Analysis Of A Passage To India

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A Post-Colonial view of A Passage to India
In this article I would like to highlight a couple of relationships that between the colonizer and the colonized in a colonial context and that between two friends as manifested in Forster’s novel. F. R. Leavis calls Forster "pre-eminently a novelist of civilized personal relation"(Mr E. M. Forster p.102). In all his five books Forster has focused on the aspects of human relationships.

I've often thought about it, Helen. It's one of the most interesting things in the world. The truth is that there is a great outer life that you and I have never touched--a life in which telegrams and anger count. Personal relations, that we think supreme, are not supreme there. There love means marriage settlements,
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He also displays a particular interest in the superficial, materialistic life that he believes to be delusionary. His perception of human relationships was different from that of mutual benefits. From a post colonial perspective, after nearly six decades, independent India reveals how meticulous Forster was in depicting the psychological barrier that existed between the British and the Indians during the days of British Raj. To Jan Mohamed, A Passage to India attempts “to overcome the barriers of racial difference” (Childs 1999:348). Nirad Chaudhuri, on the other hand, criticised it “for its reduction of political history to a liberal’s preoccupation with personal relationships” (Childs, p.347). To Nihal Singh, however, the novel depicts “how the British in India despise and ostracise Indians, while on their part the Indians mistrust and misjudge the British” (Childs 1999:347).The racial barrier between the west and the east is well depicted in the book. Its characters are equally stereotyped and its incidents are merely stereotypical.

The Colonial
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‘I cannot say , I was not present.’ (Forster Passage 164-165)

To conclude, it is hard to decide whether the friendship between the colonizer and the colonized would ever be possible. Forster leaves this as an ambiguity, leaving it for the reader to decide. But he hints towards a possible friendship post-independence when he says that Aziz is ready to re-establish his relation with Fielding after Independence has been achieved. This symbolizes the friendship perceived by him, which India and Britain would have once India was free. There have been many articles on this aspect of A Passage to India but, there remain broader aspects of this novel that are yet to be explored, hoping that one such explorer finds the answer in his quest of reality through this article. References

Bhabha, Homi. 2001. ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, in Modern Literary Theory, ed. by Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. USA: Hodder Arnold.

Childs, Peter. (ed.)1999. Post-Colonial Theory and English Literature: A Reader.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Forster, E.M. 2005. A Passage to India. St Ives:

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