Gender and Masculinity Theme Analysis

Even as love proves a powerful force within the desperate world of A Train to Pakistan, women in the story are routinely denied autonomy and defined primarily by their relationships to men. At the same time, men in the story are subject to stringent expectations of masculinity that shape their prevalence towards violence. By highlighting the highly-restrictive attitudes that prescribe both male and female behavior throughout the novel, Singh suggests that, in addition to religious and caste tensions, gendered prejudice is heavily to blame for the horrors following the Partition.

Women in the story lack their own subjectivity. When they are discussed, it is in the context of their relationships to men. Even Nooran, who is more fully detailed than any other female character in the novel, is defined as Juggut’s lover and the daughter of the Muslim weaver, Imam Baksh. Juggut’s mother is given no name at all, though Nooran calls her “beybey,” a reference to her status as a female elder and a term that reinforces her role as a nurturer. Muslim prostitute Haseena is perhaps the most powerless female character in the story, whose thoughts and feelings are filtered through her client, Hukum Chand’s, perceptions of her. These characterizations of women reinforce the notion that they lack individual agency.

Women are also regarded as objects or vessels for men’s desires. During a conversation with Iqbal in their shared cell, for example, Juggut speaks of British women as unattainable sexual objects (“houris”) and calls Indian women “black buffalos” due to their darker skin. The comparison of English women to houris, or angels, reinforces a myth, learned through colonial rule, that white women are superior to darker-skinned women and are more desirable because they were long forbidden to Indian men.

When women are not rendered sex objects, they become emblems of purity whose chastity determines their value. Chand says Hindu women are so “pure that they would rather commit suicide than let a stranger touch them.” This indicates that Hindu women who become rape victims worry that the crime committed against them will devalue them in the eyes of Hindu men. Chand’s comment is especially hypocritical given that he happily uses the services of Haseena, the teenaged Muslim prostitute, while rhapsodizing about the “purity” of Hindu women. This indicates grossly disparate standards of behavior for Hindu men and women, which constrain the latter while ensuring the sexual license of the former.

When men cannot prove their masculinity through the sexual exploitation or objectification of women, they resort to violence. Sikh men in the novel in fact characterize their manhood by a willingness to confront or commit violence. For example, when a group of Sikh soldiers goes to the gurdwara during a community meeting, a boy leader stands out among them and baits the Sikh male villagers into killing Muslims by saying that their masculinity depends on it. Singh describes the young man as “small in size, slight of build” and “somewhat effeminate.” This indicates that the boy leader is using his military authority to rouse the male villagers into violence, as a means of validating his own manhood.

Manhood is also threatened by the presence of the hijras, whose transgender or intersex identities place them outside of traditional modes of masculinity and femininity. The hijras’ flagrant disregard for social norms allows them to call attention to the performative nature of gender. During a confrontation with a Sikh and Hindu mob that threatens to kill a Muslim infant, for example, the hijras “[whirl] around so fast that their skirts [fly] in the air,” revealing their genitals and prompting them to ask the mob if they are “Hindus or Muslims,” a comic stroke that pokes fun at rigid obedience to categories of identity. When the Sikhs offer to let the hijras live in exchange for their immediate departure from the village, one hijra “[runs] his finger in a Sikh’s beard” and asks if he is afraid that the men will become like the hijras and stop having children—which sends the crowd, including other Sikhs, into laughter again. The comment is a not-so-subtle reference to the tendencies of some Indian men to have sexual affairs with hijras while denying any affiliation with them in public. Singh uses the hijras’ mockery of the mob, particularly of the Sikhs, who are most hostile toward them, to address the hypocrisy of the men. The animosity toward the hijras further suggests that masculinity is often constructed as a rejection of anything approaching femininity.

The novel’s treatment of women and hijras exposes their vulnerability in a country that does not value them individually, and ultimately highlights how sexism and gender discrimination were related to the vicious cycle of violence that engulfed the country. The gendered nature of that violence is evidenced in the novel’s repeated mention of rape as a weapon of war. For example, Muslims in Mano Majra speak of rumors “of gentlewomen having their veils taken off” and being “raped in the marketplace.” The story of Sundari is another horrific account, as Muslims rape the newlywed and then cut off her husband’s penis—this literal unmanning being the basest and most humiliating of punishments. This routine denial of humanity to women and hijras is one of the precursors, Singh suggests, to the wider violence that overtook India in 1947.