PASSAGE TO INDIA

E M Forster’s tale set in the inter-war Raj.

Forster’s quite an interesting character; he was a member of the Bloomsbury Set that included other luminaries such as Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and Maynard Keynes. Utterly mollycoddled by his mother, Lily, (whom he wanted to marry), he was known as a sissy and D. H. Lawrence commented on his dummy sucking while an adult. After a string of homosexual affairs, he met his muse in Syed Ross Masood, to whom Passage to India is dedicated. More accurate, but less imaginative than Kipling, Forster’s tale, nevertheless, was an instant classic upon its release in June 1924. The central them revolves around Dr Aziz and his accusation of accosting a sahib while on an expedition to the Marabar caves. Forster’s skill is not in his plot development, but in his ability to portray the clash between the different cultures and religions at the time of the Raj - and not just between West and East, between Sikh and Hindu and Moslem also. His skill is his ability to successfully portray the psychological side of the cultural melting pot that was India in the 1920s and to show how the different factions, sub-factions, genders, age groups and interwoven individuals all react differently to the same stimulus (particularly how the English ‘club gentry’ react to the middle class Indian doctor, Aziz and his accusor, the wan Lady Quested) and hence, why, as a social experiment, the British Raj was doomed to failure. A truly enjoyable read, but some knowledge of India (or at least an annotated copy) is recommended to fully understand all the events chronicled. Better than Howards End of 1910, he was never to write another novel.