Khushwant singh brief biography of princesses

However in , he returned the honour as protest to Indian government against the storming of Golden Temple by the Indian Army. In the year , Khushwant Singh was awarded with the Padma Vibhushan. In , he was given Sahitya academy fellowship award by Sahitya academy of India. Khushwant Singh was a member of the Rajya Sabha from the year to the year Books and Documentaries.

He mainly wrote in English language. Among his major books included Train To Pakistan first Published in which won him international acclaim and Groove Press Award in The book depicts the partition of India and Pakistan in His third major work was Delhi: A Novel. Khushwant Singh by V. Although Khushwant Singh is a distinguished Sikh historian, his reputation as a fiction writer rests solely upon Train to Pakistan , a harrowing tale of events along the borders of the newly divided nations of India and Pakistan in the summer of The atrocities that accompanied the division of these nations had an enormously depressing effect on a world that had just fought a long, bitter war to defeat practitioners of genocide.

Khushwant singh brief biography of princesses

The somewhat artificial division of the subcontinent the boundaries remain in dispute had been strictly along religious lines: Pakistan was to be a nation of Moslems; India, of Hindus, Sikhs, and what Singh calls "pseudo Christians. Rather than settle down to peaceful coexistence or permit a passive exchange of populations, partisans on both sides set out on a violent campaign of annihilating the communities that were trapped on their ancestral lands beyond friendly borders.

Train to Pakistan is set against a background of this ruthless and senseless mass destruction. This powerful novel derives its title from a squalid border town, where a rail line crosses from India to Pakistan. At first this mixed community of Sikhs and Moslems is undisturbed by the violence that is breaking out elsewhere on the frontier, but inevitably it, too, is caught up in the mass hysteria as ominous "ghost trains" of slain Sikhs begin to arrive in town from across the border.

Agitation for reprisals follows when the Moslems of the town are at last rounded up and fanatics urge the Sikhs of the community to kill their former neighbors as the train carrying them to Pakistan passes through town. Singh's story contrasts the ineffectualness of the educated and ruling classes with the power of the violent and irrational peasants.

Early in the story the town's only educated citizen, a Hindu money-lender, is gruesomely murdered by a band of Dacoity professional bandits. Juggut Singh, a passionate Sikh farmer with a bad record, is suspected of the crime—though he played no part in it—and imprisoned; at the same time, an educated young former Sikh, Iqbal, comes to the community to agitate for a radical cause and is also imprisoned on suspicion of being a Moslem League agent.

While these two are off the scene, the unlighted trains with their cargoes of dead begin to roll into town, and the agitation for reprisals begins. Both the young radical and a government commissioner, Hukum Chand, are unable to prevent the vicious plot against the fleeing Moslems from being carried out, and collapse emotionally; but in an extraordinary gesture of self-sacrifice, Juggut Singh—who had been in love with a Moslem girl—foils the plotters and allows the train to roll over his body "on to Pakistan.

Singh's terse fable suggests a profound disillusionment with the power of law, reason, and intellect in the face of elemental human passions. The philosophy that sparked his tale seems to be expressed through the thoughts of Iqbal, the young radical, as he realizes his helplessness and drifts off into a drugged sleep the night of the climactic incident of the train's passing: "If you look at things as they are … there does not seem to be a code either of man or God on which one can pattern one's conduct….

In such circumstances what can you do but cultivate an utter indifference to all values? Nothing matters. The action occurs about five years before that of the earlier novel, at a time when the British are expressing a willingness to get out of India once the Axis nations have been defeated in World War II. Sher Singh, the ambitious but lazy son of a Sikh senior magistrate, cannot decide between two worlds, "the one of security provided by his father … and the other full of applause that would come to him as the heroic leader of a band of terrorists.

Sher is suspected of the murder and imprisoned, but on the advice of his mother when his father will not speak to him he refuses to betray his companions. In Chatterji, Lola ed. The Fiction of St. New Delhi: Ravi Dayal Publisher. OCLC The Tribune. Retrieved 1 March The Guardian. ISSN A Critical Study. Bhattacharjea, Aditya; Chatterji, Lola eds.

King's College London. The Indian Express. India Today. Retrieved 18 September The Economic Times. Archived from the original on 23 March The Library of Congress New Delhi. The Caravan. Retrieved 3 May In Nandini Mehta ed. Not a Nice Man To Know. Penguin Books. On 25 July , one week before he was to retire, he was abruptly asked to leave with immediate effect.

Khushwant quietly got up, collected his umbrella, and without a word to his staff, left the office where he had worked for nine years, raising the Illustrated Weekly 's circulation from 65, to , The new editor was installed the same day, and ordered by the Weekly 's management to kill the "Farewell" column. Retrieved 9 August Limca Book of Records.

Archived from the original on 8 August Retrieved 20 June Retrieved 5 November Outlook India. Retrieved 27 March Khushwant Singh's Big Book of Malice. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Jiya Prakashan. Hindustan Times. Archived from the original on 5 December Retrieved 20 March The Avenue Mail. Turmoil in Punjab Politics. Mittal Publications.

Indo-Asian News Service. Retrieved 23 March The Hindu. The Express Tribune. The Cricket Country. Open University. A History of the Sikhs. Princeton University Press. Khushwant Singh". The Journal of Modern History. Retrieved 8 September Orient Blackswan. More Malicious Gossip. Harper Collins. Sex, Scotch And Scholarship. Penguin Books India. India: An Introduction.

A History of the Sikhs 2 ed. It earned a great deal of approval in India. Khushwant Singh was a votary of more prominent political relations with Israel when India did not have any desire to disappoint Arab countries where a large number of Indians discovered business. He visited Israel during the s and was intrigued by its encouraging. Tweet Share Share Share.

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