“Mr. Fielding was a disruptive force, and rightly, for ideas
are fatal to caste, and he used ideas by that most potent method- interchange.
Neither a missionary nor a student, he was happiest in the give-and-take of a
private conversation. The world, he believed, is a globe of men who are trying
to reach one another and can best do so by the help of good will plus culture
and intelligence- a creed ill-suited to Chandrapore, but he had come out too
late to lose it."
Mr. Fielding emerges in “A Passage to India” as the only
British Colonizer who does not allow any inherent bias to interfere in his
interaction with the Indians. What I find most interesting in his character is
how he is slowly ostracized from the good graces of his fellow Englishmen who
label him as not “pukka”. This term itself is loaded with meaning, for it
serves as an important tool of distinction between the British who view the
Indians purely as a colony, and those who are able to- not sympathies- but
treat the Indians with a modicum of respect deserved by humans. The passage
above shows how the liberal attitude of Mr. Fielding inevitably becomes a
disruptive force, and how the treatment of Indians as equals actually destabilizes
the function of colonization. However, at the same time, Mr. fielding stands as
a unique character that exemplify the qualities of reason and symmetric
thinking the British claim as heirs to the Western Tradition. I think Mr.
Fielding represents an attempt by the author how the colonies could have been
if the British were willing to accommodate the culture of India.
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