A Passage to India

by E.M. Forster

"You're superior to them, anyway. Don't forget that. You're superior to everyone in India except one or two of the Ranis, and they're on an equality."

"Please tell these ladies that I wish we could speak their language, but we have only just come to their country." "Perhaps we speak yours a little," one of the ladies said. "Why, fancy, she understands!" said Mrs. Turton. "Eastbourne, Piccadilly, High Park Corner," said another of the ladies. "Oh yes, they're English-speaking." "But now we can talk: how delightful!" cried Adela, her face lighting up. "She knows Paris also," called one of the onlookers. "They pass Paris on the way, no doubt," said Mrs. Turton, as if she was describing the movements of migratory birds. Her manner had grown more distant since she had discovered that some of the group was Westernized, and might apply her own standards to her.

"What I say. We're out here to do justice and keep the peace. Them's my sentiments. India isn't a drawingroom." "Your sentiments are those of a god," she said quietly, but it was his manner rather than his sentiments that annoyed her. Trying to recover his temper, he said, "India likes gods." "And Englishmen like posing as gods."

And she regretted afterwards that she had not kept to the real serious subject that had caused her to visit India— namely, the relationship between Ronny and Adela. Would they, or would they not, succeed in becoming engaged to be married?

On this basis Aziz found the English ladies easy to talk to, he treated them like men. Beauty would have troubled him, for it entails rules of its own, but Mrs. Moore was so old and Miss Quested so plain that he was spared this anxiety. Adela's angular body and the freckles on her face were terrible defects in his eyes, and he wondered how God could have been so unkind to any female form. His attitude towards her remained entirely straightforward in consequence.

"I do so hate mysteries," Adela announced. "We English do." "I dislike them not because I'm English, but from my own personal point of view," she corrected.

She hates generalizations about English but will make them about everyone else.

As for Miss Quested, she accepted everything Aziz said as true verbally. In her ignorance, she regarded him as "India," and never surmised that his outlook was limited and his method inaccurate, and that no one is India.

He did not mean to be rude to the two men, but the only link he could be conscious of with an Indian was the official, and neither happened to be his subordinate. As private individuals he forgot them.

They were overwhelmed by its pathos; pathos, they agreed, is the highest quality in art; a poem should touch the hearer with a sense of his own weakness, and should institute some comparison between mankind and flowers.

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.

Wow

He was still after facts, though the herd had decided on emotion. Nothing enrages Anglo-India more than the lantern of reason if it is exhibited for one moment after its extinction is decreed.

"There was an echo that appears to have frightened her. Did you go into those caves?" "I saw one of them. There was an echo. Did it get on her nerves?"

Interesting to put Mrs. Moore's episode right before this event so we see how Quested came to these inaccurate conclusions about what happened.

But the case has to come before a magistrate now; it really must, the machinery has started." "She has started the machinery; it will work to its end."

remarked that the darker races are physically attracted by the fairer, but not vice versa— not a matter for bitterness this, not a matter for abuse, but just a fact which any scientific observer will confirm. "Even when the lady is so uglier than the gentleman?"

"No," she said in a flat, unattractive voice. Slight noises began in various parts of the room, but no one yet understood what was occurring except Fielding. He saw that she was going to have a nervous breakdown and that his friend was saved. "What is that, what are you saying? Speak up, please." The Magistrate bent forward. "I'm afraid I have made a mistake." "What nature of mistake?" "Dr. Aziz never followed me into the cave." The Superintendent slammed down his papers, then picked them up and said calmly: "Now, Miss Quested, let us go on. I will read you the words of the deposition which you signed two hours later in my bungalow."

When she saw she was wrong, she pulled herself up with a jerk and said so. I want you to realize what that means. All her friends around her, the entire British Raj pushing her forward. She stops, sends the whole thing to smithereens. In her place I should have funked it. But she stopped, and almost did she become a national heroine, but my students ran us down a side street before the crowd caught flame. Do treat her considerately. She really mustn't get the worst of both worlds. I know what all these "--he indicated the shrouded forms on the roof--" will want, but you mustn't listen to them. Be merciful. Act like one of your six Mogul Emperors, or all the six rolled into one."

His Indian friends were, on the other hand, a bit above themselves. Victory, which would have made the English sanctimonious, made them aggressive. They wanted to develop an offensive, and tried to do so by discovering new grievances and wrongs, many of which had no existence. They suffered from the usual disillusion that attends warfare. The aims of battle and the fruits of conquest are never the same; the latter have their value and only the saint rejects them, but their hint of immortality vanishes as soon as they are held in the hand.

"If you had been sensible and made Miss Quested pay--" "I chose not to. Discussion of the past is useless," he said, with sudden sharpness of tone. "I have allowed her to keep her fortune and buy herself a husband in England, for which it will be very necessary. Don't mention the matter again."

"Yes, your mother was my best friend in all the world." He was silent, puzzled by his own great gratitude. What did this eternal goodness of Mrs. Moore amount to? To nothing, if brought to the test of thought. She had not borne witness in his favour, nor visited him in the prison, yet she had stolen to the depths of his heart, and he always adored her.

Aziz produced a letter that he wanted to send to Miss Quested. A charming letter. He wanted to thank his old enemy for her fine behaviour two years back: perfectly plain was it now that she had behaved well.

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."