A Passage To India
(E.M. Forster)
E.M. Forster made a mark in the literature of the twentieth century with his last novel A Passage to India (1924), which dealt with the political occupation of India by the British, a colonial domination that ended soon after the publication of this novel. Forster, a liberal and humanist in outlook, emphasised the importance of love and understanding at the personal level in this novel.A Passage to India was the direct outcome of his own experiences in India as secretary and companion to the Maharaja of Dewas Senior. It is a historical novel.Though Kipling had already treated the India of the Raj in his Kim, it was Forster who gave a sympathetic portrait of India under the foreign rule.The novel's title was taken from Walt Whitman from his celebration of the opening of the Suez Canal as bringing together East and West. But Forster echoed Kipling?s belief in the incompatibility of the two cultures- that East is East and West is West and the twain shall never meet.In A Passage to India Forster explored various themes like friendship between the ruler and the ruled, the incompatibility of different cultures, the hollowness of religion, the need for humanism and the divisions made by man among men. The city of Chandrapore in the British India was where Forster laid his scene- the microcosm of British India.The novel dealt with the misunderstandings between the English and the Indians in the British India of 1910-20. The ruling English considered the natives as racial, social and cultural inferiors. The novel concludes that the disharmony that the fervent missionaries caused among the Indian people, the social apartheid shown by the English towards the natives, the arrogance of the British officials and the atrocities committed by them led to the dissolution of the British Raj in India.
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