nation’s history. The author outnumbered, they faced total annihilation. descries beyond the ‘already qualified world’ to Frenzied Muslim mobs would assemble ensure authorial objectivity. Mano Majra an from all over, beating drums and shouting epitome of border villages, though non-descript, it their religious war cries. They would trap represents the Indian spirit of unity in diversity. The the scanty Sikh populations in their villages story alerts any dispassionate reader about the and start making short work of them. Sikhs imminent danger to Indian secularism, the binding were not hunted down in their homes, in spirit that emanates from classic ethos of solidarity gurdwaras and in the shelters offered by ‘Sarva dharma sambav13: a pronouncement of friendly local Muslims … woman nor child tolerance from vedic antiquity; a bedrock principle was spared. The holocausts Sikhs had of Indian societal harmony. Decades after its suffered in the eighteenth century were publication and after courting both acclamation and thrown into the shade by this organized repugnance from many platforms, Train to Pakistan butchery.” *Remembering Partition by undoubtedly bear the threads to darn the tattered Gyanendra Pandey, CUP, 2004, pp-82-83] Indian secular fabric. Khushwant’s premonitory Gyanendra Pandey further writes, “Indeed, addresses everyone for as the following Githa the clearest statement I have found on the

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‘Sikh method’ of attack on Muslim villages the language of the book. “If this novel in East Punjab comes from the Bengal were to be submitted today as an Muslim League leader, Husain Suhrawardy. unpublished manuscript, I believe half- He described the procedure in a letter to dozen publishers would readily accept it. Its Gandhi written at the peak of the killings in intrinsic qualities as a fine novel grip the Punjab and north-western India in August– reader.” Yet, certain degree of criticism is September 1947. The method consisted, he also leveled against his use of local idiom. wrote, in surrounding a village on three Of such Survir Kaul comments “That a sides, leaving one side ‘open’, and then largely mediocre novel, thin in character creating an uproar, opening up with gunfire and event, written in an idiom that must and setting fire to the houses. When have seemed forced even in the 1950s (and ‘Muslims *sic] and their families and which has certainly dated rapidly since), has children’ tried to escape towards the open achieved such prominence is surprising. side, they found themselves confronted by This success is either a tribute to the ‘gunners … and by a special group of young novel’s simplicity of conception and men who separate the women. These narrative…. or, more likely, follows from women and girls are abducted … and the the fact that there was so little else written men shot dead.” *Remembering Partition in English about the partition of 1947 that by Gyanendra Pandey, CUP, 2004, pp-72], interested readers did not have much to [(IOR) Mss. Eur. F200/129, Suhrawardy to choose from (…). Notwithstanding all its Gandhi, bulletin no. 4 (Lahore, 21 problems, the novel has found a large September 1947]. readership, which begs the question of 2. Green and Ketih explain Greenblatt saying, what it is about the power of not very “Here we see the familiar historicist compelling writing (or indeed cinema) to breaking down of the barriers between keep us riveted, so long as the stories told literary and non-literary discourse and are those of Partition?” (18). * Kaul, Suvir, between the social and the aesthetic. If the The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of social and the aesthetic circulate together, the Division of India. New Delhi: Permanent then that which might be considered Black, 2001]. Rituparna Roy takes the side peripheral to one discourse may be fore of Kushwanth Singh saying, “By the strictest grounded to show a particular relation or standards of novelistic discourse, this undo a text’s discursive logic. If the social would be deemed a flaw, but Singh’s and the aesthetic are continually separated, intention here is not the individualization of their own internal logics are less likely to be characters but the foregrounding of events. questioned. That which is the ‘aesthetic’, This foregrounding is indeed so important a however, can be read against the part of the narrative technique that other significance of that which would be aspects like the individualization of considered the ‘social’. An anecdote, a characters through speech is largely peripheral discourse element (somehow ignored. Thus, all the characters in the not ‘serious’), can be read against the body novel – good, bad, illiterate and educated – of the aesthetic.” *Ketih Green & Jill speak in the same idiom. It is almost as if Lebihan, Critical Theory and Practice: A Singh is determined that nothing should Course Book, London and New York: come in the way to detract the attention of Routledge, 1996.] the reader from the main storyline”(44). 3. Arthur Lall, the former ambassador [Rituparna Roy, South Asian Partition and permanent representative from India Fiction: From Kushwanth Singh to Amitav to the United Nations, politely rounds up

