A Passage to India - E. M. Forster [0]
A Passage to India
Copyright © 1924 by E. M. Forster
Cover art and eForeword to the electronic edition copyright © 2002 by RosettaBooks, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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First electronic edition published 2002 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.
ISBN 0-7953-0932-5
Contents
eForeword
Part 1: Mosque
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part 2: Caves
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part 3: Temple
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
About the Author
About this Title
eForeword
Forster’s 1924 masterpiece, A Passage to India, is a novel about preconceptions and misconceptions and the desire to overcome the barrier that divides East and West in colonial India. It shows the limits of liberal tolerance, good intentions, and good will in sorting out the common problems that exist between two very different cultures. Forster’s famous phrase, “only connect,” stresses the need for human beings to overcome their hesitancy and prejudices and work towards realizing affection and tolerance in their relations with others. But when he turned to colonial India, where the English and the Indians stare at each other across a cultural divide and a history of imbalanced power relations, mutual suspicion, and ill will, Forster wonders whether connection is even possible.
The novel begins with people very much desiring to connect and to overcome the stereotypes and biases that have divided the two cultures. Mrs. Moore accompanies her future daughter-in-law Adela Quested to India where both are to meet Mrs. Moore’s son Ronny, the City Magistrate. Adela says from the outset that she wishes to see the “real India” and Mrs. Moore soon befriends an Indian doctor named Aziz. Cyril Fielding, an Englishman and the principal of a local government college, soon becomes acquainted with everyone, and it is his uneasy friendship with Dr.Aziz that constitutes the backbone of the novel.
Although the primary characters all take pains to accept and embrace difference, their misunderstanding, fear and ignorance make connection more difficult than any of them expect. Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested find that surpassing their preconceived notions and cultural norms entails confronting frightening notions about the contingency of their beliefs and values. Getting to know the “real” India proves to be a much more difficult and upsetting task than they had imagined. For Aziz, the continued indignities of life under British rule and the insults-intentional and unintentional-of his English acquaintances make him suspect that although friendship is desired, the two cultures are not yet ready for it.
Forster’s keen eye for social nuance and his capacious sympathy for his characters make A Passage to India not only a balanced investigation of the rift that divides English and Indian but also a convincing and moving work of art. Written in 1924, two years after the publication of Eliot’s The Waste Land and Joyce’s Ulysses and one year before Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Forster’s masterpiece was produced during one of the most remarkable periods of achievement in English literature since Wordsworth’s day.
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