15/02/2012
“A Passage to India” by E.M. Foster
A Passage to India (1924), by a renowned English writer Edward Morgan Foster, is a novel about cultural encounter, colonisation and alterity. Moreover, it constitutes an interesting “document” about life and atmosphere in time of rapid colonial expansion approximately twenty years before the collapse of the British Empire.
The book tells a story of Mrs Moore’s stay in India where her son Ronny, engaged to Adela Quest, occupies the post of a city magistrate. Encouraged by a pleasant conversation with Dr Aziz, a young Muslim physician, Mrs Moore is willing to socialise with the local people and, before returning to England, experience their culture and some Indian tourist attractions. Her open-minded mentality does not unequivocally please Ronny who blatantly treats Indians as inferior. Deaf to her son’s unreasonable prejudice, Mrs Moore accepts Dr Aziz’s proposal to visit the Marabar Caves. Her friend and potential future daughter-in-law, Adela, also participates in the trip. Due to an unexpected incident, this typically enjoyable getaway becomes a source of misunderstandings, antagonisms and racial abuses: because Mrs Moore, overcome with claustrophobia, decides to stay back, Adela goes to the caves alone with Dr Aziz. They are separated; soon after an echo causes Mrs Quest to panic, to mishear the young physician words and to take them for a sexual assault.
Notwithstanding Dr Aziz’s claims, the English community instantly turns its back on him and treats him as a criminal. Fielding, the only Englishman who believes in Indian Muslim’s innocence, will soon pay for his personal conviction with ostracism and an accusation of being a traitor. Although Mrs Moore sides with the defendant, she does nothing to help him. Alarmed by his mother’s behaviour, Ronny decides to arrange a trip for her back to England, so she is not able to testify. During the trial, Adele admits to not being certain of Dr Aziz’s guilt and the latter is thus pronounced innocent.
This apparently happy ending does not help to lessen hostilities between the indigenous or to quell resentment of the falsely accused physician. Despite being thankful to Fielding for his support, Dr Aziz declares that they cannot stay friends until India becomes a free country.
At the heart of the intrigue, the false accusation of the young Muslim is not the only element of the division between the Indians and the English in A Passage to India. The writer seems to use Dr Aziz’s trial as a pretext to emphasise tensions in the British colonies. From the outset and throughout, Foster’s story is indeed strewn with numerous excerpts showing how much the English fail to fathom Indian mores, how much they despise the local population, their culture and mentality. Furthermore, the novel presents how much the autochthones consider the colonists a necessary evil, an unwanted guest who, by using their power, became the host, or even a master. In fact, Foster depicts the English-Indian exchanges as a relationship between the dominant and the dominated. This does not augur well for the future of the status quo in this region. Before reading the last page of the book, the reader has no doubts that a significant conflict is hovering in the air, which will soon lead to a definitive separation between the two nations.