Aziz's Home

"Until he remembered that he had, or ought to have, a motherland"

The need for a motherland, a place of belonging, is a recurring idea in Forster's "A Passage to India". This place would act not only as a uniting force for the inhabitants but also as a rejuvenating space for the natives. The Britishers have such a space in England and Europe as a collective, the beauty of which invokes that which is thought to be lost.

"Turning his back on it yet again, he took the train northward, and tender romantic fancies that he thought were dead forever flowered when he saw the buttercups and daisies of June"

For Fielding, Venice is a revival. Feelings of human emotion, which he had long repressed, surface and scratch at the feelings of  cynicism for the opposite sex that he harbored for much of the novel.

Such a regeneration eludes the Indian, especially the Indian Muslim, who is twice removed from the motherland due to British Imperialism as well as not being indigenous to the land. Aziz feels such an exile, a distance from the motherland, for which he holds no "natural affection". But his trial and subsequent interaction with the Hindu Mr. Das leads him to the realization that a motherland, which he often conflates with a nation, is essential.

"It led him towards the vague and bulky figure of a motherland"

But the vision Aziz encounters if the motherland is less than flattering, and not inspiring at all. It is reminiscent almost of the unfeminine form of Adela, who with her "angular body" is disgusting to Aziz. Aziz cannot contemplate an Indian motherland which will have a similar rejuvenating affect as Venice has for Fielding specifically due to the double exile he faces. The closest he comes to such a moment of revitalization is in the mosque.

"A mosque by winning his approval let loose his imagination"

The "bulky figure" of the motherland, no matter how hard he tries to love it, cannot win his approval, for it is cannot absorb the Muslim identity that Aziz values. Thus it is only within the mosque, built on Indian land and housing Muslim principles (it is representative of Islam) can Aziz come closest to the homeland he craves. It is where "his body and his thoughts found their home".