A Passage to India in Never too Late to Read Classics

Jun 27, 2021 Faraaz rated it it was amazing

Shelves: to-read-2021

Read this for the Pankaj Mishra essay. "If India is governed from the bridge tables and tennis courts of Chandrapur, well, the day is coming when she will be so no longer."

Forster was the first novelist imagining the subject peoples from a perspective of empathy and a position of equality. This alone makes Forster stand head and shoulders above his contemporaries and his work unprecedented in Orientalist literature.

As one early Indian perspective stated "I was filled with a sense of great reli Read this for the Pankaj Mishra essay. "If India is governed from the bridge tables and tennis courts of Chandrapur, well, the day is coming when she will be so no longer."

Forster was the first novelist imagining the subject peoples from a perspective of empathy and a position of equality. This alone makes Forster stand head and shoulders above his contemporaries and his work unprecedented in Orientalist literature.

As one early Indian perspective stated "I was filled with a sense of great relief and of an almost personal gratitude to Mr Forster. This was not becuase as an Indian I felt myself vindicated or flattered by the book. Indeed to know oneself is not to feel flattered as many an Ango-Indian reader of the book has discovered before me. It was because for the first time I saw myself reflected in the mind of an English author, without losing all the semblance of a human face. In "A Passage to India", Mr. Forster is the first to raise grotesque legendary creatures and teracotta figures to the dignity of human beings. I, who never had the courage to protest when people would insist on behaving as if I was a dissolute prince, or an unsaved heathen soul, or a slothful Oriental or a profound occultist or a savage aborigine, when I came to the last page of the book and read
"Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want."

But the horses didn't want it they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through
which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there"

When I read this, for a moment I ignored the awful truth of the passage, so elated was I at the discovery that somebody had found ordinary human beings in the East."

Forster interpretted the East to the West. Who better than Pankaj Mishra, the Western voice speaking of the East, to re interpret Forster to us today. Mishra states "But Forster judges no one in his fictional universe as unworthy of redemption."

This is right here is why we need Literature. ...more

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Jun 17, 2021 Faraaz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

" 'Yes we all have limitations' she thought, withdrew her palm from the wall and laid it on her forehead."

For all the frailties, shortcomings and imperfections of the human condition that are laid bare before us in Forster's A Passage to India, there's also the human potential for courage and tendency towards a sense of justice, and connections against all odds. This is what makes Literature and particularly 19th century literature (Forster was often called a 19th century novelist writing in the " 'Yes we all have limitations' she thought, withdrew her palm from the wall and laid it on her forehead."

For all the frailties, shortcomings and imperfections of the human condition that are laid bare before us in Forster's A Passage to India, there's also the human potential for courage and tendency towards a sense of justice, and connections against all odds. This is what makes Literature and particularly 19th century literature (Forster was often called a 19th century novelist writing in the 20th century) the pathway to human salvation.

A Passage to India in my view is E. M. Forster's greatest work in his most excellent oeuvre. The novel was written almost hundred years ago and is essentially a result of two trips Forster made to India in the 1910s and 1920s. Post Colonialism today is a major subject in humanities and the important frameworks it has developed has undoubtedly shaped literature and non fiction writing.

Yet E. M. Forster which pre dates the crux of Post Colonial works of the late 20th century contains within it some of the same themes that would go on to shape the Post Colonial novels of the 21st century.

When a former colonial administrator E. A. Horne objected to the depiction of the British administrators in the novel as 'wildly improbable' and 'strangely distorted', Forster responded "You say I don't like them because I don't really know them. But how can I ever like them when I happen to like Indians and they don't? Sympathy is finite, at least mine is, alas - so that as the rope is pulled into the right hand it slips out of the left."

It is hard to overstate the power and impact of Forster's perspective here when you take into consideration the historical and social context of the early 20th century and the way Empires viewed their subjects. One just has to look at the literature coming out of the Empire in this period to see gauge this perspective. Yet Forster not only challenges the colonial mindset of his peers, he goes further and like Mr Fielding in the novel, embraces the friendship of the Oriental.

This was unheard of at that time chiefly because the European did not see their Asian subject as equals. So friendships or personal relationships were out of the question. Forster's visits to India were out of personal friendships he had formed that were only strengthened over the years. It is no surprise that so much about A Passage to India is about friends getting together and having a great time.

"Down with the English anyhow. That's certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We may hate one another, but we hate you most. If I don't make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it's fifty-five hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman
into the sea and then " he rode against him furiously "and then," he concluded, half kissing him, "you and I shall be friends."

"Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want."

But the horses didn't want it they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through
which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there."

If you want to understand a nation, read its literature. Before South Asian novels would present to the world their imagined histories and realities, Forster set the pathway with "A Passage to India" It strips away the layers of race, class and political divide to show us a glimpse of a possibility of connections, of trust, of friendships across the divide. They're difficult and the odds of overcoming them are slim. You can make the case that by the end of the novel, the individuals at the heart of Forster's novel succumb despite their best individual efforts. But Forster showed us a possible path of getting there. That's what great novels do. They show us a path to salvation despite our frailties. ...more

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Oct 25, 2016 Caitlin Channer rated it liked it

Shelves: classics, fiction

This was much different than I was expecting, and I enjoyed the writing and insight into human nature, though I do think Forster made it just a tad too long for the plot. There were some spots that were pretty dull.

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Nov 22, 2021 Faraaz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

An excellent compendium of literary essays, reviews and critiques on one of the greatest 20th century novels of our times. The collection of essays and reviews range from reviews that came out right when the book was published, providing us with an excellent insight into how British and Indian society reacted to this work and what that says about those times.

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