A central theme in Forster's A Passage to India is the question of whether or not the English and the Indians can be friends, and this question of whether two human beings can or cannot be friends reveals itself to be a highly political matter once we examine why it needs to be asked in the first place. It is important to note that we are not examining simply whether two persons of different communities can be friends, that could have been done within England or within India, both of which compromise of many different religious/ethnic communities, the English-Indian question is that of the relationship between colonizer and colonized and so it is a matter of power-relations; a matter of politics.
At the beginning of the novel we witness banter among three Indians on whether or not the English can be friends, the conversation is mostly focused on the personality of the English people and the difference between the two peoples but there is one specific opinion that deserves special attention. Hamidullah contends that friendship with the English is possible only within England, and so we must examine what, exactly, is the difference between an Englishman and Indian meeting in India and the same happening in England--the foremost thing that comes to mind is that all the English in India, by default, are rulers while within England the common English man can meet the Indian without that ruler-ruled relationship and so there is potential for a personal relationship on a more equal footing.
For Aziz, Mrs. Moore and Mr. Fielding at first present the possibility of friendship with the British simply because they are more amicable than the other English he has encountered. The extremely troubling underlying power difference does not rear its ugly head until Aziz is vilified and falsely accused of raping Adela Quested. It is only when he is put in a position to feel the full force of the inequality of the position that he occupies in a colonized society that he begins to hate, temporarily, Mr. Fielding. At first this may seem to be simply the result of the misunderstanding where Aziz feels that Mr. Fielding is taking the side of the the woman, Adela, who almost ruined his life but the feeling that Aziz and Mr. Fielding cannot be friends persists even after all that is cleared up. And it is simply because the truth of the inequality of their friendship, no matter how nice they were to each other, that was embedded within the very structure of the society that they inhabited had been thoroughly exposed during Aziz's trial and now could no longer be ignored. This culminates in the final scene of the novel where the very landscape of India is telling them that they cannot be friends, a recognition that the obstacle to their friendship is structural and that the political has overpowered the individual personal views that they had of each other.
At the beginning of the novel we witness banter among three Indians on whether or not the English can be friends, the conversation is mostly focused on the personality of the English people and the difference between the two peoples but there is one specific opinion that deserves special attention. Hamidullah contends that friendship with the English is possible only within England, and so we must examine what, exactly, is the difference between an Englishman and Indian meeting in India and the same happening in England--the foremost thing that comes to mind is that all the English in India, by default, are rulers while within England the common English man can meet the Indian without that ruler-ruled relationship and so there is potential for a personal relationship on a more equal footing.
For Aziz, Mrs. Moore and Mr. Fielding at first present the possibility of friendship with the British simply because they are more amicable than the other English he has encountered. The extremely troubling underlying power difference does not rear its ugly head until Aziz is vilified and falsely accused of raping Adela Quested. It is only when he is put in a position to feel the full force of the inequality of the position that he occupies in a colonized society that he begins to hate, temporarily, Mr. Fielding. At first this may seem to be simply the result of the misunderstanding where Aziz feels that Mr. Fielding is taking the side of the the woman, Adela, who almost ruined his life but the feeling that Aziz and Mr. Fielding cannot be friends persists even after all that is cleared up. And it is simply because the truth of the inequality of their friendship, no matter how nice they were to each other, that was embedded within the very structure of the society that they inhabited had been thoroughly exposed during Aziz's trial and now could no longer be ignored. This culminates in the final scene of the novel where the very landscape of India is telling them that they cannot be friends, a recognition that the obstacle to their friendship is structural and that the political has overpowered the individual personal views that they had of each other.
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