A Passage to India

There's very little bridging between cultures going on at the Turtons' Bridge Party.
The Indians and the English are grouped on opposite sides of the lawn.
Adela feels disappointed. Ronny lectures Adela about why Indians don't matter.
Adela notices that Ronny is getting annoyingly conventional about things.
Mrs. Turton introduces Adela and Mrs. Moore over to the Indian women. She speaks
some Urdu to the Indian women, who reply in English. This is an unpleasant surprise
to her because it makes it less easy for her to act superior.
The two English-speaking Indian women, Mrs. Bhattacharya and Mrs. Das, have a
polite conversation with Adela and Mrs. Moore.
As they leave, Mrs. Moore asks whether it would be all right for Adela and herself to
call on the Indian women. After some confusing banter between Mr. and Mrs.
Bhattacharya, they agree to a visit on Thursday.
Adela then meets Mr. Fielding, the principal of the local government college. After
some friendly chitchat, Mr. Fielding invites her and Mrs. Moore over to tea. On
hearing that Mrs. Moore has met Aziz, he agrees to invite Aziz over as well.
Adela, Ronny, and Mrs. Moore all head home from the party.
The McBrydes and Miss Derek join them for dinner. Miss Derek views the Bridge
Party, and her overall experience in India, as pure comedy.
After their dinner guests leave, Ronny is alone with his mother. His mother chides
him for his attitude toward Indians, but Ronny retorts that he is in India to govern,
not to "behave pleasantly" (1.5.86). Mrs. Moore disagrees and argues that they are
in India to behave pleasantly. When she invokes religion "Godislove" (1.5.97),
Ronny gets uncomfortable and decides to leave his mother alone.

Analysis:
The Bridge Party is an honorable failure for all those who attend, borne of mostly
good intentions but extremely poor execution. Though the event is meant to be a
time of orchestrated interaction, a bridge between the two cultures, the only
result is heightened suspicion on both sides. Indians such as Mahmoud Ali suspect
that Turton is throwing the party not in good faith, but on orders from a superior.
Turton himself suspects that the Indians attend only for self-serving reasons. It
represents all of the problems of cross-cultural exchange between the English and
the Indians.
With a few notable exceptions, the British who attend the party do not behave well.
Mrs. Turton, for instance, represents the attitude of most Englishwomen in India: she

is flatly bigoted and rude, regarding herself as superior to all Indians in seemingly
every respect. The Englishmen at the party, however, appear less malicious in their
attitudes. Mr. Turton and Ronny Heaslop are representative of this type: through
their work they have come to know some Indians as individuals, and though
somewhat condescending, they are far less overtly malicious than the
Englishwomen. Of the men, only Mr. Fielding and Mr. Turton behave well, while
among the women only Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested are interested in speaking
with the Indians. Unlike the other English, Fielding does not recognize racial
distinctions between himself and the native population. Instead, he interacts with
Indians on an individual-to-individual basis. While Fielding and Mrs. Moore are
unself-conscious in their friendship with Indians, whereas Adela consciously and
actively seeks out this cross-cultural friendship as an interesting and enriching
experience. However, these two women, who wish to learn from the Indians, find
that this particular setting is stifling.
Even when Mrs. Moore and Adela attempt to reach out to Indians, they find that
their attempts go awry. The interaction between Mrs. Moore and Mrs. Bhattacharya
is indicative of this; while Mrs. Moore simply wants to visit with Mrs. Bhattacharya,
this woman, unaccustomed to such polite behavior, misinterprets this as a
significant event and plans to postpone her vacation for it. Forster indicates that the
desire for each of these groups to be polite and sensitive to one another creates a
stifling atmosphere between them; those who wish to interact socially have such a
fear of offending one another that they create barriers to their own interaction. This
also illustrates a prevalent motif in A Passage to India, the insufficiency of good
intentions.
Mrs. Moore serves as the moral center in A Passage to India, a woman of exemplary
behavior and intentions toward others. She behaves with a direct simplicity,
reminding her son of Christian teachings. Mrs. Moore does bear a certain burden
because of this uncomplicated goodness; her unwavering, righteous mindset will
make her a victim of others' less stringent moral systems, while her belief in the
tenets of Christian morality will be tested in the non-Christian landscape of India.
Forster mentions that Mrs. Moore finds it more difficult to avoid mentioning God as
she ages; this shows that Mrs. Moore has a great concern for her own morality and
that she has a preoccupation with death.
Forster fleshes out the character of Adela Quested significantly in these chapters. As
part of this effort, the author uses Fielding as a sort of moral barometer, a character
whose judgments we can trust. In this regard, we can see Fieldings judgment of
Adelathat she appears to object to the English treatment of the Indians on an
intellectual, rather than emotional levelas Forsters own judgment. Adela, perhaps
because of this intellectual, unemotional curiosity about Indian culture, conducts
her interactions in India in a negative sense rather than a positive oneattempting
to not act like the other English rather than attempting to actively identify with
Indians. Adela always acts as an individual, rejecting the herd mentality of the other

