POST-PARTITION TRAUMA AND IDENTITY RECONSTRUCTION IN KHUSHWANT SINGH’S TRAIN TO PAKISTAN

Abstract

The article examines how Singh describes post Partition trauma and the struggles of identity formation among individuals as well as communities in the novel. The 1947 Partition of India was one of the most traumatic events in South Asian history leaving in its wake, displacement on an unimaginable scale, communal violence and fractured social ethos. This cataclysmic event is conveyed in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956), which depicts the inferno through the prism of Mano Majra, a fictional Punjabi village engulfed by the sweep of history. Utilizing postcolonial trauma theory and cultural memory studies, the study demonstrates how violence, dislocation and betrayal shatter collective and individual identities, providing a reading of moral choice, acts of resistance and cultural negotiation. The review points out that Singh’s storytelling also not only chronicles the scarred memory of Partition, but also probes into possible ways for ethical re-identification in a trauma-ridden environment. By foregrounding everyday villager’s mental traumas and moral predicaments, Singh offers an alternative to nationalist historiographies of Partition that depict the event solely in political terms; instead, he shows how the lived experience of Partition was a profoundly human crisis for ordinary people. This paper adds to Partition Studies and English literary studies revealing fiction's position as testimony and critique of collective trauma

Keywords: Partition, trauma, identity, Khushwant Singh, postcolonial literature, cultural memory