Study notes for a Passage to India by E.M. Forster

2. Economic cosequences
Only briefly hinted
Eg.: Fielding mentions to Godbole and Adela that mangoes
can now be purchased in England: “They ship them in ice-cold
rooms. You can make India in England apparently, just as you
can make England in India.” (Chap 7)
Claim to be in India for the good of the Indians but
economically exploit them
 Increase wealth– trade system- beneficial entirely to one party

3. Religious Rivalry
.......Muslims and Hindus have always been—and continue to
be—antagonists in India. In A Passage to India, the relationship
between Dr. Aziz, a Muslim, and Dr. Panna Lal, a Hindu
underscores the tension between Muslims and Hindus. Aziz
and Lal despise each other, and Lal agrees to testify against
Aziz at the trial.
Throughout the novel, Aziz—though deeply insulted by British
prejudice against Indians—frequently deprecates Hindus with
unfounded generalizations in the same way that the British find
fault with the native populace.

4. Of the Bhattacharya family, he says, "Slack Hindus—they
have no idea of society; I know them very well because of a
doctor [Panna Lal] at the hospital.
 Such a slack, unpunctual fellow!" Aziz—and no doubt
many other Indians—also object to Christian Converting, as
a passage in Chapter 9 indicates.
Aziz is lying sick in bed when he could hear church bells as
he drowsed, both from the civil station and from the
missionaries out beyond the slaughter house—different
bells and rung with different intent, for one set was calling
firmly to Anglo-India [the British], and the other feebly to
mankind.

5. He did not object to the first set; the other he ignored,
knowing their inefficiency.
 Old Mr. Gaylord and Young Mr. Sorley [Christian
missionaries] made converts during a famine, because
they distributed food; but when times improved they
were naturally left alone again, and though surprised
and aggrieved each time this happened, they never
learnt wisdom.

6. Hope
.......The final section of the novel—which takes place in
the Hindu city of Mau, to which Aziz has relocated—
offers hope for a better future.
 First, Muslim Aziz receives help from Hindu Godbole.
Muslims and Hindus are rivals, but Aziz and Godbole
demonstrate that traditional antagonists can get along
when they treat each other with respect and live
together as equals.

7. Second, Aziz reconciles with Cyril Fielding and
befriends Mrs. Moore's son, Ralph.
 However, Aziz cautions Fielding that they will never
have a lasting friendship until the English leave India.

8. Culture Clash
Negative portrayal:
Clash between Christian and Hindu beliefs
Mrs Moore’s conditioned values and the idea of oneness –
even good and evil
Positive portrayal:
Part 3
Hindu festival in Mau
Enacts Lord Krishna’s birth
Joy & affirmation
Mystery of Indian spirituality

9. Fielding’s response - culture clash
Does not believe in God
No interest in contrast between Eastern- Western spirituality
But- chap 23- feels far more at home with Western
architecture – he encounters in Venice- than Indian temples

10. God & Religion
Forster – not a religious man/ writer
But Religion – major preoccupation
India: meeting point of 3 world’s historic religions
(Islam, Christianity, Hinduism).
Corresponds with 3 parts of the book (Mosque, Cave,
Temple)

11.  For e.g.:
Aziz – loves cultural & social aspects of the Islamic heritage
Less concerned with its theology & religious practice
Aware that Moslems – minority– feels a special kinship with
other Moslems
Anglo- Indians – nominal reps of Christianity
Ronny – admits– for him Christianity is fine in its place -- But-
not let it interfere with civil duty
Mrs Moore– Christian in her outlook – experience a crisis of
faith in the caves

12. Hinduism: main religion of India
Godbole- central Hindu figure
Most religious character
Hinduism (to him) : “completeness, not
reconstruction.”
central principal: total acceptance of things as they are
Forster– suggests- most positive spiritual approach to
life
Most representative of the true spirit of India

13. Symbols:
• The Marabar Caves
• The Green Bird
• The Wasp
Motifs:
• The Echo
• Eastern and Western Architecture
• Godbole’s Song

14. The Caves .......
E. M. Forster modeled the fictional caves in A
Passage to India on actual caves about twelve
miles from the city of Gaya in the state of Bihar.
However, the real caves are known as the Barabar
Caves, not the Marabar Caves (Forster's fictional
name for them).

15. A Buddhist ruler of the second century BC, tolerant of
other religions, ordered workers to hew the caves from
rock faces as holy places for monks of the Ajivika religion.

There are four Barabar caves.
Their smooth interior walls sustain prolonged echoes.

16. The Cave Echo
What It Means to Mrs. Moore and How It Affects Adela
In the first of the Marabar Caves, all sounds—sneezes,
whistles, shouts—return the same echo: boum, or a
variation of it such as ou-boum.
This echo appears to mock the Hindu concept that
the entire universe—and everything in it—consists of
a single essence, Brahman (not to be confused with
Brahmin or Brahma).


17. Even the human soul, called atma by Hindus, is part
of this essence.
Thus, a whistle is a sneeze and a sneeze is a soul,
since all are Brahman—that is, all are the same
essence.

18. The echo unnerves Mrs. Moore because she vaguely
understands that it represents a force that reduces
everything to sameness—a monotonous, empty sameness.
Even biblical words that she had lived by become part of the
Brahman and thus lose their meaning, as reported by the
narrator in the last paragraph of Chapter 14.
Mrs. Moore is attempting to write a letter to her children,
Stella and Ralph, when ruminating over her experience in
the cave.