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Ghosh. Ed. Paul van der velde, Amsterdam and “ethnic cleansing,” retributive and University Press: Amsterdam, 2010] otherwise, most notably the Hutu–Tutsi 4. From M. Rafique Azad (ed.) Speeches and killings in Rwanda and the massacres and Statements of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed forced migrations of peoples in ex- Ali Jinnah, 1911-34 and 1947-48. Lahore Yugoslavia: Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. In 1966 Pages 56-62. reviewing the terms used to attach both 5. Can be accessed from responsibility and blame as these events http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/com transpired, one cannot help also but think mons/1947/mar/05/india-government- of the mortal cycle of revenge and policy retribution in contemporary Israel and the 6. Chhabil Das makes the point that it is an occupied West Bank.” *Paul R. Brass “The abuse of language to call these events and Retributive Genocide ‘riots’: … The demobilized soldiers, in the Punjab 1946-47: means, methods pensioners (civil and military), Lumberdars and purposes.” Journal of Genocide or Patels, Zaildars and Jagirdars and Research 5.1, 2003: pp-72] Inamkhors, all fell prey to the vicious 8. Remembering Partition by Gyanendra communal virus indiscriminately spread by Pandey, CUP, 2004, pp-37-38, 79. the Muslim League Feudal Lords, and 9. Letter to Parmanand Trehan, 16 July 1947, armed with spears, axes, tommy guns, hand in Durga Das, ed., Sardar Patel’s grenades and incendiary bombs [they] Correspondence, 1945–50, vol. V, pounced upon the peaceful populations. Ahmedabad, 1973, p. 289. [Remembering Partition by Gyanendra 10. Ranbir Samaddar quoted Lord Mountbatten Pandey, CUP, 2004, pp-83] [(NMML) B. S. “We have given careful consideration to the Moonje papers, file no. 58, ‘The Punjab position of Sikhs. The valiant community Riots and the Lessons’, from Chhabil Das, forms about an eighth of the population of ex-life member, Servants of the People Punjab, but they are so distributed that any Society (Lahore, 5 May 1947)]. partition of the province will inevitably 7. Brass writes “What gives the genocidal divide them. All of us who have the good of massacres in the Punjab their special Sikh community at heart are very sorry to character is that they were not ordered by think that the partition of Punjab which a state, but they were also not merely or they themselves desire, cannot avoid even at all spontaneous. There was splitting them to a greater or lesser extent”. organization and planning that has been “… while this search for some sort of largely ignored in the scanty literature on a ‘natural frontier’ led by Cyril Radcliffe to subject of such enormous violence, but chose the boundary at Ravi rather than there were also local acts of violence Chenab in the west (as the Congress and carried out for a multiplicity of reasons and Sikhs wanted) or at Sutlej in the east (as the motives that were not genocidal in intent: Muslim League wanted), as the novelist loot, capture of property, abduction of Rajinder Puri commented later, the women. Moreover, much of the larger scale Punjabis vanished. In West Punjab they violence was mutual. Grimshaw has Pakistanis, in East Punjab they became captured it well in the term, “retributive Hindus and Sikhs, Akalis, Congressmen, genocide”—applied also to similar actions Arya Samajists and Jan Sanghis never taking place elsewhere on the subcontinent Punjabis. [Ranbir Samaddar. “The at the time.2 In several of these respects, Undefined Acts of Partition and Dialogue”. the Punjab massacres precede and Partition: Reshaping States and Minds. anticipate contemporary forms of genocide Comp. Ranbir Samdaar, Rada Ivikovic,

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Stefano Bianchini, Sanjay Chaturvedi. New its power and sophistication, has never York: Frank Cass, 2005, pp- 98] satisfactorily resolve the theoretical 11. Ranbir Samaddar writes “The assumption of problems raised in the Gundrisse and a ‘normal state of geopolitical state of elsewhere. Finally, if literature is seen only politics’ shows the existence of two things: as a detached reflection upon the prevailing first, the normal is always the reflection of behavioral codes, a view from a safe the regime of the normal, whereby the distance, we drastically diminish our grasp extraordinary, the excess, has been of art’s concrete functions in relation to normalized, at least the attempts are very individuals and to institutions, both of much on; and second, the regime of the which shrink into an obligatory “historical normal is often the strategy to gloss over background” that adds little to our the fault lines in the extraordinary. To find understanding. We drift back toward a out how the ‘excess’ or ‘extraordinary’ is conception of art as addressed to a sought to be normalized and yet how that timeless, cultureless, universal human strategy is never at peace with itself essence or, alternatively as a self-regarding, because of continuous contestations, it is autonomous, closed system-in either case, important that we probe into the art as opposed to social life. A literary normalizing accounts of the abnormal, and criticism that has affinity to this practice the splits in the accounts of profile of the must be conscious of its own status as extraordinary”. *Ranbir Samaddar, “The interpretation and intent upon Undefined Acts of Partition and Dialogue”. understanding literature as part of the Partition: Reshaping States and Minds. system of signs that constitutes a given Comp. Ranbir Samdaar, Rada Ivikovic, culture; its proper goal, however difficult to Stefano Bianchini, Sanjay Chaturvedi. New realize, is a Poetics of culture. Such York: Frank Cass, 2005, pp- 96] approach is necessarily a balancing art – 12. Stephan Greenblatt in his introduction to correcting each of the functional Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to perspectives I sketched in the preceding Shakespeare says as follows: “Literature paragraphs against the others-and function within this system in three necessarily impure; its central concerns interlocking ways: as a manifestation of the prevent it from permanently sealing off one concrete behavior of its particular author, type of discourse from another or decisively as itself the expression of the codes by separating works of art from the minds and which behavior is shaped, and as a lives of their creators and their reflection upon these codes. *…+ If audiences”(pp-4-5). [Stephen Greenblatt, interpretation limits itself to the behavior Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to of the author, it becomes literary biography Shakespeare. USA: UoCP, 1980] 13. The in either a conventionally historical or concept can be accessed from psychoanalytic mode. And risks losing a http://www.hinduhumanrights.info/sarva- sense of the larger networks of meaning in dharma-sambhava-unity-or-confusion-of- which both the author and his works religions/ explains Sava Dharma Sambava participate. If, alternatively, literature is as “a common tenet of Hinduism is "Sarva viewed exclusively as the expression of Dharma Sambhava, which literally means social rules and instructions, it risks being that all Dharmas (truths) are equal to or absorbed entirely into an ideological harmonious with each other. In recent superstructure. Marx himself vigorously times this statement has been taken as resisted this functional absorption of art, meaning "all religions are the same" - that and subsequent Marxist aesthetics, for all

