A Passage to India
A Passage to India is a 1924 novel by English author E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of 20th century English literature by the "Modern Library" and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. "Time" magazine included the novel in its "All Time 100 Novels" list. The novel is based on Forster's experiences in India, deriving the title from Walt Whitman's 1870 poem "Passage to India" in "Leaves  of Grass". The story revolves around four characters: Dr. Aziz, his British friend Mr. Cyril Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Miss Adela Quested. During a trip to the fictitious Marabar Caves (modeled on the Barabar Caves of Bihar), Adela thinks she finds herself alone with Dr. Aziz in one of the caves (when in fact he is in an entirely different cave), and subsequently panics and flees; it is assumed that Dr. Aziz has attempted to assault her. Aziz's trial, and its run-up and aftermath, bring to a boil the common racial tensions and prejudices between Indians and the  British during the colonial era. Background. "A Passage to India" is a reflection of Forster's visit to India in 1912-13 and his duration as private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas State in 1921–22. Plot summary. Arrival. A young British schoolmistress, Adela Quested, and her elderly friend, Mrs. Moore, visit the fictional city of Chandrapore, British India. Adela is to decide if she wants to marry Mrs. Moore's son, Ronny Heaslop, the city magistrate. Meanwhile, Dr. Aziz, a young Indian Muslim physician, is dining with two of his Indian friends and conversing about whether it is possible  to be a friend of an Englishman. During the meal, a summons arrives from Major Callendar, Aziz's unpleasant superior at the hospital. Aziz hastens to Callendar's bungalow as ordered but is delayed by a flat tyre and difficulty in finding a tonga and the major has already left in a huff. Disconsolate, Aziz walks down the road toward the railway station. When he sees his favourite mosque, he enters on impulse. He sees a strange Englishwoman there and yells at her not to profane this sacred place. The woman, Mrs. Moore, has respect for native customs. This disarms  Aziz, and the two chat and part as friends. Mrs. Moore returns to the British gentleman's club down the road and relates her experience at the mosque. Ronny Heaslop, her son, initially thinks she is talking about an Englishman and becomes indignant when he learns the facts. Adela, however, is intrigued. Bridge Party. Because the newcomers had expressed a desire to see Indians, Mr. Turton, the city tax collector, invites numerous Indian gentlemen to a party at his house. The party turns out to be an awkward event, due to the Indians' timidity and the Britons' bigotry, but Adela  meets Cyril Fielding, principal of Chandrapore's government-run college for Indians. Fielding invites Adela and Mrs. Moore to a tea party with him and a Hindu-Brahmin professor named Narayan Godbole. At Adela's request, he extends his invitation to Dr. Aziz. Fielding's tea party. At Fielding's tea party, everyone has a good time conversing about India, and Fielding and Aziz become friends. Aziz promises to take Mrs. Moore and Adela to see the Marabar Caves, a distant cave complex. Ronny Heaslop arrives, and finding Adela "unaccompanied" with Dr. Aziz and Professor Godbole, rudely breaks up the  party. Aziz mistakenly believes that the women are offended that he has not followed through on his promise and arranges an outing to the caves at great expense to himself. Fielding and Godbole are supposed to accompany the expedition, but they miss the train. Marabar Caves. Aziz and the women explore the caves. In the first cave, Mrs. Moore is overcome with claustrophobia. But worse than the claustrophobia is the echo. Disturbed by the sound, Mrs. Moore declines to continue exploring. Adela and Aziz, accompanied by a guide, climb to the upper caves. Adela's illusion. As Aziz helps Adela  up the hill, she asks whether he has more than one wife. Disconcerted by the bluntness of the remark, he ducks into a cave to compose himself. When he comes out, he finds the guide alone outside the caves. The guide says Adela has gone into a cave by herself. Aziz looks for her in vain. Deciding she is lost, he strikes the guide, who runs away. Aziz looks around and discovers Adela's field glasses lying broken on the ground. He puts them in his pocket. Aziz then looks down the hill and sees Adela speaking to another young  Englishwoman, Miss Derek, who has arrived with Fielding in a car. Aziz runs down the hill and greets Fielding, but Miss Derek and Adela drive off without explanation. Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Aziz return to Chandrapore on the train. Adela has injured herself while descending from the caves. Aziz's arrest. At the train station, Aziz is arrested and charged with sexually assaulting Adela in a cave. The run-up to his trial releases the racial tensions between the British and the Indians. Adela says that Aziz followed her into the cave and tried to grab her, and that she  fended him off by swinging her field glasses at him. The only evidence the British have is the field glasses in the possession of Aziz. Despite this, the British believe that Aziz is guilty. They are stunned when Fielding proclaims his belief in Aziz's innocence. Fielding is ostracised and condemned as a blood-traitor. But the Indians, who consider the assault allegation a fraud, welcome him. Moore mystery. During the weeks before the trial, Mrs. Moore is apathetic and irritable. Although she professes her belief in Aziz's innocence, she does nothing to help him. Ronny, alarmed by his  mother's assertion that Aziz is innocent, arranges for her return by ship to England before she can testify at the trial. Mrs. Moore becomes more concerned with her own end of life issues as she feels her health failing. Her relationship with her son allows her to be distracted and less sympathetic to Aziz's situation. Mrs. Moore dies during the voyage. Her absence from India becomes a major issue at the trial, where Aziz's legal defenders assert that her testimony would have proven the accused's innocence. Trial scene. Adela becomes confused as to Aziz's guilt . At the trial, she is asked