ENG 523

BRITISH LITERATURE
 A
TERM PAPER
ON
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
AS A
POST COLONIAL TEXT
SUBMITTED TO
Dr B JAMUNA
SUBMITTED BY
ARAVINDAN S S
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
POST COLONIALISM
A PASSAGE TO INDIA AS A POST COLONIAL
TEXT
CONCLUSION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
INTRODUCTION
The novel A Passage to India, written by E.M. Forster in 1924, was chosen
as one of the 100 great works ever written in English literature by the
Modern Library, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

In this novel, Forster seems to observe the English Empire from a critical
point of view rather than a nostalgic one. The theme of the book is the non
superficial relationship of the Indians and the English. It is an attempt at
understanding the country India and the Indians from a more personal,
positive and meaningful perspective. However, it holds “out little hope
either for social interaction between Europeans and Indians, or for Indian
national independence”.

The novel focuses on the three characters: Dr. Aziz, his British friend Cyril
Fielding, and Adela Quested. During a trip to the Marabar Caves, Adela
accuses Aziz of attempting to rape her. Aziz's trial brings out all the racial
tensions and prejudices between Indians and the British colonialists who
rule India.
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
POST COLONIALISM

Post-colonial literature (or "Postcolonial literature", sometimes called "New

English literature(s)"), is a body of literary writings that reacts to the
discourse of colonization. Post-colonial literature often involves writings that
deal with issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural
independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule. It is also a
literary critique to texts that carry racist or colonial undertones. Post-
colonial literature, finally in its most recent form, also attempts to critique
the contemporary post-colonial discourse that has been shaped over recent
times. It attempts to re-read this very emergence of postcolonialism and its
literary expression itself.

The term “Postcolonialism” refers broadly to the ways in which race,

ethnicity, culture, and human identity itself are represented in the modern
era, after many colonized countries gained their independence. However,
some critics use the term to refer to all culture and cultural products
influenced by imperialism from the moment of colonization until today.
Postcolonial literature seeks to describe the interactions between European
nations and the peoples they colonized. By the middle of the twentieth
century, the vast majority of the world was under the control of European
countries. At one time, Great Britain, for example, ruled almost 50 percent
of the world. During the twentieth century, countries such as India,
Jamaica, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Canada, and Australia won
independence from their European colonizers. The literature and art
produced in these countries after independence has become the object of
“Postcolonial Studies,” a term coined in and for academia, initially in British
universities. This field gained prominence in the 1970s and has been
developing ever since. Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said’s critique
of Western representations of the Eastern culture in his 1978 book,
Orientalism, is a seminal text for postcolonial studies and has spawned a
host of theories on the subject. However, as the currency of the term
“postcolonial” has gained wider use, its meaning has also expanded. Some
consider the United States itself a postcolonial country because of its
former status as a territory of Great Britain, but it is generally studied for its
colonizing rather than its colonized attributes.