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all religions are merely different paths to God or the same spiritual goal.” Fort, Adrian. The Life and Times of a Imperial 13. The same concept discussed in Servant. London: Random House, 2011. http://veda.wikidot.com/dharma-rajya Print. explains Sarva Dharma Sambava as Gandhi, Mahatma. The Collected Works of Mahatma “Freedom of different viewpoints, different Gandhi. Vol. 98. Delhi: Ministry of forms of worship not only outside religion Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of but even within religion. Even certain sects India, 1994. Print. who are hedonistic and consumeristic, and Greenblat, Stephen. “Towards a poetics of culture”. who do not strictly believe in the existence New Historicism . Ed. Aram Veeser. New of God, are also taken as part of society. York: Routledge, 1989. 1-14. Print. Accepts that there are many ways of Grimshaw, Allen D. “Genocide and democide.” attaining salvation. Other paths, ways, Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and faiths or religions can therefore be taken as Conflict, Three Volume Set. Ed. Lester alternative ways of attaining one's moksha. Kurtz. 1st ed. Vol. 2. Academic, UK, USA, Within religion, one should finds Netherlands: 1999. Print. acceptance to many other sub-religions or Grujic V. Peter. Kosovo Knot. Pittsburg: Dorrance, schools, which are in many respects 2014. Print. dissimilar to each other but still considered Hariharan, Githa. In Times of Siege. Manipal: part of broad nationhood. Entire human Penguin, 2009. Print. race to work for the ennoblement of every Hodson, H. V. The Great Divide: Britain, India and human being. To uplift and alleviate every Pakistan. London: Hutchison, 1969. Print. human being to the status of a noble, Jalal, Ayesha. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the cultural and civilized being; become a pure Muslim League and the Demand for human being within and without. Wishes Pakistan. Great Britain: CUP, 1994. Print. happiness, mercy, welfare and good for Lentricchia, Frank. “Foucalt’s Legacy-A New everyone.” Historicism?”. New Historicism. Ed. Aram WORKS CITED: Veeser. New York: Routledge, 1989. 231- Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination, ed. 242. Print. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Novick, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life M. Holquist. Austin, Tex.: University of Boston and New York: Mariner, 1999. Print. Texas Press. 1981. Print. Quisar Zoha Alam, Language and Literature: Divers Barelvi, Ebadat. Azadi ke Sayee Mein. Lahore: 1988. Indian Experiences, New Delhi: Atlantic, Print. 1996. Print. Brass, Paul R. “The Partition of India and Retributive Sengupta, Somini. “Bearing Steady Witness to Genocide in the Punjab 1946-47: means, Partition’s Wounds.” New York Times, methods and purposes.” Journal of NewYork Times. 21 Sep 2006. Web. 16 Aug Genocide Research 5.1 (2003): 71-101. 2015. Print. Singh, Armik. Introduction. The Partition in Chaudhari, Nirad C. Thy Hand, Great Anarch! India Retrospect. Ed. Armik Singh. New Delhi: 1921–1952. New York: Addison-Wesley, Anamika, 2000. xix. Print. 1987. Print. Singh, Khushwant. Malicious Gossip. Harper Collins: Dahlvi, Sadia. “My Friend Khushwanth”. A Man New Delhi, 2008. Print. Called Kushwanth Singh. Ed. Rohini Singh. Singh, Kushwant. Train to Pakistan. New Delhi: New Delhi: UBS, 1996. 115-28. Print. Penguin & Ravi Dayal, 2007. Print. Dehlavi, Shahid Ahmad, Dilli ki bipta. Karachi: Naya Daur, 1948. Print.

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Singh, Kushwant. Truth, Love and a Little Malice: An Autobiography. New Delhi: Penguin, 2002. Print. Veeser, Aram. Introduction. New Historicism. By Veeser. Ed. Aram Veeser. New York: Routledge, 1989. ix. Print.

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