The novel A Passage to India by E.M. Forster explores themes of power, religion, race, and friendship in British-ruled India in the early 20th century. The British are portrayed as enforcing a racist system that subordinates Indians, yet the novel also questions whether Indian independence could truly unify a diverse country. Religious differences are shown to divide both colonizers and colonized, though no one faith is presented as superior. The novel examines the difficulties of inter-cultural friendship between the Englishman Fielding and the Indian doctor Aziz, as they struggle to overcome barriers imposed by their political and social circumstances.

1. ‫عيسى‬ ‫حسام‬ ‫شيراز‬
‫الغامدي‬ ‫غيداء‬
‫المالكي‬ ‫مطلق‬ ‫وجدان‬
‫سالم‬ ‫بشرى‬
‫ياسر‬ ‫سعاد‬
‫روا‬‫محمدالبلوي‬ ‫ن‬

2. A Passage to India
E.M. Forster's A Passage
to India concerns the
relations between the
English and the native
population of India during
the colonial period in
which Britain ruled India.
The novel takes place
primarily in Chandrapore,
a city along the Ganges
River notable only for the
nearby Marabar caves.

4. E. M. Forster, by Dora Carrington c. 1924–1925
Born Edward Morgan Forster
1 January 1879
Marylebone, Middlesex, England
Died 7 June 1970 (aged 91)
Coventry, Warwickshire, England
Occupation Writer (novels, short stories, essays)
Nationality English
Education Ton bridge School
Alma mater King's College, Cambridge
Period 1901–1970
Genre Realism, symbolism, modernism
Subject Class division, gender, homosexuality
Signature

5. Adela Quested
A young woman
newly arrived
from England,
expecting to be
the fiancee of
Ronny Heaslop.
Mrs. Moore
Adela's
chaperone and
Ronny
Heaslop's
mother, by her
first marriage.
Ronny
Heaslop The
City
Magistrate of
Chandrapore.
Doctor Aziz
The Moslem
doctor at the
Government
Hospital.
Professor
Godbole
The Hindu
colleague of
Fielding's.
Cyril Fielding
The English
Principal at the
Government
College.

6. Two englishwomen, the young Miss Adela Quested and
the elderly Mrs. Moore, travel to India. Adela expects to
become engaged to Mrs. Moore’s son, Ronny, a British
magistrate in the Indian city of Chandrapore. Adela and
Mrs. Moore each hope to see the real India during their
visit, rather than cultural institutions imported by the
British.

7. • At the same time, Aziz, a young Muslim doctor in India, is
increasingly frustrated by the poor treatment he receives at
the hands of the English. Aziz is especially annoyed with Major
Callendar, the civil surgeon, who has a tendency to summon Aziz
for frivolous reasons in the middle of dinner. Aziz and two of his
educated friends, Hamidullah and Mahmoud Ali, hold a lively
conversation about whether or not an Indian can be friends with
an Englishman in India. That night, Mrs. Moore and Aziz happen
to run into each other while exploring a local mosque, and the
two become friendly. Aziz is moved and surprised that an
English person would treat him like a friend Mr. Turton, the
collector who governs Chandrapore, hosts a party so that Adela
and Mrs. Moore may have the opportunity to meet some of the
more prominent and wealthy Indians in the city. At the event,
which proves to be rather awkward, Adela meets Cyril Fielding,
the principal of the government college in Chandrapore. Fielding,
impressed with Adela’s open friendliness to the Indians, invites
her and Mrs. Moore to tea with him and the Hindu professor
Godbole. At Adela’s request, Fielding invites Aziz to tea as well

8. • At the tea, Aziz and Fielding immediately become friendly, and
the afternoon is overwhelmingly pleasant until Ronny Heaslop
arrives and rudely interrupts the party. Later that evening,
Adela tells Ronny that she has decided not to marry him. But
that night, the two are in a car accident together, and the
excitement of the event causes Adela to change her mind about
the marriage.
• Not long afterward, Aziz organizes an expedition to the nearby
Marabar Caves for those who attended Fielding’s tea. Fielding
and Professor Godbole miss the train to Marabar, so Aziz
continues on alone with the two ladies, Adela and Mrs. Moore.
Inside one of the caves, Mrs. Moore is unnerved by the enclosed
space, which is crowded with Aziz’s retinue, and by the uncanny
echo that seems to translate every sound she makes into the
noise “boum
• Aziz, however, is angry that Fielding would befriend Adela after
she nearly ruined Aziz’s life, and the friendship between the two
men suffers as a consequence. Then Fielding sails for a visit to
England. Aziz declares that he is done with the English and that
he intends to move to a place where he will not have to
encounter them.

