Liberal Colonials: Odious Adela

There are two broad categories of White Colonizer in Forster’s A Passage to India; there is one group (Ronny, Mr. Turton, Major Callendar) that is utterly disdainful towards the ‘natives’ despite their having been in India for a (presumably) long time. They are part of the imperial service and consider themselves the ‘gods’ of India. They do not try to hide behind a facade as to their true intentions and attitudes when it comes to governing their subordinates.

The other category is the ‘liberal’ colonial best represented by Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested. I find that Adela’s naiveté borders on arrogance as she articulates her desire to discover the ‘real India’. To Ronny, Adela’s desire seems ‘comic’, and in many ways it most certainly is. She adds that she “only [wants] those Indians” that are the collector’s friends, which clearly shows that she is interested to know of a select part of white washed India. To her, Indians, especially the Muslims, are glamorous from afar. When Mrs. Moore relates the incident of the mosque, she remarks that it "…sounds very romantic…you [met] a young man in a mosque”. At once she sexualizes the mosque, which is a place of worship, and at once she exoticizes the young Muslim male who she encountered. Her encounter in the Marabar caves with Dr. Aziz also give further merit to this observation. “What a handsome little Oriental he was”- as if Dr. Aziz were an object, a concept- but never a human being.