Fluent Essays

Choose one of the options below and write a 3- to 3½-page essay that addresses the prompt.  No works cited required  Option 1 Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan has three main characters:  Juggut Singh, a Sikh peasant and “budmash” (bad man or criminal) who lives in the village of Mano Majra; Mr. Hukum Chand, a Hindu magistrate and commissioner in the district where Mano Majra is located; and Iqbal Singh, a secular (non-religious), urban, well-educated man who has been sent to Mano Majra by the People’s Party of India (a communist organization) to organize its poor, rural people to demand greater rights.   Choose one of these characters and write an essay that examines, and makes a judgment about, his ethics or morality.  Does this character behave ethically or unethically?  Is he “good,” “bad” or somewhere in between, and what specific actions, or failures to act, lead you to make this judgment?   Since readers have access to these characters’ thoughts and moral reasoning about their decisions, you should consider thesethings as well.  Do the thoughts a character has about himself and his situation make his actions seem more, or less, sympathetic or admirable?  (Note:  literary characters, like people in real life, are not always good judges of their own motives and actions, so you have to be careful here.  Juggut Singh is an interesting case in point:  he considers himself a bad man because that is what it says in the police registry, but is he?)  Apart from what a character may think to himself in his own defense, are there any objective factors that cause us to look more or less favorably on the character’s actions or failures to act?  Is he, in other words, doing the best he can under the circumstances?  (Both Hukum Chand and Iqbal Singh spend a good deal of time thinking about these circumstances and how they may limit what they can do.) In judging your character’s ethics or morality, you should consider his thoughts and behavior generally, but pay particular attention to his response to the communal violence (violence across ethnic or religious lines) that is at the center of the novel.  What does the character do or not do when confronted with these events?  To what extent is he complicit in or responsible for the bloodshed, sexual violation and dispossession that are engulfing the newly separated countries of India and Pakistan?Khushwant Singh t r a i n t o p a k i s t a n Contents About the Author Dedication Dacoity Kalyug Mano Majra Karma Follow Penguin Copyright Page PENGUIN BOOKS TRAIN TO PAKISTAN It is the summer of 1947. But Partition does not mean much to the Sikhs and Muslims of Mano Majra, a village on the border of India and Pakistan. Then, a local money-lender is murdered, and suspicion falls upon Juggut Singh, the village gangster who is in love with a Muslim girl. When a train arrives, carrying the bodies of dead Sikhs, the village is transformed into a battlefield, and neither the magistrate nor the police are able to stem the rising tide of violence. Amidst conflicting loyalties, it is left to Juggut Singh to redeem himself and reclaim peace for his village. First published in 1956, Train to Pakistan is a classic of modern Indian fiction. Khushwant Singh is India’s best-known writer and columnist. He has been founder-editor of Yojana, and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, the National Herald and the Hindustan Times. He is also the author of several books which include the novels I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi, The Company of Women and Burial at Sea; the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs; and a number of translations and non-fiction books on Sikh religion and culture, Delhi, nature, current affairs and Urdu poetry. His autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, was published in 2002. Khushwant Singh was a Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974, but returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the storming of the Golden Temple by the Indian Army. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan. For my daughter Mala Dacoity The summer of 1947 was not like other Indian summers. Even the weather had a different feel in India that year. It was hotter than usual, and drier and dustier. And the summer was longer. No one could remember when the monsoon had been so late. For weeks, the sparse clouds cast only shadows. There was no rain. People began to say that God was punishing them for their sins. Some of them had good reason to feel that they had sinned. The summer before, communal riots, precipitated by reports of the proposed division of the country into a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan, had broken out in Calcutta, and within a few months the death toll had mounted to several thousand. Muslims said the Hindus had planned and started the killing. According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped. From Calcutta, the riots spread north and east and west: to Noakhali in East Bengal, where Muslims massacred Hindus; to Bihar, where Hindus massacred Muslims. Mullahs roamed the Punjab and the Frontier Province with boxes of human skulls said to be those of Muslims killed in Bihar. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs who had lived for centuries