Khushwant Singh – författare

“In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people—Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs—were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.”It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.

The new second edition volume one 1469-1839 is updated to the present recounts the return of the community to the mainstream of national life. Written in Khushwant Singh's trademark style to be accessible to a general, non-scholarly audience, the book is based on scholarly archival research. This volume covers the social, religious and political background which led to the formation of the Sikh faith in the fifteenth century. Basing his account on original documents in Persian, Gurmukhi and English, the author traces the growth of Sikhism and tells of the compilation of its sacred scriptures in the Granth Sahib. The transformation of the Sikhs from a pacifist sect to a militant group called the Khasla led by Guru Gobind Singh is portrayed in detail.

I am inclined to conclude that we do not know whether or not God exists or ever did. I go one step further and hold that his existence or non-existence is of no consequence to human beings.

6 June 1984: The Indian Army storms the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Called Operation Bluestar, the historic and unprecedented event ended the growing spectre of terrorism perpetrated by the extremist Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers once and for all. But it left in its wake unsolved political questions that continued to threaten Punjab's stability for years to come. How, in a brief span of three years, did India's dynamic frontier state become a national problem? Who was to blame: the central government for allowing the crisis to drift despite warnings, or the long-drawn-out Akali agitation, or the notorious gang of militants who transformed a holy shrine into a sanctuary for terrorists? First published two months after Operation Bluestar, The Punjab Story pieces together the complex Punjab jigsaw through the eyes of some of India's most eminent public figures and journalists. Writing with the passion and conviction of those who were involved with the drama, they present a wide-ranging perspective on the past, present and future of the Punjab tangle; and the truth of many of their'conclusions having been borne out by time.

For Khushwant Singh who wrote his own obituary in his twenties, death is not sacred but he reflects on it increasingly these days. In Death At My Doorstep, a collection of obituaries written over the years, he presents the dead in death, as in life - good, bad or ugly. Be it on the twilight hours of Bhutto, the gory end of Sanjay Gandhi, the overbearing Lord Mountbatten, or on his pet Alsatian Simba, each obituary bears out his irreverence or affection. Cocking a snook at death, he has also penned his own epitaph. Yet outliving those whom he admired has moved him to tears, and many of his obituaries have left the reader with a heavy heart. While Death At My Doorstep is Khushwant Singh's demystification of death, it also ferries his message to Badey Mian, in the words of Allama Iqbal:Baagh-e-bahisht say mujhay hukm-e-safar diya thha kyon? Kaar-e-Jahaan daraaz hai, ab meyra intazaar kar. (Why did you order me out of the garden of paradise? I have a lot of work that remains unfulfilled; now you better wait for me.)