This year marks the centenary of the iconic Raj-era colonial novel A Passage to India which was selected as one of the 100 great books of English literature in the 20th century by the Modern Library. The book made it to the 1924 James Tait Black memorial prize for fiction and won hosannas even from the Time critics who included it in their 100 great novels listing.
Written by E. M. Forster, the book is a literary masterpiece set against the backdrop of British rule in India. The title, A Passage to India, was taken from the American poet Walt Whitman's poem Leaves of Grass and was based on Forster’s own experiences in India while he was employed as the private secretary to the Maharaja of Dewas. That in itself was an inversion of the colonial trope of the ruler being served by the natives.
More people are familiar with the book’s plot from David Lean’s sensitively made film of the same name which went on to win 11 Academy nominations and two awards. Lean, who also wrote the screenplay and incorporated a few more details and scenes not in the book, captured brilliantly the diffidence of the young Indian doctor in Victor Banerjee who lived the part to the hilt. From this diffidence, interspersed with flashes of aggressiveness, we get to see through him the caged soul of the Indians who sway between asserting their cultural beliefs and identity even as they are restrained brutishly by the colonial masters and their imposing worldview.
A Passage to India is a powerful assay into the muddled relations between the rulers and the ruled with all the nuanced colonial mistrusts and prejudices that run rife between two inherently polar forces. Forster, the humanist, presents to us the painful passage which is the journey to understand India spiritually just as it signified for Whitman erupting in a civilisational conflict.
In the book, the clash of cultures of the Orient and the Occident eventually ends up with the promise of a delicately wrought reconciliation sundered forever by shame and prejudice. The twain shall never meet seems to be Forster’s considered opinion as the Indian Dr Aziz and Cyril Fielding, the English principal of the government college whose empathy with the Indians stands out, agree to disagree at letting the threads of their frayed friendship fly in the winds. The two English women in the novel, Adela and Mrs Morre, who come to “see” India finally do not see it. Despite the bridge party and despite speaking the same language as the bridge founders, leading to nowhere.
Forster’s writing leaves us in no doubt - a subjugated people cannot live in harmony with their colonial masters. For that freedom and equality are imperative.
To see what a difference freedom can make, you just have to look at the world outside India, 76 years after India won its freedom. Today the passage of Forster’s book has come full circle with a brown, Rishi Sunak, presiding over the colonisers. India's diaspora is powerful, rich and successful. No longer are Indians considered through a western refraction as inefficient and unreliable. Over these last seven decades, India has only become surer in its identity and its place in the geopolitical arena.
From a time when it was all about the passage of the Occident to India’s raw materials and human resources, over the last 30 years the West has been making a determined passage to India for its large market. Post-colonial India is no longer ready to accept being seen as inferior and is determined to climb out of the developing country paradigm. As the sixth-largest consumer market, the sixth-largest importer and ninth-largest exporter as of 2022, Indians are no longer diffident like Dr Aziz. India is now perceived as a leader of the developing world that firmly believes the global south should have a voice.
The India story is not just a bon mot but heralds a different kind of passage to a new world order.
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