A Passage to India

I had actually never read any E. M. Forster before teaching this novel. There's a lot going on in it: it amazes me to think that anyone could have ever wondered if it was pro-British or pro-Indian, but maybe that's my modern anti-colonialist biases at work. (Though maybe as a feminist, I should believe the accusation.) The crux of the whole book is arguably the incident in the caves, but the alleged sexual assault is just one part of that. There's a weird break in the narration at that moment-- if there is a sexual assault, it occurs between pages, and that feels like a cheat designed to up the ambiguity, given how closely Forster renders point-of-view throughout the rest of the novel.

But is it a cheat? If there was a sexual assault, show more it's a very modernist move to indicate it through a break in narration: the trauma of the event would render it unthinkable and therefore unnarratable. (It's kind of like, but very different to, how Hardy handles the rape of Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which I taught in the same class.)

However, then the cheat becomes: if there wasn't a sexual assault, why is there a break in the narration? The answer to that, I would argue, lies earlier in the novel, where we are told, "Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence" (146). Like all moments where fiction tells you about what fiction does, you have to read this as indicative of what this work of fiction is or is not doing. According to A Passage to India, there are long passages of time where nothing happens, where the brain is lying if it indicates emotion was actually felt: "a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent" (146). So if nothing happened in the caves, of course there's a break in the narration, because if nothing is happening, the book must be silent since this book is a "perfectly adjusted organism," not an exaggerator like all those earlier works of fiction.

What is easy to overlook if you focus on the sexual assault, I think, is that there's another act of violence in the cave: Mrs. Moore's crisis of faith. Mrs. Moore struggles with what she thought were fundamentals of existence when she finally travels to a place where they are not true. India is older than anything in world (135), upsetting her beliefs in Britain and in Christianity, and the darkness of the cave shows how a whisper can be echoed to seem all-consuming (166). She thinks the cave is evil, but it turns out to just be that the cave amplifies what is brought into it; I never thought I'd make this comparison, but it's basically the cave from The Empire Strikes Back. In the end, she cannot write down what happened (165)-- it really was too traumatic for her. Later we are told that there is no sorrow like Mrs. Moore's sorrow, the experience of an utterly unprofound vision. When East meets West, Mrs. Moore accesses the modern condition and realizes how meaningless life is. Poor woman. show less

The trouble with my generation - and the one that took me so long to read Forster - is that we grew up watching Forster's narrative on screen, may it be Howard's End, A Room with a View or A Passage to India; which I must say, is probably just a tinge of the actual narrative and cannot capture the intended angst of characters, which is abundantly multifarious and cannot be captured accurately by any other medium other than the novel. Forster was right in mentioning that his narrative is wider than politics and communal tension in British India.

To me, its about the contrasting standpoints from which an occidental and oriental person proceed to view life in general, and each other in particular; especially so, when the latter is show more colonized by the former. Forster successfully shows us that a purely humanistic standpoint is not only possible in these circumstances but perhaps the only one that explains life most accurately. In this backdrop, Forster's references to 'oriental pathology' or suspicion in oriental mind as a 'malignant tumour' must not disturb a careful reader because he also talks about the 'English crime' and 'western hypocrisy' in more or less same vain. Its an achievement of epic proportions because it seems humanly impossible to situate one's self in two different Weltanschauungs at the same time. show less

Adela Quested and Mrs. Moore arrive in Chandrapore, Adela to see if she and Mrs. Moore's son, Ronny, should be married. They both want to experience "the real India" and less of the carefully curated world created to keep the English women safely contained. When Mrs. Moore encounters a young Muslim doctor at a mosque, they form a quick friendship, which leads Dr. Aziz to invite the two women to an excursion to the nearby Malabar caves, an excursion that will end disastrously with Adela leveling charges against Dr. Aziz, allegations that will unsettle all of Chandrapore and the court case even more so.

In his portrayal of the British in India, Forster is scathing in his contempt for what colonialism does to the Imperialists controlling a show more country. They are insular and unable to see the people they rule over as people. The women are especially affected, since they are as limited as the women of India in experiencing the lives of people different from themselves. It makes them scared and reactive, and the men who rule over this obscure corner of the British Empire encourage them to be fearful. While I don't doubt that Forster was ahead of the curve, he still treats the Indian characters as simpler than their British counterparts, especially the one Hindu character who is inscrutable to the point of incoherence. That said, this is an insightful and riveting look at the Raj. show less

A tragedy about how kind people will inevitably become enemies in an unequal racist world, written with an amount of nuance a lot of books nowadays wish they had.
Anti-colonial yet still orientalist. It questions the British rule sharply at every turn, with an amazing attention to detail, but also generalizes ‘Orientals’ as a whole and never truly defends Aziz. For a book from the 1920s though? Iconic.

