A Passage to India
The book that has been taken into consideration is “’Passage to India” and is written by E.M. Forster. The book has been written in a way that it presents scenes set in the imaginary northern India city of Chandrapore.
E.M. Forster’s ‘Passage to India’, has always been extensively looked upon as an early 20th century classic, and it presents to the readers the account of the distressed connections between British India and the country’s Indian populace. The basic message that has been proffered by the author of the book is that the white British and the local Indians should not have made any attempts to interrelate communally outside of the conventional forms because it always ended badly for all concerned.
Review
A Passage to India is a well-known novel written by E. M. Forster that was published in the year 1924. The book presents a depiction of society in India under the British Rule, and from that it is easy to deduce the clash between East and West, as well as that of the discriminations and misinterpretations that foredoomed friendliness.
The book has been condemned at first for anti-British and perhaps imprecise partiality; it has been admired as an outstanding character study of people of one race by a writer of another race.
The book has been written in three parts namely Mosque, Caves, Temple, and is about Aziz, a young Muslim doctor, whose openness and eagerness for the British turn to resentment and cynicism when his pride is injured. Compassion builds up amid him and the elderly Mrs. Moore, who has come to visit her son, who is the City Magistrate.
Along with her is Adela Quested, who is youthful, sober, and charmless, who wishes to know more and more about the ‘real’ India and tries to ignore the taboos and snobberies of the British circle. Aziz arranges a voyage for the visitors to the famous Caves of Marbar, where an unexpected expansion plunges him into dishonor and provokes deep rivalry between the two races. Adela indicts him of slighting her in the Caves; he is committed to jail and stands trial. E
ven though Adela pulls out her charge, but Aziz turns wrathfully away from the British, towards a Hindu-Muslim entente. In the last part of the book he has moved to a post in a local state, and is bringing up his family in tranquility. His friend Mr. Fielding visits him who is the former Principal of the Government College, a clever man. They talk about the future of India and Aziz foretells that he and Fielding can be friends only if the British are driven out of the country.
After going through the book, one can easily make out why the author believes that the Indians and the British can not be friends. First of all there is a massive culture clash between the two parties that can not be ignored. The basic theme of the book under consideration A Passage to India and in its background is a clash between two essentially different cultures, those of East and West.
As is mostly believed by a number of people, east and west are two parts of the world that can never come into terms with each other which is exactly what has been presented in this book. Without putting forward any such quotes this is basically the under lying theme of the book presented by Forster.
In Chandrapore, the Anglo-Indians (the British commissioners and their families living in India) represented the West. They make up a comparatively small but close-knit community. Their social lives basically revolve around the Chandrapore Club, where they challenge to restructure the entertainments that would be found in England. Even though these Westerners desire to uphold good relations with the Easterners whom they preside over, they have no yearning to comprehend India or the Indians.
As in written in one chapter of the book, a character Ronny Heaslop remarks that “No one can even begin to think of knowing this country until he has been in it twenty years.” (Forster, p. 50). Adela Quested reprimands him for his attitudes, he replies that “India isn’t home” — which means that India is not and will never be England.