couples at the English club. While the other English try to re-create England in India
through meals of sardines and plays like Cousin Kate, Adela hopes to experience the
real India, the spirit of India. Yet we sense that Adelas idea of this real India is
vague and somewhat romanticized, especially when compared to Mrs. Moores
genuine interaction with Aziz or Fieldings enthusiastic willingness to partake in
Indian culture.

Themes:
Religion. Religion plays a major role in A Passage to India, dividing not only the
primarily Christian British from the Indians, but also dividing Indian society from
within. While Hinduism is the majority religion in India, and Islam the most
significant minority, other Indian religious groups mentioned in the novel include
Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists. Ronny Heaslop typifies the British administrator's
attitude toward all religion, including Christianity, as an irrational system of beliefs.
According to him, Christianity is only useful insofar as it provides divine justification
for the British monarchy, and no more. And India's plethora of religions only
underscores its backwardness to someone like Ronny. The novel, however, explores
how different religious traditions, including Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, might
provide a better, more inclusive view of humanity. But no one religion in the novel is
valorised over the others as the last word on life, the universe, and everything. The
"boum" a twist on the Hindu Dharmic "om" that threatens Mrs Moore's hold on
life signals the novel's general skepticism toward all organized religions.

Power. Set in India at a time when the country was a British colony, Forster's novel
is an obvious critique of the British Empire. The assumption that one people have a
right to dominate another what people at the time called Britain's "civilizing
mission" is constantly and consistently undercut throughout the novel. The British
Empire is portrayed as a fundamentally racist institution that excludes and
subjugates others. But the novel is ambivalent about Indian aspirations for
independence. It seems equally skeptical of the idea of India as an independent
nation: how can a country with so much religious and social diversity be unified
under one government? Is the idea of nationhood just as exclusive as the idea of
empire? Is there anything beyond nation and empire, something that includes
everyone, regardless of race, religion, or class?

Friendship. Faced with the machinery of the British Empire and the daunting task
of Indian nation-building, A Passage to India asks us to consider friendship as the
solution to these incredibly complex political issues. ("All you need is love,"
anyone?) What makes the novel interesting, however, is its candor regarding all of
the barriers the characters face in establishing their friendships, particularly with
Aziz and Fielding, who are unable to bridge their cultural and political differences
despite their affection for one another.

Quotes:

Quote: "Because India is a part of the earth, and God has put us on the earth to be
pleasant to each other. God islove [] God has put us on earth to love our
neighbors and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even in India, to see how we are
succeeding [] The sincere if impotent desire wins His blessing. I think everyone
fails, but there are so many kinds of failure. Good will and more good will and more
good will.

Analysis: Like the missionaries in Quote #2, Mrs. Moore is Christian. But unlike the
missionaries, she seems to embrace a God who loves all things even the humble
wasp that made Sorley so uncomfortable in Quote #2.

Quote: [Mrs. Moore] must needs pronounce [God's] name frequently, as the
greatest she knew, yet she had never found it less efficacious. Outside the arch
there seemed always an arch, beyond the remotest echo a silence. (1.5.102)

Analysis: Perhaps it is because Mrs. Moore's version of Christianity is so allembracing that it leads her to question Christianity itself. Her experience in India
makes her question whether Christianity is the only way of understanding the world,
whether there is a religion (or "arch") that is greater than Christianity, whether there
is a religion even greater than that religion, and so on and so forth. Perhaps beyond
religion there is nothing at all, "a silence."

Quote: One touch of regret not the canny substitute but the t rue regret from the
heart would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different
institution.
"I'm going to argue, and indeed dictate," she said, clinking her rings. "The English
are out here to be pleasant." (1.5.94)

Analysis: The passage suggests that Ronny's attitude is representative of the

British Empire's as a whole toward its "civilizing mission." By questioning Ronny,
Mrs. Moore questions the whole notion of a civilizing mission here. Ronny's callous
attitude toward Indians suggests that the civilizing mission is just an excuse to gain
power, and no more.