Multiculturalism In Crisis: An Analysis of Identity, Communal Conflict, and Cultural Dislocation in Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan

Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh illustrates how the Partition disrupted the everyday coexistence of people through the lenses of social order, communication, communalism, identity, and cultural displacement. This study combines textual analysis and quantitative content analysis to investigate the ways multiculturalism and identities intercommunal conflicts and cultural displacement are portrayed in the text. Due to the absence of a complete, publishable edition of the book, the numerical component of the study relies on a dataset of 60 coded analytical text units that were established across twelve binary thematic areas; it is assumed that these data do not represent an exact count of the book. From the perspective of the analytical results, identity came to dominate the other codes (71.7%), while later phases of the analysis illustrated the presence of communalism (55.0%), fear/violence (51.7%), and cultural displacement (48.3%). Communalism was related to fear/violence (χ²=9.55, p=.002, V=.40) and cultural displacement and migration/displacement were significantly associated with cultural dislocation (χ²=32.72, p<.001, V=.74). In the context of recent studies on the Partition, the author’s focus on the moral and thematic values of the Partition is set against the collective hatred of an entire community. Hashmi reveals how the building of rigid religious boundaries during a political crisis can disrupt and fracture the idea of locality. From the perspective of recent studies, the author focuses on the moral and thematic values of the Partition that continue to challenge the collective hatred of an entire community. The study shows how digital humanities can support but not replace literary analysis.