Heat and Dust Study Guide

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Themes: Themes and Meanings

Heat and Dust is especially effective as a novel of social criticism. Jhabvala brilliantly captures the nuances,
tensions, and frustrations of Westerners living under stress in an alien setting, artificially maintaining a facsimile of an
English country village with its manners and traditions. It is appropriate that the British residential area should be
called “the Civil Lines.” The British are superficially “civil” toward the local population but remain socially aloof and,
among themselves, disdainful.

The British ruling class is marked by its smugness and condescension: “like good parents they all loved India
whatever mischief she might be up to.” When Olivia speaks in defense of the Indians’ right to practice their traditions,
her countrymen “sportingly discussed her point of view as if it were one that could be taken seriously.” Dr. Saunders,
who is openly hostile to Olivia and considers any sensitivity towards Indian culture as a sign of weakness, condemns
the Indians for their “savagery and barbarism.” Most of the English characters are more tolerant than Saunders and
his wife, who are extreme cases, more openly frustrated and less practiced at veiling their hostility and contempt for
India. The usual tolerance is a part of the colonial image and a consequence of conditioned civility. The “proper”
Englishmen, such as Douglas, Crawford and Minnies, will be protected by their smugness and strength of character.
It is no wonder the Nawab delights in spiting them.

This theme is best expressed through the character of Major Minnies, who realizes that there are many reasons for
loving India: “the scenery, the history, the poetry, the music, and indeed the physical beauty of the men and women.”
Major Minnies adds, however, that it is “dangerous for the European who allows himself to love [India] too much” and
warns that the “proper” Englishman “has to be very determined to withstand—to stand up to—India.”

The successful European will know, like Beth Crawford, “where lines had to be drawn, not only in speech and
behavior but also in one’s thought.” Olivia does not know where to draw the line, however, and that is her
“weakness.” Major Minnies explains that this “weak spot is to be found in the most sensitive, often the finest people.”
Hence, only the insensitive can succeed in India by English standards.

Finally, the major theme of Heat and Dust is cultural transformation, a process for which only the most determined of
the sensitive are qualified. India is not a healthy place for Olivia’s friend Harry, who languishes in the Nawab’s
entourage and who is unable to extricate himself from the Nawab’s influence. Only after the prince’s fall from power

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is Harry free to return to his mother’s flat in Kensington.

The Nawab and his immediate relatives are ultimately seduced and destroyed, ironically, by Western values and
creature comforts. As a prince, he lives beyond his means. For profit, he allows bands of thieves to terrorize his
province, the price of his being able to stay at Claridges while in London. While Olivia stays in India, the Nawab
spends much of his time in London, glutting himself on pastries, and, later, in New York, where he dies in the
Begum’s Park Avenue apartment in 1953. As Harry remarks after seeing the prince in London, “The Nawab was
quite changed.”

The Nawab’s relatives are further contaminated by the Western world. Before going to India, the narrator visits the
Nawab’s nephew and heir, Karim, and his wife, Kitty (who, despite the cute Western name, is descended from Indian
royalty), at their Knightsbridge flat. Karim and Kitty’s circle of London friends, all of them transplanted Indians, tell
stories of their debauched relatives who “had been involved in scandals in London hotels,” or, like the Nawab, “had
been deposed for some frightful misdemeanour, had squandered away family fortunes, had died of drink, drugs, or
poison administered by illegitimate brothers.” Such corruption and debauchery, for these transformed Indians, is a
matter of nostalgia, not of shame: “Those days had their charm,” they conclude, witlessly.

Only the strongest-willed characters, such as Olivia and her latter-day counterpart, can survive the transformation
with integrity. Harry is seduced by Indian indulgence and the personal charm of the Nawab. In the framing story,
Chid is seduced by Hindu spiritualism, but his transformation is superficial and incomplete. Chid is unable to cross
over into what Major Minnies calls “the other dimension.”

“We Indians are fit to live here,” Dr. Gopal tells the narrator: “But no one else.” Clearly, Chid is not physically “made
to live the life of an Indian holy man.” Yet Dr. Gopal’s speculation does not apply to Olivia, who not only manages to
cross into “the other dimension” but even manages to take her piano along, up the Himalayas to a transcultural
community that includes a German Buddhist and “two ex-missionaries who had tried to start a Christian ’ashram.’”
Both Olivia and her latter-day counterpart do manage both to pass through the “heat and dust” of the lowlands and to
climb to a higher plane of spiritual existence. Because the times have changed (presumably for the better), the more
liberated narrator is able to rise to these heights with her child, and that fact would seem to indicate both hope and
spiritual progress.