This article presents a comparative analysis of Khushwant Singh?s Train to Pakistan and Bapsi Sidhwa?s Ice-Candy-Man, two seminal partition novels depicting the trauma of the 1947 division of the Indian subcontinent. It examines how both authors, eyewitnesses to Partition, portray communal violence, involuntary migration, human suffering, and the breakdown of social harmony. While Singh narrates the tragedy from an Indian rural perspective through the village of Mano Majra, Sidhwa offers a Pakistani-Parsee viewpoint centered on Lahore. The study explores similarities and differences in narrative technique, ideological stance, characterization, and thematic concerns such as love, sacrifice, religion, sexuality, and humanism. It argues that although both novels document the same historical catastrophe, they reflect distinct national, cultural, and ideological perspectives shaped by the authors? locations and identities.
Research Scholar, Department of English, Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya
