A Passage to India—E.M. Forster
All conquers love
E.M. Forster began writing this novel in 1913, just before the first world war, and finally published it in 1924, before the second, at the height of British colonial power. His sympathies clearly lie with the Indians against their oppressors, and just as clearly he recognizes the simmering internal pressure for a national identity of India distinct from and equal to that of England. His stereotyped depiction of Indians, though, as highly emotional and impulsive suggests that he thought them too immature for self-rule. However desirable or undesirable Forster may have thought Indian nationality, he recognized its inevitability. As one character puts it, “Until England is in difficulties we keep silent, but in the next European war—aha, aha! Then is our time.”
Adela Quested has come to India to decide whether Ronny Heaslop, the man she plans to marry, holds up under closer scrutiny. The story centering around these two and Ronny’s mother, Mrs. Moore, provides the plot. The heart and soul of the novel, however, lies in the relationship between Cyril Fielding, an itinerant teacher, and Dr. Aziz, a local Indian medical doctor. Dr. Aziz invites Adela, Mrs. Moore, and Fielding on an excursion to some local caves. They become separated and something happens—we never know what—that causes Adela to mistakenly accuse Dr. Aziz of assaulting her. During the subsequent trial, she doubts her own story and retracts her accusation, but the repercussions of the whole incident have profound personal, social, and political consequences.
The book starts with a conversation among several Indians about the very possibility of real friendship between an Indian and an Englishman. The majority believe that such a friendship cannot arise or endure. This question reappears throughout the novel even into the final lines.
New British arrivals, especially those of the younger generation, usually start out willing to accept others at face value, but after a while fall into a stereotyped pattern of aloof distrust. They begin to attribute sneaky motives to everything an Indian does or says. A similar pattern of distrust emerges among the Indians, bolstered by a willingness to imagine duplicitous motives of the British. Suspected duplicity in the other justifies one’s own duplicity in a spiral of hatred and intrigue. In general, Forster seems to equate aging or prolonged life in India with calcified attitudes, prejudices, stereotypes. Any hope of true friendship between people widely separated—by culture, religion, gender, class, race, or whatever—seems to rest entirely on the shoulders of future generations. True friendship based on respect for human dignity seems impossible now, but not impossible altogether. Everything conspires to keep us humans from loving each other.
In the last chapter, Aziz and Fielding have reaffirmed their personal friendship but openly stated their antipathy for each other’s politics. The book concludes with a mixture of long-term optimism but short-term pessimism. Returning to Mau on horseback, Aziz says to Fielding,
‘...if it’s fifty or five hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea. And then’—he rode against him furiously—‘and then,’ he concluded, half kissing him, ‘you and I shall be friends.’
‘Why can’t we be friends now?’ said the other, holding him affectionately. ‘It’s what I want, it’s what you want.’
But the horses didn’t want it—they swerved apart; the earth didn’t want it, sending up rocks through which the riders must pass single-file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the guest house that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath; they didn’t want it, they said in their hundred voices ‘No, not yet,’ and the sky said, ‘No, not there.’
Forster, while attacking stereotypes, nevertheless depicts Indians, typified by Aziz, as highly emotional, impulsive, guided almost entirely by feeling and conflicting emotions.
Forster does an impressive job of conveying the Byzantine workings of conversations in which the speakers conceal their real thoughts while trying to outguess the thoughts of others. The narrator mostly explains or paraphrases each person’s meaning, recounts the relevant history, or gives cultural context, without always stating any explicit thoughts. In fact, I would say the narrator tells us what everyone means, and lets us judge for ourselves how wildly that diverges from what they actually say.
Forster portrays nothing human as straightforward. Chaos rules, making everything into a muddle, a mystery, or a bit of both. The British look down on those they refer to as Indians. But also, among the Indians, the Muslims like Aziz look down on the Hindus. Forster deplores these attitudes. Ultimately, Forster offers the Hindi belief in the equal value of all life as the only way out of this muddle. Early on, though, we see a comic reductio ad absurdum of this view in this description of two minor characters, an older and a younger Christian missionary.
“For in our Father’s house are many mansions, they taught, and there alone will the incompatible multitudes of mankind be welcomed and soothed. Not one shall be turned away by the servants on the veranda, be he black or white, not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart. And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mission for the monkeys also? Old Mr Graysford said No, but young Mr Sorely, who was advanced, said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys should not have their collateral share of bliss, and he had sympathetic discussions about them with his Hindu friends. And the jackals? Jackals were indeed less to Mr Sorely’s mind, but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, and was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? And the bacteria inside Mr Sorely? No, no, this is going too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.”
While the equivalence of all life may seem absurd in this early presentation, it reappears throughout the novel as a mystical truth that collapses under rational cross-examination but yet remains a truth.
The omniscient narrator interjects his personality throughout, not just in his choice as to whose thoughts to reveal and whose to conceal, but also in his confidential attitude to the reader. For a small example, I distinctly saw the narrator wink at me while relating a conversation between Adela and Fielding about ghosts.
“...it is difficult [Fielding says], as we get on in life, to resist the supernatural. I’ve felt it coming on me myself. I still jog on without it, but what a temptation, at forty-five, to pretend that the dead live again; one’s own dead; no one else’s matter.”
“Because the dead don’t live again.”
“I fear not.”
“So do I.”
There was a moment’s silence, such as often follows the triumph of rationalism.
Forster’s writing has never spoken to me, though I’ve read several works. In 2010, as part of the Decade Project, I read Howards End, and it did not impress me greatly. I had previously read A Room with a View, and it had impressed me not at all. But I did after all embark on the Decade Project expressly to become literate. And, as with any acquired taste, only the reading of literature confers the ability to read literature. So, A Passage to India moved me and impressed me greatly in ways I don’t think it could have several years ago.
Next up, Wise Blood, by Flannery O’Connor.
Amazon links to works mentioned in this post.
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
Howards Ends by E.M. Forster
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
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