A Study of National Impact The Train to Pakistan

Abstract Khushwant Singh also had an extremely successful career as an author. He has written a poignant short story about his grandmother-The Portrait of a Lady. She would constantly be occupied in recitation of the Holy Scriptures-‘The Granth Sahib’ and ‘Sukhmani’ the psalm of peace. This greatly influenced Singh and probably generated his interests in religion. Perhaps this guided him afterward specialize in Sikhism. He translated the Sikh sunrise Prayer ‘Japji’, composed by Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. He also wrote a book entitled The Sikhs. His parents had rented a small hovel where his father had taken contracts for the construction of a new capital of India, New Delhi. Khushwant Singh’s father was a contractor; he saw his father go ahead the life of a contractor as has been presented in careful details in the chapters like ‘The Life of a Contractor’ and ‘The 204 Builders’ in his novel Delhi. The diplomatic attitude adopted by Sir Sobha Singh and by the other Indians in their transactions with the British officers has depicted by Khushwant Singh in his second novel- I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale. In Delhi Khushwant Singh attended the Modern School for nine years. It was a nationalist school; national leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu were invited to address the students in those days. He also published two classic volumes History of the Sikhs, several works of fiction comprise the novels Train to Pakistan; I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi and The Company of Women . Apart from that a number of translated works from Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi, non-fiction books on nature, current affairs…etc. Khushwant Singh was a Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. He has obtained several awards and honours, he was awarded ‘the Padma Bhushan’ in 1974 by the President of India but he returned the declaration in 1984 in remonstration against the Union Governments cordon of the Golden Temple, Amritsar. Keywords : Contractor, Successful, Construction, Builders, remonstration