passage to india. (e.m. forster)

It feels incumbent, after finishing Forster’s novel, to find out what, for example, Edward Said thought about it. I learn with a bit of research that Said saw it as an example of further mysticisation of the Orient, indicative of a late colonial attitude. Forster, it should be noted, spent time in India. Unlike those novels where the impact of colonialism is inferred, consciously or unconsciously, (Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair), this is a novel written with first hand experience of the colonial project.

Given this, it felt to this reader as though the writer of Passage to India leaves little doubt as to his opinions. The portrait of the British community in India is scathing: “At Chandrapore the Turtons were little gods; soon they would retire to some suburban villa, and die exiled from glory.” At another point, Adela’s fiancé, says to his mother: “India likes gods. And Englishmen like posing as gods.” Forster dissects the Anglo-Indian community with understated savagery. The novel shows them to be petty, racist and philistine to boot.

There is, perhaps, a certain authorial courage in tackling the issue of colonialism head-on. It’s a subject which so many writers danced around the edges of. For three hundred years of British history, from the early 17th century to the mid 20th century, colonialism was a pillar of British society and wealth. And yet, as Said observes, its significance was only ever addressed in a tangential, allusive fashion. Whilst the British were politically and economically active, carving up the world to their own ends, its writers by and large ignored the colonial project. As such it felt, to this reader, looking back, a relief to find a writer prepared to take on the task of critiquing this centuries old policy. (People tend to talk about Colonialism as an inevitable practice, but it isn’t.) There is undoubtably, within the novel, a strand that perceives India as a place of mysticism and complex religion. Although, to be fair, this also leads to an examination of the complexities of the co-existence of India’s religious communities, one that India would still appear to be still struggling to come to terms with today. And it should be noted that Forster, in talking about these religions and their differences, is honouring them in a way that, he makes clear in the novel, the vast majority of the Anglo-Indian settlers failed to do.