I am not sure whether other readers will get the same feelings or not, but I am sure it will leave them unsettled and melancholy. The ending is the best part of the book because, when I finished reading, I was in tears. The story of Train to Pakistan is slow in the beginning but picks on gradually as the events unfold. Will the Mano Majra Muslims get the same fate as the Hindus of Pakistan got? Will communal riots take over the once peaceful village?
On the other hand, the police officers and government officials are tensed when a train arrives at the small station of Mano Majra – it is a ghost train full of dead corpse of Hindus from Pakistan. But as soon as he finds rest, he is arrested for the murder of the moneylender too. The next morning, a “Mona Sardar” and social worker, Iqbal, arrives in the village to prevent any riots in the area. On one such night, when he is out of the village and the local moneylender gets killed by some dacoits, he is blamed for the murder and arrested. He is in love with a Muslim weaver’s daughter with whom he often rendezvouses in the dark of the night. Jugga is a thug, infamous for his bad character. The village is very remote and hence ignorant of the happenings in the country. Mano Majra, as previously suggested, is a small village on the Indo-Pak border graced by a few inhabitants – both Sikhs and Muslims, in equal majority, along with a few important places like a railway station, an officer’s bungalow, a mosque and a temple. It is in this backdrop that the story of a small village, on the border of India and Pakistan, unfolds along with the story of its inhabitants.
The time was a tumultuous one where, as an outcome of communal riots, many people were killed, their properties looted, women raped and children tortured. It is set in 1947 when the partition of India was taking place and swarms of people – both Hindus and Muslims were migrating in large numbers. Train to Pakistan is the highly acclaimed novel written by Khushwant Singh.