On Conflicts Between the British and Native Indians in A Passage to India

侯书华

【Abstract】E. M. Forster is an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and critic whose most famous work A Passage to India well illustrates his views about religion, human relationship, colonialism, cultural and racial conflicts between British people and Indians. In the colonial country and period, their friendship is impossible if they do not treat each other as equals in the background of different cultures, religions and spiritual conceptions.This essay, based on the novel A Passage to India, mainly analyzes conflicts between the British and Native Indians.

【Key Words】A Passage to India; colonial rule; conflicts

E. M. Forsters A Passage to India is built around its threefold division into “ Mosque”, “Caves”, and “Temple”, which presents to us three worlds—Anglo-India, Hindu, Muslim. In this novel, we can see how the colonizer and the colonized get along with each other. In the colonial country and period, their friendship is impossible if they do not treat each other as equals in the background of different cultures, religions and spiritual conceptions. It shows how the British in India despise and ostracize Indians, while on their part the Indians mistrust and misjudge the British and how the gap between the two is widening and becoming unbridgeable. Therefore, conflicts between Englishmen and Indians are inevitable. Forsters two visits to India inspire him a lot to write this novel, and give readers a truthful sense of colonial India under the British rule before Indian Independence in 1947.

I. conflicts between the British and Indian Muslims

Ronny Heaslop is a City Magistrate in India, and his fiancée Adela and his mother Mrs. Moore visit India and want to see the real India. The Muslim, Dr Aziz leads them to visit the Marabar Caves which in some degree symbolize India. Because the Caves are full of mysterious background, just like the mysteries of India. Mrs. Moore and Adela both wished to “see India”, and their efforts to so had their first promise of success at Fieldings tea party, but the limitation that it would be strange and unpleasant came at the same time in Professor Godboles song which connected, on the one hand, with the formless, the muddle of India, the India which is “not a promise, only an appeal,” and, on the other hand, with the natural repugnance of western intellectuality toward what is formless, what is not infused with order and purpose. Mrs. Moore, on her arrival, had been immediately attracted to India. “With its cool nights and acceptable hints of infinity.” “to be one with the universe, so dignified and simple.” For her, India was a mystery and she liked mysteries; in this aspect she differed from the clear-headed Fielding and Adela. “I do so hate mysteries,” said Adela, and Mrs. Moore replied, “I like mysteries, but I rather dislike muddles.” “A mystery is only a high-sounding term for a muddle,” Fielding declared. Mrs. Moore had hoped for a glorious union of mankind through love, and her contribution to that endeavor, she felt, lay in assisting the marriage of her children. Although Adela and Mrs. Moore are very different in temperament, they are both expression of western intellectuality in that they both demand that orderly and purposeful conception of the universe. Mrs. Moore, a Christian, demands a universe supported and justified by a divine being who is the promise of righteousness and of ultimate regard for good works. It is in this respect that Mrs. Moore shares with the others of the western group a commitment to the way of knowledge. Adela, like the liberal Fielding, is skeptical just as her name Quested suggests, agonistic in her religious views. Every problem for Adela is “something more to think out.” Whether the western attitude is shown through the temperament of a Mrs. Moore or an Adela, it is in either case distinctly at odds with that of the Orient which accepts from the beginning the inadequacy of the intellect to approach a conception of deity. The mind, in order to perform its functions, must necessarily identify, individuate, and force into a causal pattern all the events which come before it but the mystical conception of deity occurs only with the disintegration of these categories. Differences in values between Englishmen and Indians determine that its impossible to develop good friendship between them.

