When a money-lender is murdered, suspicion falls upon Juggut Singh, the village gangster who, when not in jail, is carrying on a clandestine affair with a Muslim girl. It is 1947 and bloodshed has erupted between India and Pakistan. But Skihs and Muslims have co-existed peacefully in this frontier village, where the politics of partition have had little meaning. That is until a train arrives at an irregular time, full of dead Sikhs. The conflicts are more complicated than just ethnic in nature, as as the Sikhs are the landowning class and the Muslim are the peasant class. The village becomes a battlefield of conflicting loyalties, and neither the magistrate nor the police can stem the frequent clashes. Violence is abundant in this film, but so are scenes of seduction and steamy love. Iqbag, the Western educated Communist intellectual, immune to such passions, who arrives to bring about change. But it is the uneducated Juggut who turns out to be the hero at film′s end. Iqbal sleeps peacefully while pillaging takes place in the village, Nooran is no a train bound for Pakistan with other fleeing Muslims, and the magistrate sits helplessly while drinking away his frustrations. Juggut goes to save the Muslims in a stirring climax, an individual transformed by history. (Im Hyun-Ock)