The Roots of the Liberal Colonizer (as seen through Mr. Fielding)

In Foster's "A Passage to India", the figure of the "liberal colonizer" is portrayed through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested. To see their mannerisms and actions as functions of them being just the “liberal colonizers” is failing to see them in the wider socio-political scenario at the time. Through two specific encounters between Mr. Fielding and Aziz: one in which the latter visits the former, and the second in which the converse happens, one can realize that one simple, yet powerful, factor which governed the liberal colonizers' actions and mentality in the story.

A close examination of the first formal introduction of Mr. Fielding (which is contained within the first three paragraphs of Chapter 7) in conjunction with the two specific encounters mentioned, hints at unceremonious discrepancies. How was it that Mr. Fielding, whose best friends in Britain were the English, was now building up a similar relationship with Aziz, given that there was no shortage of the English in India? Why did he engage in such a friendly and frank conversation with Aziz, a conversation which included a game in which he had to guess Aziz’s appearance? Why did he let Aziz into his bedroom while he was still dressing given that he was not friends with Aziz previously and it was only the first time that they were meeting each other? Why did he visit Aziz when he was ill? Why did he contemplate over what hostage from his past to hand over to Aziz when Aziz showed him the picture of his dead wife as a sign of the level of confidence that Aziz placed in him? Generally speaking, how was it, that from having “no objection” and a certain harmless indifference to Indians he found “it convenient and pleasant” to mingle with them? The only reasonable explanation to such discrepancies is that Mr. Fielding, was an exile himself and it was precisely this that made him into, as was defined in class, the “liberal colonizer”.

Because of being brought up under a different set of ideals, Mr. Fielding had no racial feeling and he also had an aversion to the “herd-instinct”. Given that, it comes as no surprise to read of Mr. Fielding’s acts of unintentional non-conformity to the British-in-India culture, such as declaring the white races to be actually “pinko-gray”. Failures to be sensitive to the British-in-India culture coupled with the fact that he was not a racist man ushered onto him the exilic experience. Edward Said in “Reflections on Exile” states that the exiled figure tries to identify with, what he or she sees, as the “triumphant ideology”. The basis for this “triumphant ideology” in Mr. Fielding’s case was his upbringing; building on that, he became from the “harmless-and-indifferent colonizer” to the “liberal colonizer” and this precisely accounts for the discrepancies I have mentioned previously.  

The revealing conclusion is that, in Mr. Fielding’s case, his mentality and actions were explicit functions of him being a “liberal colonizer” and he being a “liberal colonizer” was explicitly and intimately related to the exilic experience that he was undergoing and this provides a deeper understanding of the personality of the “liberal colonizer”: it brings one to the very roots of the "liberal colonizer".