whether Aziz sexually assaulted her. She has a vision of the cave, and it turns out that Adela had, while in the cave, received a shock similar to Mrs. Moore's. The echo had disconcerted her so much that she became unhinged. At the time, Adela mistakenly interpreted her shock as an assault by Aziz. She admits that she was mistaken, and the case is dismissed. Aftermath. Ronny Heaslop breaks off his engagement to Adela and she stays at Fielding's house until her passage on a boat to England is arranged. After explaining  to Fielding that the echo was the cause of the whole business, she departs India, never to return. Although he is vindicated, Aziz is angry that Fielding befriended Adela after she nearly ruined his life. Believing it to be the gentlemanly thing to do, Fielding convinces Aziz not to seek monetary redress from her. The men's friendship suffers, and Fielding departs for England. Aziz believes that he is leaving to marry Adela for her money. Bitter at his friend's perceived betrayal, he vows never again to befriend a white person. Aziz moves to the Hindu-ruled state of  Mau and begins a new life. At Mau. Two years later, Fielding returns to India. His wife is Stella, Mrs. Moore's daughter from a second marriage. Aziz, now the Raja's chief physician, comes to respect and love Fielding again. However, he does not give up his dream of a free and united India. In the novel's last sentences, he explains that he and Fielding cannot be friends until India becomes independent from British rule. Literary criticism. The nature of critiques of "A Passage to India" is largely based upon the era of writing and the nature  of the critical work. While many earlier critiques found that Forster's book showed an inappropriate friendship between colonizers and the colonized, new critiques on the work draw attention to the depictions of sexism, racism and imperialism in the novel. Reviews of "A Passage to India" when it was first published challenged specific details and attitudes included in the book that Forster drew from his own time in India. Early critics also expressed concern at the interracial camaraderie between Aziz and Fielding in the book. Others saw the book as a vilification of humanist perspectives on the importance of interpersonal  relationships, and effects of colonialism on Indian society. More recent critiques by postcolonial theorists and literary critics have reinvestigated the text as a work of Orientalist fiction contributing to a discourse on colonial relationships by a European. Today it is one of the seminal texts in the postcolonial Orientalist discourse, among other books like "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, and "Kim" by Rudyard Kipling. "A Passage to India" emerged at a time where portrayals of India as a savage, disorganized land in need of domination were more popular in mainstream European literature than romanticized depictions. Forster's novel departed  from typical narratives about colonizer-colonized relationships and emphasized a more "unknowable" Orient, rather than characterizing it with exoticism, ancient wisdom and mystery. Postcolonial theorists like Maryam Wasif Khan have termed this novel a Modern Orientalist text, meaning that it portrays the Orient in an optimistic, positive light while simultaneously challenging and critiquing European culture and society. However, Benita Parry suggests that it also mystifies India by creating an "obfuscated realm where the secular is scanted, and in which India’s long traditions of mathematics, science and technology, history, linguistics and jurisprudence have no place." One of the most notable  critiques comes from literary professor Edward Said, who referenced "A Passage to India" in both "Culture and Imperialism" and "Orientalism". In his discussion about allusions to the British Empire in early 20th century novels, Said suggests that though the work subverted typical views on colonialism and colonial rule in India, it also fell short of outright condemning either nationalist movements in India or colonialism itself. Of Forster's attitude toward colonizer-colonized relationships, Said says Forster:. . . found a way to use the mechanism of the novel to elaborate on the already existing structure of attitude and reference without changing it . This structure permitted one to feel affection for and even intimacy with some Indians and India generally, but made one see Indian politics as the charge of the British, and culturally refused a privilege to India nationalism.Stereotyping and Orientalist thought is also explored in postcolonial critiques. Said suggests that Forster deals with the question of British-Indian relationships by separating Muslims and Hindus in the narrative. He says Forster connects Islam to Western values and attitudes while suggesting that Hinduism is chaotic and orderless, and subsequently uses Hindu characters as the background to the main narrative. Said also identifies  the failed attempt at friendship between Aziz and Fielding as a reinforcement of the perceived cultural distance between the Orient and the West. The inability of the two men to begin a meaningful friendship is indicative of what Said suggests is the irreconcilable otherness of the Orient, something that has originated from the West and also limits Western readers in how they understand the Orient. Other scholars have examined the book with a critical postcolonial and feminist lens. Maryam Wasif Khan's reading of the book suggests "A Passage to India" is also a commentary on gender, and a British  woman's place within the empire. Khan argued that the female characters coming to "the Orient" to break free of their social roles in Britain represent the discord between Englishwomen and their social roles at home, and tells the narrative of "pioneering Englishwomen whose emergent feminism found form and voice in the colony". Sara Suleri has also critiqued the book's orientalist depiction of India and its use of radicalized bodies, especially in the case of Aziz, as sexual objects rather than individuals. Manuscript. In 1960, the manuscript of "A Passage to India" was donated to Rupert Hart-Davis by  Forster and sold to raise money for the London Library, fetching the then record sum of £6,500 for a modern English manuscript.