A Postcolonial Study of E.M.Forster’s A Passage to India (1924)

Abstract

This dissertation examines the way in which the ‘colonizer’ treated the ‘colonized’. It basically seeks to spot the postcolonial aspects in E.M.Forster’s novel A Passage to India (1924).The novel revolves around four characters namely: Dr.Aziz, Mr. Cyril Fielding, Mrs. Moore and Miss Adela Quested. During a trip to the Marabar Caves, Miss Adela accused Dr.Aziz of assaulting her. Aziz’s trial brings to a boil the racial tensions and prejudices between the indigenous Indians and the Britishers. Although the charge against Dr.Aziz was dropped, the gulf between the British and the Native Indians grows wider than ever. The novel therefore represented the native Indians as inferior and backward and to British as superior and advanced. In other words, the novel illustrates the gap existing between the British and the Indians’, a gap which cannot be bridged.