The alleged sexual assault of Dr Aziz by Adela is the climax of the novel. Adela expresses a desire to see the “real” India, and in order to satisfy Adela, Dr Aziz, a young doctor, arranges a trip to the famous Marabar Caves. But during the expedition Adela enters a cave and on emerging has the impression that Aziz followed her in and assaulted her. Her accusations made publicly, an explosive situation is created in the small town, and a trial is arranged. When the tension is at its height during the trial, Adela suddenly declares that no one followed her into the cave. The trial collapses; there is a temporary breakdown of public order, and then life resumes its normal tenor. For this case, there is an obvious racial fuss raised by the English, and hysterical indignation among the native Indians. Adela, who has incurred universal dislike for her action, returns to England without marrying Ronny. The novel concludes with a long section devoted to an Indian festival which is attended by Mrs. Moores son and daughter. Mrs. Moore herself, who stood throughout the novel as a reconciling power between English and Indians, has died on the voyage home after an illness which began, like Adelas crisis, with her experiences in a Marabar cave. In this event, the British carry out the panoramic surveillance over Dr Aziz. Once they find or doubt that Aziz has transgression behavior, they immediately arrest him to a trial. We can imagine that when British readers appreciate this novel, they will specifically focus their attention on Azizs behavior in the cave to see whether Aziz really insult the British girl Adela. In most British readers eyes, native Indians, are savage, disloyal, immoral, accustomed to evil-deeds in the dark atmosphere, so the British think that they need to have some surveillance over Indians. From this point, Englishmen find justified reason to carry out their control. While, Indian readers after reading A Passage to India, will be extremely cautious in their behavior because they feel that they are under the surveillance of the British in the colonial period. From this point we can say that this novel is a satire on the British colonial rule over India. The Hindu nationalist Bankim Chatterjee believes:“so long as the conqueror-conquered relationship will last between English and Indians, and so long as even in our present degraded condition we shall remember our former national glory, there cannot be any hope of lessening the racial hatred.” A Passage to India embodies the truth that Orientals hate their European oppressors.

II. cultural conflicts in Indo-British relations

In some sense, the novel is about Indo-British relations during the colonial period although conflicts exist in their relations. In dealing with Indo-British relations, Forster takes Muslims as the principal characters. Ever since the nationalist movement got into its stride the Muslims were playing a curiously equivocal role, realistic and effective politically, but unsatisfying in every other respect. The Muslims hated the British with a hatred even more caustic than the Hindus, because it was they who had been deprived of an empire by the British. The Islamic order was the natural enemy of the Christian-European, and the British empire in India was in one sense the product of the secular conflict between the Christian West and the Islamic Middle East, which is still running its course, under the background of British colonial rule, some of Indians were assaulted, some insulted, and others slighted by the local British. When talking about Mr. and Mrs. Callendar, Aziz said,

She has just taken my tonga without my permission… and Major Callendar interrupts me night after night from where I am dining with my friends and I go at once, breaking up a most pleasant entertainment, and he is not there and not even a message… But what does it matter? I can do nothing and he knows it. I am just a subordinate, my time is of no value; … and Mrs. Callendar takes my carriage and cuts me dead…” (Forster,15)

None of them had any intimate personal relations with any member of the British ruling community. There were also thousands of Indians who had adopted Western ideals and were following them to the best of their ability, and who were not only not cultivated but shunned with blatant ostentation by British in India. This was due, not to any personal snobbery, but to that massive national snobbery which refused to share British and Western civilization with Indians. The British ruling class in India never felt happy about the Indo-British relations. As one critic points out that, “once the cultural discrimination was admitted, there could be no advance on the personal relations, and for men do not treat as equals those who are not of their psychological species. The British in India clinging to the obsolete idea of zoological speciation for mankind, could only cry as the District Collector does in A Passage to India,” “I have never known anything but disaster result when English people and Indians attempt to be intimate socially. Intercourse, yes. Courtesy by all means, intimacy-never, never.”(Forster, 147)

Their cultural conflicts are reflected in the failure of establishing harmonious Indo-British relations, which is mainly reflected on two aspects. Firstly, it is reflected on the friendship between Fielding and Dr Aziz who represents British culture and Indian culture respectively. Although they made great efforts to maintain their friendship, it is doomed to be a failure at last, and we can see it through the last outburst of the hero, Aziz “we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then you and I shall be friends.” (Forster, 293). The first meeting of Aziz and Fielding, and the incident of the collar-stud make them own a good impression about each other. When Fielding calls on Aziz who ‘thought of his bungalow with horror, it was a detestable shanty near a low bazaar. Aziz is in bed with slight fever. Of some he is acutely ashamed--‘third-rate people. His spiritual restlessness and discomfort, until he gets rid of the others, has Fielding to himself, and shows him the photograph of his wife. All these show that they are intimate friends before enduring tests and cultural conflicts. Then upon the alleged assault of Adela, Fielding firmly believes and defends for Aziz that he is innocent, but after the trial, Aziz doubts why Fielding persuades him to quit the damage from Adela. Especially, Adela stays together with Fielding to have several evening talk. Aziz misunderstands that Fielding has a special relationship with Adela. Truly, Fielding and Adela share the same cultural background but it is impossible for them to establish the special relationship as Aziz considers. I think that it is cultural difference and Azizs misunderstanding make Fielding and Azizs friendship deteriorate. From their friendship we can find that the confrontation between two cultures is heightened and dramatized by the fact that one group of persons represented by Fielding and Ronny, to the other group, represented by Aziz and Ali, in relation of the rulers to the ruled. The presence of the British in India is resented by the Indians, while most of the British feel it a waste of time to attempt to communicate with the Indians. The gap cannot be bridged, in spite of the fact that a catastrophic dislocation on the worlds it conquered and colonized generated new forms of tension within colonial countries and brought the West into a condition of permanent antagonism with other civilizations. The friendship between Fielding and Aziz, disturbed throughout by differences in standards and tastes, is finally ruptured when each withdraws within the boundaries of the embattled communities, and it is Forsters consciousness that social connections will fail which sends him in pursuit of spiritual communication between Mrs. Moore and both Aziz and Godbole.

