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What is the routine of the village that is disrupted in 1947?.What is the religious/ethnic make-up of the village? Who owns most of the land?.How is Mano Majra described? Where is it located?.What historical context is established at the beginning? What has happened in Calcutta, Bihar, and Noakhali?.What does the weather portend at the opening of the novel?.What is the implication of focusing on a predominantly Sikh village, rather than a Muslim or Hindu one? Also, how might the novel be different were it a story about a “Train to India”?.How does the ending of the novel change, if at all, our view of each? In particular, comment on the very differing characterizations of the men whose lives in the novel become intertwined: Iqbal and Jugga.If we view them as representative types, how are the following figures depicted: the foreign-educated social reformer from the “new” India, Iqbal Singh the Hindu Indian government official Hukum Chand the local Sikh villager Bhai Meet Singh the masculine “sympathetic” criminal Juggut Singh the young, sexually exploited Muslim female characters Haseena and Nooran Baksh?.How does the novel represent specific religious belief/practice as such? Does the novel suggest that “Muslim,” “Hindu,” and “Sikh” are exclusively religious designations, or is there more to membership in these groups than just religious belief?.How many of each are presented? To what extent? What are some characteristic features that one might attribute to each group and gender based on these depictions? Is there anything problematic about these depictions? Consider the ways the different ethnic/religious groups are presented: Sikh males and female, Muslim males and females, and Hindu males and females.As the events unfold, particularly in the final section of the novel, are the authorities portrayed as being in an impossible situation, with few if any good options and little ability to prevent the violence?.
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To what extent does the novel imply that what occurs in Mano Majra is typical or emblematic of what occurs in the Punjab and beyond during Partition, or does it suggest that this is merely one individualized portrait?.How much of the broader historical setting of the Partition does one encounter in the novel? How much indication of the impact of British colonization do we receive? The pre-Partition relationships among the different groups? The conditions outside of this village and even the Punjab itself? The scale of the violence and of the migrations that occurred during Partition?.What is the general style and tone of the narration? Does this impersonal (i.e., 3rd person) narrator seem to have a particular view of characters and events? How easy, or difficult, is it to distinguish between the point of view of the narrator and thoughts and feelings of the characters to whom we are allowed internal access?.What is the significance of trains, including but also beyond the obvious deadly ones we encounter in the novel?.How does the weather and natural world more generally function as a symbol and backdrop over the course of the novel?.Study Questions for SIngh Singh, Train to Pakistan Study