E M Forster's significant fiction
 As most students would have known the British writer E M Forster's
(1879-1970) novel A Passage to India is a significant fiction in English
literature. We must remember that Forster began writing this novel in
1912 and completed in 1924. The title of the novel derives from a poet
called 'Passage to India' written by the American poet of New Poetry
fame, Walt Whitman, in 1871.
The writer was also the author of Aspects of the Novel and other
fiction. He has many other works that are important.
A Passage to India is significant in many ways, and one way is that
it is a depiction of some aspects of colonized India as seen and
understood through a western eye.
We shall note that the book is divided into three sections: Mosque,
Cave and Temple.
Passage can be interpreted as if the soul reaching infinite (the
metaphysical sublime) - the ecstasy glimpsed in a harmonies communion
with the Almighty. The passage takes place in four stages in the novel:
Journey from England to India, An attempt to understand India
immediately before Indian Independence, Passage from Soul to Soul,
Attempt to Understand the Almighty.
Well, as a Hindu, I see that the novel has strong elements of
spiritualism conveyed through implicit symbols. And yet there are
different interpretations of the novel by eminent literary critics. For
instance, J A Boulton sees it as a political novel. I quote:
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E M Forster |
"A Passage to India is much more than a novel about the political
situation in India, in the years following the 1914-1918 War and
commentary on the novel must dwell on it ore enduring character, but it
certainly is apolitical novel which explore with understanding and
compassion, a political situation. The novel is an attack on British
rule in India. One should be aware of the intellectual courage with
which Forster explores the degrading effects of British Rule in India."
There is another view: One of my favourite British critics, Arnold
Kettle (though Marxist) simply says that "This is not to be a book about
the 'problems of India' or anything pretentious even though in the
course of the exploration of the personal relationship is far too
sensible and far too worldly to attempt to abstract relationship from
their actual contexts."
He adds: Up to a point this sense of the arbitrariness of existence
is one of the great virtues of this novel.
The sudden shafts of violence, of horrors, of death and the
indifference of the living to the dead, are extremely effective in the
novel, both in conveying the actual uprightness of life's detail and
counteracting the urbane, high comedy tone of Forster's narrative
manner."
What the writer wants to say in this novel is whether it was possible
for Indians to be friendly with an Englishman. The novel explores
personal relationships among people. There is Aziz, an Indian Muslim and
Fielding, an Englishman in the novel. Their relationship may be
described as the crux of the novel. There are also three other
characters of interest - Ms Quested, Mrs Moore and Dr Godbole.
At the same time it is remarkable that all aspects of the novel -
theme-characterization, images - contribute to the central pattern of
the book. There is the character of Ms Quested. Her problems, one may
say, are imposed on the Asziz- Fielding relationship. They face
problems. One such problem can be related to what had been described in
the last section of the book of a Hindu religious festival.
Kettle argues that ' both Aziz and Fielding are subjected to a strain
so profound that their relationship scarcely survive, even with all
arbitrariness, all casual forms of misunderstanding removed, and the
strain in the strain of the actual situation in which they exist, the
strain of Imperialism, which corrupts all it touches."
Arnold Kettle uses an unusual phrase which I like -"destroyers of the
morality of the heart". While pointing out the weakness in the novel
Forster fails to dramatize quite convincingly the positive values what
he has to set against he destroyer of the morality of the heart."
E M Forster we understand was bent towards liberal agnosticism and
yet he uses Mrs Moore and the Hindu theme to attempt to achieve a
dimension. In the 12th chapter Hinduism is seen historically.
I am grateful to the late A M G Sirimanne, my teacher, for explaining
to me that "philosophically Dr Godbole stands for that universality,
characteristic of Hinduism. And that it makes no distinction between
humanity and the rest of the creation. Its creed teaches that each
particular part is a member of all other parts and that all is One in
the Divine."
When I read the novel first some decades ago, it was a little heavy
reading. But it is not now when I read it again. You will benefit by
reading this novel.
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