Passage to India
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A Passage to India by E.M. Forster is a complex story of humanity, tragedy, friendship, and imperialism. Forster places India at the center of his story, not only as the setting but as a living culture and as the unifying factor amidst all of his themes. Throughout the story, Forster represents India as a location with multiple cultures and influences that collectively overrides individual peoples desires to form communities and friendships because of the tyranny of imperialism.
Forster reveals the multiplicity of the “real” India through a number of images throughout the book. First of all, Forster writes, “India – a hundred Indias – whispered outside beneath the indifferent moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own” (10). Here Forster hints at the many different Indias that exist and represents them as if they were quiet voices. Yet he also foreshadows that this complex entity called India is perceived as a single entity even though it is not. This is reflected in the use of the word seemed rather than something more definitive like was or became. Additionally, he represents the watchful indifferent gaze of the British Empire in the moon. On the very next page, Forster offers more imagery of multiplicity within a single entity in the image of the “great net Great Britain had thrown over India” (11). This phrase conjures images of fishing nets that catch thousands of fish in one net. These nets essentially make the fish one massive living being wherein individual fish lose their freedom to choose and eventually lose their very lives. Again, the image is a critique of the impact that British imperialism has on the people of India, both British and Indian.
The characters quest for insight into the “real India” is part of an independent subplot that leads to an epiphany for the reader regarding the true character of India and provides a passage to new understanding. Adelas early comment “I want to see the real India” arises from a feeling of curiosity but ends with heartache and irreparable change because she seeks the truth rather than the superficial fiction of British life in India (Forster 18). She notices quickly that the India which she is seeing through Ronnys eyes is not real. Forster writes from her perspective, “They would see the Lesleys and the Callendars and the Turtons and the Burtons and invite them and be invited by them, while the true India slid by unnoticed” (Forster 38). She is deeply unsatisfied with the protected life with which Ronny is presenting her because she realizes innately that the British have transplanted their sense of normalcy onto India without any regard for the people who live there. By the end of the novel, Mrs. Moore is the only Brit to realize the truth about India – that a unified single India does not exist. During Mrs. Moores epiphany,