When I sat to watch ‘A Train to Pakistan’, I was reminded of a similar movie I had seen a year back. The movie was a Bengali film titled ‘Raj Kahini’. It was set in the time of the India-Bangladesh partition. The story is of a brothel in the India-Bangladesh border and how the inhabitants of the brothel refused to recognize the new world order and refused to vacate their home.
A Train to Pakistan explores the India-Pakistan partition from the perspective of the villagers in a small village in the border. What does India mean for a Sikh who has lived in harmony with Muslims all his life in a small village? What does it mean for people who know only the boundaries of their village and nothing further? What did they know of Delhi and of the propaganda of the Indian National Congress?
Before independence the idea of India as a socio-cultural unit did not exist. There were fragmented communities who either stuck with their own or lived in unison with each other. However, their cultures were distinct and for them, their identities were restricted to either being a Sikh or a Hindu or a Muslim like in the case of the village in question.
In short, identities were either distinctly linguistic or religious in nature. When India was formed and a mass of land was given the name of a nation, people were probably very confused about who they were as a part of the whole nation. They associated themselves largely with their regional identities. Sometimes, like in the case of A Train to Pakistan, the regional identities surpassed the newly formed national identity. Case in point, the Sikh man Jagga, and his Muslim lover. Had Jagga associated with a national identity, he wouldn’t have saved the train his Muslim lover was in from the hands of Sikh militants who claimed to commit atrocities in the name of India.
When the Indian National Congress started preaching the concept of India, they imagined several distinct communities coming together and becoming one. They imagined a nation. This is where Anderson’s theory of nations as an imagined community holds true. The whole idea that Bengalis are the same as Kashmiri Pundits and being a part of a large community known as India is flawed. That is because, we are essentially different from one another. Similarly the identities that emerged during the partition was of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
To understand and embrace ‘us’, we had to hate ‘them’. ‘Them’ were the Muslims who chose to migrate to Pakistan and ‘us’ were primarily those who remained. Even in the ‘us’ were the Hindus who believed India belonged solely to them, the Muslims who tried to fit in, and the other minority communities who got caught in the cross fires between the Hindu-Muslim communal fights.
To understand and visualize oneself as a part of the newly formed India, one had to create fundamental differences with the other, so as to start the process of discriminating oneself with the other. These differences were more often than not, imagined. How else is it possible that communities who had previously co-existed in harmony, started hating each other overnight?
In other words, the common man had to reshape his sense of identity to justify his belonging to a certain nation. He had to create fundamental differences with the other, even if there were none. It was an eye for an eye situation where to justify ones new identity as an Indian, one had to put down the other (either a Pakistani or a Bangladeshi).
What contributed more to the difficult situation of the man who lived during the partition was, his other identities, apart from his national identity. These other identities included his identity as a father, as a politician, as a member of the army, as a lover, etc.
When all of these contrasting identities combine, what you get is a thoroughly confused person who lashes out, for example, the Sikhs who revolted and planned to kill the Muslims, in the train going to Pakistan.
Reflections 
My favorite