9. • Aziz, however, is angry that Fielding would befriend Adela after
she nearly ruined Aziz’s life, and the friendship between the two
men suffers as a consequence. Then Fielding sails for a visit to
England. Aziz declares that he is done with the English and that
he intends to move to a place where he will not have to
encounter them.
• Two years later, Aziz has become the chief doctor to the Rajah
of Mau, a Hindu region several hundred miles from Chandrapore.
He has heard that Fielding married Adela shortly after
returning to England. Aziz now virulently hates all English people.
One day, walking through an old temple with his three children,
he encounters Fielding and his brother-in-law. Aziz is surprised
to learn that the brother-in-law’s name is Ralph Moore; it turns
out that Fielding married not Adela Quested, but Stella Moore,
Mrs. Moore’s daughter from her second marriage.
• Aziz befriends Ralph. After he accidentally runs his rowboat
into Fielding’s, Aziz renews his friendship with Fielding as well.
The two men go for a final ride together before Fielding leaves,
during which Aziz tells Fielding that once the English are out of
India, the two will be able to be friends. Fielding asks why they
cannot be friends now, when they both want to be, but the sky
and the earth seem to say “No, not yet. . . . No, not there

10. A Passage to
India
Theme of

11. The theme
Theme of power Theme of religion Theme of race
Theme of friendship

12. THEME OF
FRIENDSHIP
Before the Beatles traveled to India to tootle with Ravi
Shankar, Forster had already been, loving up the
subcontinent. 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. Significantly, Aziz
only considers Mrs. Moore and Professor Godbole as his
true friends, one of whom is dead, and the other is, well,

13. Set in India at a time when the country
was a British colony, Forster's novel is an
obvious critique of the British Empire. (For
more on the historical context of the
novel, check out "Setting.") 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,
POWER
T
H
E
M
E
O
F

14. 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 valorized 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.
THEME OF
RELIGION

15. In A Passage to India, life in Chandrapore, and indeed throughout the
British Empire, is deeply fissured along racial lines, with the white
Europeans on one side, and everyone else on the other. Indians are
referred to as "Orientals," an out-dated racial term that was applied to
everyone living east of Europe, from Turkey all the way out to China.
Orientals were stereotypically considered to be exotic, sensual, passive, and
backward, as opposed to the intellectual, civilized, progressive Westerner
(source). Thus Orientals, such as the Indians in A Passage to India, were
considered unable to rule themselves, essentially needing the British
Empire to help them toward civilization (despite the fact that they had
civilizations of their own). Even as the novel criticizes this stereotyping of
Orientals – or "Orientalism" – it is itself not entirely free of the Orientalist
attitude. The narrator makes broad generalizations about Orientals, about
their psychology and their sexuality, that shows how entrenched the
Orientalist attitude is even in a novel that is sympathetic to them.
THEME OF RACE

16. Motifs are
recurring
structures,
contrasts or
literary devices
that can help to
develop and
inform the text’s
major themes.

17.  The Echo : The echo begins at the Marabar Caves: first Mrs. Moore and then Adela
hear the echo and are haunted by it in the weeks to come. The echo’s sound is
“boum”—a sound it returns regardless of what noise or utterance is originally made.
This negation of difference embodies the frightening flip side of the seemingly
 Eastern and Western Architecture : Forster spends time detailing both Eastern and
Western architecture in A Passage to India. Three architectural structures—though
one is naturally occurring—provide the outline for the book’s three sections,
“Mosque,” “Caves,” and “Temple.” Forster presents the aesthetics of Eastern and
Western structures as indicative of the differences of the respective cultures as a
whole. In India, architecture is confused and formless: interiors blend into exterior
gardens, earth and buildings compete with each other, and structures appear
unfinished or drab.
 Godbole’s Song : At the end of Fielding’s tea party, Godbole sings for the English
visitors a Hindu song, in which a milkmaid pleads for God to come to her or to her
people. The song’s refrain of “Come! come” recurs throughout A Passage to India,
mirroring the appeal for the entire country of salvation from something greater than
itself. After the song, Godbole admits that God never comes to the milkmaid. .
Forster uses the refrain of Godbole’s song, “Come! come,” to suggest that India’s
redemption is yet to come.

18. 1_THE
MARABAR
CAVES.2_THE
GREEN
BIRD.
3_THE
WASP.
The Marabar Caves represent all that
is alien about nature. The caves are
older than anything else on the earth
and embody nothingness and
emptiness—a literal void in the earth.
They defy both English and Indians to
act as guides to them, and their
strange beauty and menace unsettles
visitors. The caves’ alien quality also
has the power to make visitors such as
Mrs. Moore and Adela confront parts
of themselves or the universe that
they have not previously recognized.
The all-reducing echo of the caves
causes Mrs. Moore to see the darker
side of her spirituality—a waning
commitment to the world of
relationships and a growing
ambivalence about God. Adela
confronts the shame and
embarrassment of her realization that
she and Ronny are not actually
attracted to each other, and that she
might be attracted to no one
Just after Adela and Ronny agree for
the first time, in Chapter VII, to break
off their engagement, they notice a
green bird sitting in the tree above
them. Neither of them can positively
identify the bird. For Adela, the bird
symbolizes the unidentifiable quality
of all of India: just when she thinks
she can understand any aspect of
India, that aspect changes or
disappears. In this sense, the green
bird symbolizes the muddle of India.
In another capacity, the bird points
to a different tension between the
English and Indians. The English are
obsessed with knowledge,
literalness, and naming, and they use
these tools as a means of gaining and
maintaining power.
The wasp appears several times
in A Passage to India, usually in
conjunction with the Hindu vision
of the oneness of all living things.
The wasp is usually depicted as
the lowest creature the Hindus
incorporate into their vision of
universal unity. Mrs. Moore is
closely associated with the wasp,
as she finds one in her room and
is gently appreciative of it. Her
peaceful regard for the wasp
signifies her own openness to the
Hindu idea of collectivity, and to
the mysticism and indefinable
quality of India in general.
However, as the wasp is the
lowest creature that the Hindus
visualize, it also represents the
limits of the Hindu vision. The
vision is not a panacea, but
merely a possibility for unity and
understanding in India.