Assignment

Jahid Hasan Anik

Student ID: 19210008
Course Code: Eng -415

How does E.M. Forster represent India and Indians in A Passage to

India? Would you call him an orientalist? Give you opinion as a
postcolonial reader:

Work can be imitated, but the substance of the art and the artist's creativity cannot. A
civilization can also be isomorphically mimicked, but its essence will remain
untouchable, if not unthinkable to its replicator. The question itself is self-explanatory;
Edward Morgan Forster, who appears to be an Indian-inclined liberal novelist, could not
conceal his orientalist pathology and specialization in area study that was hidden in his
bone marrow because he is at the top of the race hierarchy, and thus represented India
and her natives artificially rather than genuinely.

Let us begin the discussion with the first chapter of the novel, which begins with the
headword "mosque," in which Forster attempted to describe the topography of India; to
be more exact, the ramshackle India. The fictional Chandrapore city, which was
neologized from the genuine Chattapore, instills an image of wretchedness and muddle
in which the ruler race's abodes and bungalows are ornamented with largesse while the
people of the subject-race are nothing more than boondoggles. At the start of the
narrative, a decaying image of Chandrapore and its landscapes is projected into the
reader's consciousness, leaving an indelible feeling of domination. My query is why
Chattapore was chosen over Mumbai, Agra, or Calcutta, which were all subservient
states. Why does a novel have to begin in a poor region? Perhaps these inquiries will
eventually lead us to the answer.

Second, the chitchat scene in Chapter 2 reminds us of the British regime's hubristic
elitism, especially when we note that Dr Aziz is purposefully called and humiliated by the
civil surgeon Major Callender. Aside from that, his wounded has been laced with insult
as a result of Mrs Callender's pompous manner, which has utterly subdued Aziz's
presence. This type of malignant and belligerent beginning to a story never fails to
represent the interest of the ruler class, whose primary objective is to enhance the lordly
image in front of a subserviently meek and docile class of downtrodden. Even so, EM
Forster, a neoliberal anti-imperialist, meekly tolls the monarchy's bell.

Forster wished to gather the entire country of India under the ostensibly unlikely canopy
of a rectilinear umbrella. The Marabar cave, the muddle of the Indian landscape, the
helter-skelter of Indian roads and administrative offices, India's squeezing hot and
humid climate, the indiscriminate generalization of a suspect to criminal due to its
boiling temperature, Dr Aziz's unreasonable fantasy, relics of mosques and temples are
all put together to represent an imaginative India. EM Forster represented a schematic
India from tip to toe, from the club to the bridge party, from Cyril Fielding's residence to
Aziz's crumbling house, from Marabar cave to court room, from Mumbai port to Mau,
from Ronny's priggish attitude to professor Godbole's cryptic personality, from Ms
Quested's conundrum to Mrs Moore's mysticism.

It is unavoidable to include some in-text quotations from Edward Said's insurrectionary

academic classic "Orientalism" in this segment. As he wrote:

"To restore a region from its current barbarism to its former classical greatness; to
instruct (for its own benefit) the Orient in the ways of the modern West; to subordinate or
underplay military power in order to aggrandize the project of glorious knowledge
acquired in the process of political domination of the Orient; to formulate the Orient, to
give it shape, identity, definition with full recognition of its place in memory, its
importance to imperial strategy, and an understanding of its importance to imperial
strategy, an understanding; to feel oneself as a European in command of Oriental
history, time, and geography almost at will; to institute new areas of specialization; to
establish new disciplines; to divide, deploy, schematize, tabulate, index, and record
everything in sight (and out of sight); to make a generalization out of every observable
detail and an immutable law about the Oriental nature, temperament, mentality, custom,
or type; and, above all, to transmute”

With special emphasis on the section where Said emphasizes "when the natives had
neither been consulted nor treated as anything except pretexts for a text whose
usefulness was not to the natives," it can be incontrovertibly proven that the fictional
natives of A Passage to India were neither be consulted nor treated as anything except
pretexts for a text as if art for the sake of art, and thus EM Forster served the role of a
spokesperson for the British Raj.

With that decided to add, I can claim that EM Forster is an orientalist, not because he
wrote voluminous words on stereotyped India and Indians, but because he took the
artistic academic enterprise of establishing a solid and recorded narrative on a specific
nation, technically keeping the natives inactivated under the fabric of a celebrated novel.
How has spirituality been explored in A Passage to India? Discuss
the topic by evaluating characters like Mrs. Moore, Dr. Aziz,
Professor Godbole, Mr. Fielding etc.

One of the most grandiloquent efforts ever was Edward Morgan Forster's infrequently
written novel A Passage to India, in which he replicated every nook and subtlety of
human religion and culture. From cross-cultural and intercontinental friendship to
colonial bumptious air, from the petty discovery of genuine India to the cryptic world of
spirituality, this story is undeniably a verbose simulacrum of a plethora of mazes.
Spirituality, in addition to various human dimensions, is examined in the narrative
through the seemingly vibrant characters of Dr. Aziz, Mrs. Moore, professor Godbole,
and even religiously neutral Cyril Fielding.

The search for spirituality begins in the early section of the narrative, when Dr. Aziz first
meets Mrs. Moore inside the mosque's premises. Moore's heartfelt response to Aziz's
emotionally charged question "God is here" immediately calmed Aziz, and he shared
the same tranquility with Mrs. Moore by sharing his mystic thinking and personal tale
with her.

Although the spiritual temperaments of Aziz and Moore were never the same, both of
them constituted Forster's anchor point for anchoring down the atmosphere of
spirituality in the narrative. Professor Godbole was eventually assigned to them in order
to explore deeper into the crater of mysticism.

When Mrs. Moore spotted a wasp clinging to the hook, she conjured a philosophical,
somewhat phantasmagorical domain in which she found the entire universe merged into
one. By using such a metaphor, I believe Forster was attempting to incorporate the
concept of the cosmos' oneness. Furthermore, Mrs. Moore the character was a
conundrum wrapped in enigma who was thrown and flung in the rigmarole of both a
mundane and a spiritual journey.

During the expedition to the Marabar cave Mrs. Moore was struck with an epiphany; a
frozen bite like an icicle paralyzed her sense of a three dimensional world. Her sudden
cognizance threw her off like a catapult into a parallel world of cryptic fantasy. Even after
stepping onto India her pathos of spirituality encircled her vision, her praxeology of the
world. Her mindful listening to Godbole‟s song added a novel dimension of mysticism
when she visualized the milkmaid remained hopeful even unanswered by the divinity
even though she never lacked passionate submission. Thus underneath the allusion
and allegory of religion, spirituality peeped out of mystery and hermeneutic convolution.
Professor Godbole once referred to the late Mrs. Moore as a "old soul," a term that also
refers to a deeper manifestation of spirituality in the novel. Forster used practically every
potential story and serendipity to consolidate the novel with all of its parts, including
literary, historical, cultural, and religious spirituality. Only cultural hegemony, imperial
oppression, and intriguingly cross-racial friendship can weave a novel's necklace; it is
the catalytic influence of spirituality that works like an invisible agent to elevate the
chemistry of a fine piece of literature. Dr. Aziz, a quixotic figure in the narrative, usually
tends to bring up the declining splendor and grandeur of Islam by quoting watchwords
and glossolalia of some spiritual expressions in movement with the flow.

The careful mixing of the three religions, Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism, created a
spiritual environment that pervaded the entire narrative through the characters of Aziz,
Mrs. Moore, and Godbole.

As a result, EM Forster strengthened his diction and storytelling while also exploring
spirituality through his brainchildren.