Back to the Classics: Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (1956)

The Partition of India in 1947 is something I've been interested in for a long time but it wasn't until I read Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh that I had any idea of the scope of the tremendous upheaval, tragedy and heartache it caused. An arbitrary line drawn by an 'Empire on whom the sun was setting,' divided a nation and created the twins countries of India and Pakistan. Former neighbours and friends became deadly enemies, people lost their homes, and an estimated one to two million lost their lives.
The author chose a true-to-life work of fiction to tell his story. Every character in the story was modelled on a real person that passed through Khushwant Singh's own life. He was about 32 years of age at the time of Partition and witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed by Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, and records them without taking sides or showing favour. He and his family were forced to flee from Lahore in 1947, leaving behind his home, his belongings and his closest friends.

The Story

In 1947 the new state of Pakistan was formerly announced, setting in motion the mass exodus of ten million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. Northern India was in chaos and only in the remote villages on the frontier was there any semblance of peace.
Mano Majra was one of these villages, known mostly because it boasted a train station. Not that many trains stopped there. In fact, it was only two slow passenger trains, one from Delhi to Lahore in the mornings and another from Lahore to Delhi in the evenings, that were scheduled to stop and then only for a few minutes. The express trains and the morning mail train rushed through without pausing. Goods trains shed and collected wagons on the sidings, and throughout the night the villagers could hear the whistling and puffing of engines and the clanging of metal couplings. The trains were the villagers' alarm clocks, signalling their mealtimes, their siestas and their prayer times. That is, up until the summer of 1947.

After Partition, the trains became less punctual, disturbing the rhythm of the village. A unit of Sikh soldiers arrived and machine guns were mounted at the railway station. Trains coming from Delhi stopped and changed their drivers and guards before continuing on to Pakistan. Trains from Pakistan heading to Delhi with their Hindu and Sikh refugees would run through without stopping.
But one morning, the train from Pakistan stopped at Mano Majra and the only person to emerge alive out of the fifteen hundred on board was a guard from the tail end of the carriages.

It was a botched up surgical operation. India's arms were chopped off without any anaesthetic, and streams of blood swamped the land of the five rivers known as the Punjab.

An order came to evacuate all the Muslims in Mano Majra to a refugee camp and from there, be placed on a train to Pakistan. Sikh agitators arrived in the village after the Muslims had left and drummed up support for a revenge attack on the next train to Pakistan. For hundreds of years the Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims had lived together as neighbours in this village and now those former neighbours and friends who had just left were to be murdered.

Iqbal, born a Sikh and educated in England, came to Mano Majra with his head full of theory to spread his message of communist reform. Learning that the train to Pakistan was to be sabotaged, he found he had nothing to say to the people of Mano Majra:

Should he go out, face the mob and tell them in clear ringing tones that this was wrong - immoral? Walk right up to them with his eyes fixing the armed crowd in a frame - without flinching, without turning...
Then with dignity fall under a volley of blows, or preferably a volley of rifle shots. A cold thrill went down Iqbal's spine.
There would be no one to see this supreme act of sacrifice...It would be an utter waste of life! And what would it gain? A few subhuman species were going to slaughter some of their own kind - a mild setback to the annual increase of four million...
In a state of chaos self-preservation is the supreme duty.

If you really believe that things are so rotten that your first duty is to destroy- to wipe the slate clean - then you should not turn green at small acts of destruction. Your duty is to connive with those who make the conflagration, not to turn a moral hosepipe on them - to create such a mighty chaos that all that is rotten like selfishness, intolerance, greed, falsehood, sycophancy, is drowned. In blood, if necessary.

It was left to another, a most unlikely character, the local 'budmash' or worthless thug, to put his life on the line for the sake of someone he cared about. 

Final thoughts

This was a brutal, gross, and at times crude novel. It's not the sort of book you'd leave sitting on your coffee table and I don't recommend it unconditionally, but it was a heartfelt, candid and literary account written by an excellent author. I learnt more from this one book of fiction than I would have gleaned from a shelf-full of political or historical titles. It was a powerful and awful account. Although there wasn't a political theme to the book, I couldn't help imbibing the political atmosphere of those days. Mano Majra was a miniature India that mirrored the whole nation. It also mirrored humanity in its portrayal of the fluidity of human reasoning - we can justify anything we decide to do. We are so readily manipulated by the opinions of others and the voices of those who stir and agitate.

The photography in this edition of the book is the work of Margaret Bourke-White who lived and travelled in India during 1946 and 1947. She was sent by Life magazine to cover the emerging nations of India and Pakistan after spending four years in Europe during World War II where she witnessed the Nazi concentration camps. According to one of the articles below, some British soldiers and journalists who had witnessed the Nazi death camps claimed Partition’s brutalities were worse.

