CLASS CONFLICT AND POWER STRUCTURES DURING THE PARTITION OF THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT: A MARXIST ANALYSIS OF ICE-CANDY-MAN AND TRAIN TO PAKISTAN

Abstract

This study presents a Marxist analysis of Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man and Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan to examine class conflict and power structures during the Partition of the Indian subcontinent. While Partition is often interpreted primarily in terms of religious antagonism, the analysis suggests that such violence was not simply spontaneous or inevitable. Instead, it operated as an ideological process through which deeper class contradictions were masked. Based on Marxist theory, together with postcolonial and Subaltern Studies, the research paper has explored the way the elite groups mobilized religious identities which helped sustain the then socio-economic order. The comparative and close textual analysis of  Ice-Candy-Man and Train to Pakistan shows that communal conflict is deeply linked with the material interests, parameters of national politics and legacies and lasting effects of the colonial power. Besides, it establishes that the marginalised subaltern groups including farmers, labours specifically women whose voices and experiences were deliberately silenced.The study concludes that Partition literature, when analyzed from a materialist lens, does not merely narrate historical trauma, but it challenges hegemonic historical narratives and re-centres the socio-economic forces shaping communal conflict.