Singh married his wife Kaval, who died some years before him, in 1939. He received many honors for his work in journalism and fiction, including a lifetime achievement award for his contributions to Indian literature. In addition to Train to Pakistan, Singh is also known for his two-volume work A History of the Sikhs, 1469-1964 (vol. He discontinued his support for the prime minister, however, after Indian troops attacked and killed hundreds of Sikhs at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. From 1980 to 1986, he served in India’s upper house of parliament and was a supporter of Indira Gandhi’s government.
The following year, he began a career as a journalist with All India Radio and spent the next two decades working as an editor of leading publications in India while continuing to publish fiction. He published his first short story collection, The Mark of Vishnu, and Other Stories, in London in 1950. During his four years in the foreign service, he took posts in London and Ottawa and also started to write fiction. He started his law practice in Lahore on the eve of the Second World War and practiced until the Partition of India in 1947, at which point he moved his family to Delhi and took a position with the Indian Foreign Service as a press attaché. Singh earned a Bachelor of Arts from Government College in Lahore in 1934 before obtaining his law degree from London’s King’s College in 1938. Later, he would become a prolific translator of Urdu poetry. His native tongue was Punjabi, but he was also fluent in Urdu and grew up reading the work of Urdu poets. Khushwant Singh was born to an affluent Sikh family and grew up in the Muslim-majority village of Hadali, then part of British India. Khushwant, Singh, Margaret Bourke-White, and Pramod Kapoor. However, do his actions, in the end, outweigh his immoral behavior in the beginning? So, although Hukum Chand may have is introduced as a shady character, he was able to change somewhat by the end of the book. Kushwant Singh also shows Hukum Chand’s more humanistic behavior in the portion where Hukum Chand aids in saving hundreds of Muslims. One way is his attitude towards Muslims changes, and he releases Jugga, the protagonist hero from jail. It was not the sort of dirt which could be wiped off or washed clean.” (Singh/ Wikipedia)Īlthough Hukum Chand struggles with many moral issues, the reader sees him change towards the end of the novel in a few ways. He rubbed his hands on the hem of his shirt. When they begin fighting, they fall right next to him causing him to panic, “Hukum Chand felt as if he had touched the lizards and they had made his hands dirty. Kushwant Singh also uses Hukum Chand’s encounter with two geckos to display the characters ethical issues. Which, could be a use of symbolism to represent his immoral actions such as, his trysts with the young prostitute. Kushwant Singh depicts this moral conflict uniquely by describing Hukum Chand with a dirty appearance.
It becomes apparent throughout the story that he is a man in moral conflict because of it,” (Wikipedia) Alcohol also enables him to commit many immoral things because he is under the influence, even, “justify trysts with a teenage prostitute the same age as his deceased daughter. In the text, Hukum Chand’s part of the story does not focus on his job and what he does around the town but, instead examines all of his daily problems and stresses. Alcohol (Wikipedia) becomes one of the tools Hukum Chand uses in an attempt to escape his problems and stresses responsibilities. This story mostly revolves around three characters: Iqbal, an educated social reformer, Juggut Singh, a Sikh man who lives in the village with a bad reputation, and Hukum Chand, the corrupt commissioner. The novel is set in the small village of Mano Majra. Train to Pakistan, written by Khushwant Singh, is a novel which narrates the Partition of India.