Secondly, the failure of establishing harmonious Indo-British relations is reflected on Mrs. Moore failure to accept reality and life. Many images and events indicate that friendship between a dominant and a subservient people is rarely possible. The final answer to the question of friendship is emphatically negative. English and Indians cannot be friends until Indians are politically independent.

III. religious conflicts between Christianity and Hinduism

Western values are in conflict with the ultimate perception of the Hindu mystic. Christianity is the main values of Englishmen, while many Indians are pious Hindus. Mrs. Moore like the others of the western group, has a strong belief in Christian God, which can be seen from his conversation with Aziz: “Because India is part of the earth. And God has put us on the earth in order to be pleasant to each other. God…is…love. …God has put us on earth to love our neighbors and to show it, and he is omnipresent, even in India, to see how we are succeeding.”(Forster, 42) In one of the caves, the echo points out to her that all is one:” Everything exists, nothing has value.” (Forster, 134). Even the categories of time are meaningless, for the idea of the beginning and the end of things suggested by “Let there be light” and “It is finished” does not hold good in view of eternity. The echo eliminates all distinctions. The concepts of Heaven, Hell, and Annihilation, which have sprung from the ethical importance attached to human actions, are all reduced to triviality, for action itself loses its significance because it perpetuates existence. Although soon after her arrival in India, Mrs. Moore had become aware of the inefficacy of her concept of God, as is evident from her spiritual awareness that “outside the arch there seemed always an arch, beyond the remotest echo a silence,” her vision in the cave terrifies her. She feels mystified and meanwhile spiritually isolated; it is the isolation of spirit, abiding in ones own essence. It is souls isolation from its own eternity and timeless essence, as Hinduism holds. Mrs. Moore cannot understand the metaphysical subtleties, and under the spell of her vision in the cave, she shrinks away from the forces of life and contemplates retiring into “a cave of her own.” She loses interest in everything, in her children, in social responsibilities, in religion, even in God. She not only renounces all action but develops an attitude of apathy and inertia. She is no longer willing to continue her assigned role on the stage of life. Just as the critic Chaman L.Sahni said, “She deteriorates into a state of psychic paralysis; but from the Indian point of view, she is spiritually heading toward a state of supreme “isolation”. Since the Absolute is beyond the confines of time and space, since it is before creation, it cannot be approached without turning ones back upon the phenomenal world. As a result of her experience in the cave, therefore, Mrs. Moore not only turns inward, but also she lapses into a state of invincible noncooperation and detachment…But that part of her which she has imbibed from personalized Christianity cannot easily be reconciled with her souls newfound vision, for she is still imprisoned in Ego.”(Chaman L.Sahni, “The Marabar Caves in the Light of Indian Thought”, 246). The above is the religious conflict between Christianity and Hinduism reflected in Mrs. Moores mind and experience.

In A Passage to India, Forster mainly describes two groups of people, and one is the English, who mostly are professional middle-class people “to do justice and keep the peace”; another group consists of Indians which are primarily the professional classes, linked to the British by their duties and to their own people by their familial and intimate friendships. From their different reactions to the same events or cases, we can see the impact of British colonial rule in India on the colonized Indians. Also, the three division structure: Mosque, Caves, Temple help us see its impact clearly. This postcolonial novel makes readers have a profound understanding about the Indo-British relations, their conflicts and differences in religion, custom, culture and spiritual conceptions.

References：

[1]Bradbury, Malcolm.“Two Passages to India: Forster as Victorian and Modern”.Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol.77. Detroit: Gale Research Inc.1993.