The copy I have above is out of print but available secondhand or there is this edition here which doesn't include the images by Margaret Bourke-White. The images are online here.

Further reading:

The Great Divide: The violent legacy of Indian Partition

Khushwant Singh (1915-2014) - Obituary

BBC article - The Hidden Story of Partition and its Legacies




Train to Pakistan is my pick for the Back to the Classics 2016 category for a Classic by a Non-White Author.

The Tragedy of the Korosko by Arthur Conan Doyle (1898)

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. After finishing school he went on to study medicine and later moved to the south of England to set up a medical practice. It was here that he started to focus on his writing and where he met his future wife, Louise. About nine years after their marriage, the couple moved to Egypt in hopes of overcoming Louise's poor health, but she died of tuberculosis six years later.
While in Egypt, Conan Doyle witnessed first hand the fragility of British rule in the Middle East and the idea for this book was born.

In 1895 the steamer, S.W. Korosko, set out from Shellal, a small village in Upper Egypt, with an assorted group of English, Irish and American tourists on board. Their intention was to travel up the two hundred miles of Nubian Nile, visiting the various points of interest along the way, but during one of their excursions they were kidnapped by a group of Arab dervishes and plunged into a world steeped in seventh century ideas and practice.

And now they were herded in at the base of the Abousir rock, this little group of modern types who had fallen into the rough clutch of the seventh century - for in all save the rifles in their hands there was nothing to distinguish these men from the desert warriors who first carried the crescent flag out of Arabia. The East does not change, and the dervish raiders were not less brave, less cruel, or less fanatical than their forebears.

The Tragedy of the Korosko is an absorbing adventure that, despite being published over a hundred years ago, is uncannily relevant to us in the 21st Century. It has its moments of melodrama, an improbable optimistic ending, and the colonial attitude is downright embarrassing and arrogant at times, but it is historically real. Apart from the cultural and historical aspects, which are fascinating, the author's humour is cleverly scattered throughout and his characters sensitively drawn:

Miss Adams, the Bostonian old maid:

She had never been from home before, and she was now busy upon the self-imposed task of bringing the East up to the standard of Massachusetts. She had hardly landed in Egypt before she realised that the country needed putting to rights, and since the conviction struck her she had been very fully occupied. The saddle-galled donkeys, the starved pariah dogs, the flies round the eyes of the babies, the naked children, the importunate beggars, the ragged, untidy women - they were all challenges to her conscience, and she plunged in bravely at her work of reformation. As she could not speak a word of the language, however, and was unable to make any of the delinquents understand what it was she wanted, her passage up the Nile left the immemorial East very much as she had found it...

The English bachelor:

His work had become an ingrained habit, and, being a bachelor, he had hardly an interest in life to draw him away from it, so that his soul was being gradually bricked up like the body of a medieval nun. But at last there came this kindly illness, and Nature hustled James Stephens out of his groove, and sent him into the broad world...
At first he resented it deeply. Everything seemed trivial to him compared to his own petty routine. But gradually his eyes were opened, and he began dimly to see that it was his work which was trivial when compared to this wonderful, varied, inexplicable world of which he was so ignorant.

The British colonel:

He rode with his back arched and his chin sunk upon his breast, for the old, time-rotted body was worn out, but in his bright, alert eyes there was always a trace of the gallant tenant who lived in the shattered house.

The Hesperus Press copy I have includes an interesting foreword written by Tony Robinson in 2003 in which he recounts an experience he had while making a television film in Egypt. He raises the questions of moral authority and global responsibility that Conan Doyle probed; questions that are still relevant today. My 16 year old son read and enjoyed this book after I did and it triggered an interesting discussion.
It fits into the time period covered in the last chapters of Volume IV of Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples, The Great Democracies.

Linking to Back to the 2016 Classics Challenge - Adventure Classic

Geography: Culture & Worldview

Perhaps no knowledge is more delightful than such an intimacy with the earth's surface, region by region, as should enable the map of any region to unfold a panorama of delight, disclosing not only mountains, rivers, frontiers, the great features we know as 'Geography,' but associations, occupations, some parts of the past and much of the present, of every part of this beautiful earth.

I love Charlotte Mason's view of teaching Geography and the quote above from Volume 6 of her wonderful book, A Philosophy of Education.

My memories of high school geography are very vague, probably due to the fact that I didn't turn up to the lessons most of the time. I didn't find anything about the subject remotely interesting and from what I observed my teacher seemed to feel the same way.

I couldn't wait to be old enough to leave school, travel and learn what I thought was real geography. I have travelled a fair bit overseas since then and have lived in most states in Australia but I've also learnt how to choose good books that make geography come alive. Books that have given my children and me the opportunity to travel with their minds to places they might never have the opportunity of visiting, to get a glimpse into a completely different culture through the eyes of someone who has their own unique perspective coursing through their veins; books that open up a panorama of places and cultures that are now no more. 