I was impressed with how the white English people were not written as simplistic oppressors. They are, but it is not displayed through pure hatred or contempt. They excuse all their actions with logic and arguments, they have laws and civility, and that made them highly realistic in a way that resonates a lot in 2025.

It was about time I got to this classic and a classic it is. It's so vivid and shares the perspective of both England and India so well that I'm surprised it was written so long ago. Dr. Aziz is accused of offending a British lady, Miss Quested at the Marabar Caves but there is also misunderstanding from Dr. Aziz with his friend Fielding - his only British defender at the trial. There is a lot of exploring of India here (the entire book never leaves India), though Dr. Aziz makes an interesting (yet cynical) point that the British only wish to explore India to conquer it. Dr. Aziz is somewhat open to having British friends in the beginning of the book (with certain people anyway) but that changes after the misunderstandings. The book show more touches on culture, class, race, religion. Dr. Aziz has to be one of the earliest fully developed Indian characters and from only a British perspective, the book may have disappeared long ago. Great characters, great settings and great writing. Yep, it's a classic. show less

Somehow I'd gotten the impression that A Passage to India was a departure from Forster's earlier novels. In subject matter, sure, but in all else this is a very Forsterian novel: sharply observed social commentary, lyrical prose, meditations on the human condition, and an almost mythic quality that is nevertheless grounded in the banal. Forster's novels are romantic, but they don't romanticize.

I'm glad I found myself reading this book in 2020. It's fundamentally a novel about nationalism, a topic I have formed Strong Opinions about. Actually maybe just one opinion, which Forster evidently shares. Please imagine, in place of this book, a tract titled "NATIONALISM" in 72-pt font, followed by one sentence: "FUCK THAT SHIT." (Forster show more phrases it more delicately.)

As a portrait of India and Indian people goes, I am not equipped to judge this novel. I think I can say it is a humane and openhearted effort. Certainly Forster's disdain for British culture does not lead him into the trap I expected, that of romanticizing the East. Instead, he attempts to be both empathetic and objective.

As far as objectivity goes, well. The text is littered with generalizations about Indians; some of these are the narrative's attempts at pointing out cultural differences, while others rise from the collective point-of-view of the colonizers. All that said, I expected this to be a novel written for the white gaze, and it's not quite that. Forster seems to be reaching toward an inclusive audience, whether or not he ever quite gets there.

I won't give away the plot, but I will say that this novel is set in British India at the turn of the 20th century and shows a British elite closing ranks in response to their tribal identity being threatened. The threat isn't some vast cultural divide between British and Indian people—the mutiny of 1857 is passing out of memory; the Indian elite is increasingly Westernized. To borrow an observation from Hannah Arendt, it's not necessarily difference that triggers xenophobia, but assimilation and the threat of social categories dissolving.

Meanwhile we have Dr. Aziz and his circle, acculturated Muslim Indians who are trying to invent a tribe of their own. Their definition of India keeps widening—Muslim identity becomes Indian pan-nationalism, which almost widens to human solidarity—but they, and we, can't quite reach across the gap.

And here's where this book gets really interesting, using the vocabulary of religion to imagine the (im)possibilities of a truly universal love. You could, in fact, write a very trite five-paragraph essay about how the second half of this book follows the structure of the Nativity story. I have no idea if Forster had this in mind; certainly he's not crass enough to explicitly compare the experiences Adele and Mrs. Morse have in the caves to an Annunciation. Nevertheless, this scene does take on a numinous quality. Encountering divinity is not a comfortable experience, threatening our belief that we are separate individuals in a structured universe. When the gods try to seize us, we flail.

This book won't enchant you with its memorable character studies or gripping plot, but something about the shape of Forster's novels is really compelling to me. I'm glad I read this one. show less

Forster is one of my favorite authors. Many of his characters are drawn in the round. Those we sympathize with are flawed, few are fully unsympathetic. In this book, Ronny Heaslop, for instance, is one of the latter. It’s clear that even those who sincerely want to understand, to “connect,” to use the key term from another of Forster’s novels, Howards End, never will.
This one basic theme, the failure of British middle and upper classes to connect, plays out in all his novels, whether set in India, Egypt, Italy, or back home in England. In each locale, he is attentive to the scenery and weather, which he describes in precise, fresh, evocative terms without being flowery. He constructs interesting plots. In the case of Passage, show more the turning point—an accusation and arrest—comes almost exactly at mid-point. The last of three sections, Temple, is shorter than the other two, Mosque and Caves; it functions as an epilogue, set two years after the main events. As in the other two sections, misunderstanding abounds. Ironically, their clarification also signals the end of friendship between two men, one Indian, one English, even while it permits them to part on heartfelt, affectionate terms.
Finally, each of his books is replete with sentences so well-crafted they could stand on their own as aphorisms. For instance, this: “Ronny approved of religion as long as it endorsed the National Anthem, but he objected when it attempted to influence his life.”
A sad book, highly recommended. show less