19. “[S]uddenly, at the edge of her mind, Religion appeared,
poor little talkative Christianity, and she knew that all its
divine words from “Let there be Light” to “It is finished” only
amounted to boum.
Then she was terrified over an area larger than usual; the
universe, never comprehensible to her intellect, offered no
repose to her soul . . .
.”.......Thereafter, her experience in the cave haunts her, and
she becomes irritable and depressed.

20. Like the biblical words, her life and everything she
believes in lose their meaning.
India had fascinated her when she arrived in the
country; now it repels her.
Its intriguing mystery has turned into the “muddle”
spoken of by other Britons.

21. No, she does not curse the country and
its people as Major Callendar and Mrs.
Turton do.
Nor does she side with Adela against Aziz
in the days leading up to the trial.
 But she can no longer tolerate India; it is
too much for her.

22. She decides to leave. She does not even stay to testify for Aziz
“Why should I be in the witness box?” she later says to her son
Ronny. “I have nothing to do with your ludicrous law courts.”
The narrator then reports Heaslop's thoughts:
“She was by no means the dear old lady outsiders supposed,
and India had brought her out in the open.”

23. 
.......Elderly and in declining health, oppressed by the
Asian heat, she dies aboard the ship and becomes part
of the vast emptiness of the Indian Ocean.

.......Like Mrs. Moore, Adela Quested is fascinated with
India when she arrives in the country.
 But she worries that its unbridled diversity will turn
her into just another cynical, disenchanted Anglo-
Indian if she marries Ronny Heaslop and becomes a
resident of India.

24. However, she sees a glimmer of hope in Indian history, in
particular in the person of the Mogul emperor Akbar (1542-
1605), who reigned from 1556 until his death.
 To unify the populace, he instituted reforms that
centralized government functions. And, though a Muslim,
he promoted dialogue between people of all religions—
Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, and so on—and even attempted to
establish a new religion that combined elements of other
religions.

25. .......When discussing Akbar with Aziz
(Chapter 14), Adela says, “[W]asn't Akbar's
new religion very fine?
 It was to embrace the whole of India.”
Aziz, acknowledging that Akbar was a great
ruler, responds that Akbar's idea of a single
Indian religion was wrong.

26.  “Nothing embraces the whole of India, nothing, nothing,
and that was Akbar's mistake.” Adela then says, “I hope
you're not right.
There will have to be something universal in this country—I
don't say religion, for I'm not religious, but something, or
how else are barriers to be broken down.”

27. She ends up saying that without a unifying force she would
find it difficult as an Anglo-Indian to “avoid becoming like
them [Mrs Turton and Mrs. Callendar].”
.......Later, when she enters one of the upper caves alone, she
scratches a wall and hears the echo.

28. It is at this moment, she later reports, that Aziz attacks her.
She fights back with her field glasses, escapes the cave, races
through a field of cactuses that tear her skin and embed
needles in it, and returns with Miss Derek to Chandrapore.

29.  She is disoriented, in a state of shock. After
her recovery, she repeatedly hears the echo.
But unlike Mrs. Moore, she has no clue as
to its meaning.
When she asks the old woman what it
means, Mrs. Moore replies, “If you don't
know, you don't know; I can't tell you.”

30. .......Unable to understand the sound, she becomes
like the other English men and women who cannot
understand Indians.
She even begins to question her own perceptiveness
and begins to realize that she has falsely accused Aziz.

31.  But Ronny and the others, who are using her as an
instrument to punish the Indians, persuade her that she was
right about Aziz.
At the trial, however, she musters the courage to admit she
was wrong and drops the charges. She too then leaves India.

.......The departure of Miss Quested and Mrs. Moore
foreshadows the historical British exit from India in 1947,
which Forster may have seen as inevitable.

32. hysterics are caused by the echo’s truth revealing
function with regard to the narrative’s stance towards
national and religious difference:
The echo in a Marabar cave is not like these, it is
entirely devoid of distinction.

33. Whatever is said, the same monotonous noise replies,
and quivers up and down the walls until it is absorbed
into the roof.
 “Boum” is the sound as far as the human alphabet can
express it, or “bou-oum.” or “ou-boum,”–utterly dull. (147)

34. “Dullness” thus becomes a linguistic, existential
and national character–and the blending of these
three registers is in itself dull. Can think of the echo as a too
perfect mimesis, subverting the claims for English
superiority that are insisted on throughout. Note that it is
precisely the threat of “miscegenation” that gets the English
folks all up in arms about Aziz–another potential “dullness.”
When Fielding returns years later to see Aziz, they get into a
minor boat crash: “That was the climax, as far as India
admits of one” (315).

35. The Echo as a Hindu Sound
Undoubtedly, the most memorable figure of speech in A
Passage to India is onomatopoeia: the boum echo in the
caves. It calls to mind the om sound chanted by Hindus and
Buddhists. Of this sound, Encyclopaedia Britannica says,

36.  The syllable Om is composed of the three
sounds a-u-m (in Sanskrit, the vowels a and u
coalesce to become o), which represent several
important triads: the three worlds of earth,
atmosphere, and heaven; the three major Hindu
gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; and the three
sacred Vedic scriptures, Rg, Yajur, and Sama.
Thus Om mystically embodies the essence of the
entire universe. It is uttered at the beginning
and end of Hindu prayers, chants, and
meditation and is freely used in Buddhist and
Jaina ritual also.