I love the idea of 'associations.' A couple of years ago two newly arrived Iranian sisters walked into our church's free English classes and with their faltering English we heard about their culture seen through their nominal Muslim eyes: young girls growing up under a culture that was not originally theirs, imposed from the outside.

This encounter with these two young women opened my heart to learn about their homeland.

Fast forward a year: our family had the privilege of hearing Dr. Daniel Shayesteh speak and we were so impressed and touched by his story which he wrote about in his book, The House I Left Behind.

The House I left Behind gives a unique insight into the life of a practicing Muslim through the lens of a man raised in an Iranian (Persian) culture dominated by fundamentalist Islam (historically Iran has not always been Muslim and defended its Persian heritage for many years despite Arabic invasions).

It's the story of a man who desired democracy and economic justice for his country and believed the Iranian Revolution which deposed the Shah of Iran and opened the door for the rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 would be the means of accomplishing this.

Was it ever stated that the purpose of the Revolution was a religious one and one that would empower the Ayatollah Khomeini with authority to apply Shari'a law in Iran? Never. The intention was supposedly a socio-political revolution that would ensure the equal and just distribution of wealth among Iranians by the vote of the people. Why would a righteous Islamic leader change his mind and betray his nation? He did it obviously to gratify his lust for power even at the cost of his fellow Muslims and countrymen, aligning himself with the political philosophy of Islam. Khomeini's manipulations were so subtle and clever that it never occurred to the people that he was deceiving them and the enforcement of Shari'a established his absolute supremacy over every individual and power in Iran.

The book looks at Persian culture and it's origins - the reigns of the great kings of old, Cyrus and Darius, the Indo-European roots of their language, their love of music and poetry and their customs and then tells the author's story:

Daniel Shayesteh was born on the Western side of the Caspian Sea in Northern Iran, which was formerly the kingdom of Persia, in the village of Talesh, in 1954. While studying in Tehran he became involved while a student in the Iranian Revolution and later in politics and saw the ousting of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

We never knew the mullahs would start with pro-democratic attitudes but demand absolute allegiance in the name of Islam later. We just did not see it coming. We did not know that they would hate Iranian culture and would enforce ancient Saudi Arabian culture to dominate the lives of Iranians.  

Daniel's hopes for justice and social, political and economic reform in his homeland were dashed and both he and his fellow students and revolutionaries were betrayed by the false promises of Khomeini and the mullahs.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has built many doors between Iranian parents and their children. The doors get closed to all if just one member of a family opposes government. For this reason, millions of doors are closed now between the children of Iran and their parents. The Islamic government has left a lot of parents mourning for their lost and fugitive children.

Falling out of favour with Khomeini's political group, he was kidnapped and sentenced to death but after a miraculous release he went into hiding and escaped to Turkey. It was here, after being betrayed by his business partner that he went to a group of Christians for help in trying to recover his money, and came to know Jesus Christ. Eventually his wife and their three daughters were able to join him in Turkey but eventually they even had to escape from there after threats on their lives.

This is a heart felt book written by a man who loves his heritage and his homeland and who still grieves for the relationships he had to sever when he left Iran. It is the best book I've ever read on Islamic culture. My grandfather (my mother's stepfather) was a nominal Muslim originally from Pakistan. I had that association when I was a child so I thought I had some insight into the Muslim worldview but Daniel Shayesteh's book opened up a whole new dimension for me, as well as presenting a diverse panorama of Persian culture.

I read this book aloud and even my 7 year old at the time kept asking for more. I did do some minor editing for her sake as some of the incidents he documents weren't suitable for her.

It was hard to choose what to quote from his book  - there was so much that was worth sharing but also if read in isolation his words may sound harsh. I was fortunate to hear him speak before I read his book and I found him to be very gentle, forgiving and very family minded. His story made me weep when I heard it from his own lips.

Is there any democratic Islamic country in the world which has developed an egalitarian  system and tolerated human rights, freedom of speech and religion? If yes, why has every Islamic country, even the most moderate one among them, made the proselytising of Muslims illegal? Why can Muslims build their mosques and schools in Islamic countries, but non-Muslims are not allowed to have similar rights in Islamic countries?

The mosque is also vital for establishing Muslims as sovereign over non- Muslims in a non-Islamic society. Building a mosque in a non-Islamic society or country symbolises Islam's claim over that society or country, even with a non-Muslim majority.

James A. Garfield once said that the two eyes of History are Geography and Chronology. Daniel Shayesteh's book presents a story that looks with both eyes and unfolds a sweeping narrative of a little known culture and a mostly misunderstood worldview.