One
of the most remarkable passages of the novel is the narrator’s description of
what India really is. By using the pronoun ‘her’ for India’s actions and in-actions, Forster associates the ideas of female sexuality with the state.
For what is Mother India, the nurturing land – A Passage to India depicts the
Indian soil to disadvantage and fail the Anglo-Indians spiritually, physically
and emotionally. “She calls ‘Come’ through her hundred mouths, through objects
ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a
promise, only an appeal’. India’s ‘appeal’ has undertones of colonization and
immigration to plunder but as the same time the displacement and exilic existence
of all of its many ‘invaders’ makes it the reason why relationships fail. The
narrator’s use of the words such as ‘Come’ and ‘Invaders’ point to ideas of
deception and hypocrisy –This mocking tone of the narrator not only relegates
the Anglo- Indians to outsiders and exilic figures but also brings in the
historical element of invasion, imperialism and colonization into perspective
for the reader. India then is not all glorious and regenerative for the
English. As much as Adela wanted to see the ‘real India’, the visit to the
caves then sets stage for the upcoming trauma and rape of the English woman.
There
is much mention of India’s antiquity. The beginning of Chapter twelve contrasts
the birth of ‘Hindustan’ geologically versus it religious bearing on the land
and the rivers. The narrator uses the term ‘we’ to ‘call India immemorial’ and
decides to say that ‘India is really far older’. Also implying the lands force
on its people, culture, religions and decadence. The modernist ways of
deconstructing the land, fragmenting images: oceans, rivers and mountains to create a flat,
sterile outlook of a place are at play here. Setting India’s ‘existence’ up
against its geography, gods and Hinduism, Forster’s description of India with
images of the natural are more successful at making it pure, old and ‘extraordinary’
so much so that in some way they justify the English colonization. In this description of
the ‘primal’ India failing and drowning underneath the northern India, Aziz is
a perfect reference. Oscillating between the Mughal glory and the British Raj,
it really was the upturn of geography versus the alignment of India’s people
over time. At one point, Forster says that Aziz’s incapability to ensure that
he satisfied all the different people was understood only by the land. When
preparing the food for the trip, he had to respect the Hindus, Christians and
his own preferences. And in that he saw a dilemma. ‘Trouble after trouble
encountered him – because he had challenged the spirit of the Indian earth
which tries to keep men in compartments’. Then the differences in the state
were enormous, the idea of uniting them or seeing any sort of resolution or
reconciliation was impossible. To which, Forster says, ‘India knows of their
troubles. She knows of the whole world’s troubles, to its uttermost depth’. The
latter then also justifies why Aziz and Fielding couldn't be friends, primarily
because ‘the horses didn't want it –they swerved apart; the earth didn't want
it, sending up rocks through which the riders must pass single file; the
temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest
House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath:
they didn't want it; they said in a hundred voices. ‘No, not yet,’ and the sky
said, ‘No, not there.’ The inability of
the land to allow sustenance to all people, cultures and friendships is the
crux of the Indian state. In one way making India home for the exile –where no
one is really ‘placed’. India’s ‘hundred mouths’ and the ‘hundred voices’ also
define the appropriate use of language here. At once, inviting and appealing;
India is not hospitable or embracing.
Finally, Aziz’s ideas of India as a nation are ironic to Indian history that Fielding very well
mocks. In the earlier part of the novel, Forster says ‘How can the mind take
hold of such a country’ as ‘unfortunately, India has few important towns’. This
failure of the country to be metropolitan enough for Adela is contrasted with
what the Anglo-Indians really see India as – ‘India is the country, fields,
fields, then hills, jungle, hills and more fields.’ It’s backward, natural
state is in fact a description of the oriental. Adela recognizes the routes of
the trains and that they are on the unimportant one. ‘Far away behind her, with
a shriek that meant business, rushed the Mail, connecting up important towns
such as Calcutta and Lahore, where interesting events occur and personalities
develop’ versus the train to Marabar caves which was ‘half-asleep, going
nowhere in particular, and with no passenger of importance in any of its
carriages.’ At every instance, travel in
the novel, defeats the English and their final royalty in the colony. And the
closing passages of the novel, as recognized by Fielding, humor the concept of
India as nation. Forster represents this as almost India’s effort to make place
in the civilized world. He says ‘Last comer to drab nineteenth century
sisterhood! Waddling at this hour of the world to take her seat! She, whose
only peer was the Holy Roman Empire, she shall rank with Guatemala and Belgium
perhaps!’. In an instance, we see how India’s existence has been likened to the
antiquity of the Roman Empire and its attempt at nationhood mocked for all the
right reasons.
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