A Passage to India

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For the 1984 film based on this novel, see A Passage to India (film).

A Passage to India (1924) is a novel by E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library.

Plot introduction

A Passage to India revolves around three characters: Cyril Fielding, his Indian friend Dr. Aziz, and Adela Quested. During a trip to the Marabar Caves, Adela accuses Aziz of attempting to rape her. Aziz's trial, and its run-up and aftermath, bring out all the racial tensions and prejudices between indigneous Indians and the British colonists who rule India. E.M. Forster employs his first-hand knowledge of India in this, arguably his best novel.

Plot summary

A young British schoolmistress, Adela Quested, and her elderly friend, Mrs. Moore, visit the fictional city of Chandapore, India. Both want to see what India is really like, and Mrs. Moore also intends to marry her son, Ronny Heaslop, the city magistrate, to Adela.

Meanwhile, Dr. Aziz, a young Muslim Indian physician, is dining with two of his Indian friends and conversing about whether it is possible to be friends with a Briton. In the middle of the meal, a summons arrives from Major Callendar, Aziz's unpleasant superior at the hospital. Aziz hastens to Callendar's bungalow as ordered, but the major has already left in a huff.

Disconsolate, Aziz walks down the road toward the train station. When he sees his favorite mosque, a rather ramshackle but beautiful structure, he enters on impulse. When he sees a strange Englishwoman there, he angrily yells at her not to profane this sacred place. The woman, however, turns out to be Mrs. Moore. Her respect for native customs (she took off her shoes on entering) instantly disarms Aziz, and the two chat and part friends.

Mrs. Moore returns to the British club down the road and relates her experience at the mosque. Ronny Heaslop initially thinks that she is talking about an Englishman, and becomes quite indignant when he learns the truth. He thinks she should have indicated by her tone that it was a "Mohammedan" who was in question. Adela, however, is intrigued.

Because the newcomers had expressed a desire to see Indians, Mr. Turton, the city tax collector, invites numerous Indian gentlemen to a party at his house. The party turns out to be an awkward business, thanks to the Indians' timidity and the Britons' bigotry, but Adela does meet Cyril Fielding, headmaster of Chandrapore's little government-run college for Indians. Fielding invites Adela and Mrs. Moore to a tea party with him, a Hindu professor named Narayan Godbole. On Adela's request, he extends his invitation to Dr. Aziz.

At Fielding's tea party, everyone has a good time conversing about India, and Fielding and Aziz even become great friends. Aziz buoyantly promises to take Mrs. Moore and Adela to see the Marabar Caves, a distant cave complex that everyone talks about but no one seems to actually visit. Then Ronny Heaslop shows up and rudely breaks up the party.

Now, Aziz's Marabar invitation was one of those casual promises that people often make and never intend. But when he learns that the women are really offended that he has not followed through, he arranges the outing at great expense to himself. He even procures an elephant! Fielding and Godbole were supposed to accompany the little expedition, but they miss the train.

Aziz and the women begin the explore the caves. In the first cave, however, Mrs. Moore is overcome with claustrophobia, for the cave is dark and Aziz's retinue has followed her in. The press nearly smothers her. But worse than the claustrophobia is the echo. No matter what sound one makes, the echo is always "Boum." Disturbed by the echo, Mrs. Moore declines to continue exploring. So Adela and Aziz, accompanied by a single guide, a local man, climb on up the hill to the next cluster of caves.

As Aziz helps Adela up the hill, she innocently asks him whether he has more than one wife. Disconcerted by the bluntness of the remark, he ducks into a cave to compose himself. When he comes out, he finds the guide sitting alone outside the caves. The guide says Adela has gone into one of the caves by herself. Aziz looks for her in vain. Deciding she is lost, he angrily punches the guide, who runs away. Aziz looks around again and discovers Adela's field-glasses (binoculars) lying broken on the ground. He puts it in his pocket.

Then Aziz looks down the hill and sees Adela speaking to another young Englishwoman, Miss Derek, who has arrived with Fielding in a car. Aziz runs down the hill and greets Fielding effusively, but Miss Derek and Adela have already driven off without a word of explanation. Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Aziz return to Chandrapore on the train.

Then the blow falls. At the train station, Dr. Aziz is arrested and charged with sexually assaulting Adela in a cave. It turns out that Adela had in the cave received a shock similar to Mrs. Moore's. The echo had disconcerted her so much that she temporarily became unhinged. She ran frantically around the cave, fled down the hill, and finally sped off with the sympathetic Miss Derek. But the reader does not learn this until later. At the time, Adela mistakenly interprets her shock as an assault by Aziz, who personifies the India that stripped of her psychological innocence. So she reports the alleged incident to the British authorities.

The run-up to Aziz's trial for attempted rape releases the racial tensions between the British and the Indians. The British colonists at Chandrapore are outraged by the alleged assault, but no one is really shocked. For at the back of all their minds is the conviction that all "blacks" are wicked, good-for-nothing degenerates who lust after white women. Holding this attitude, they are understandably stunned when Fielding proclaims his belief in Aziz's innocence. Fielding is ostracized and condemned as a blood-traitor. But the Indians, who consider the rape allegation a fraud aimed at ruining their community's reputation, welcome him.

During the weeks before the trial, Mrs. Moore is unexpectedly apathetic and irritable. Her experience in the cave seems to have ruined her interest and faith in humanity. Although she curtly professes her belief in Aziz's innocence, she does nothing to help him. She insists on taking ship back to England before ever the trial takes place. She dies during the voyage.

After an initial period of fever and weeping, Adela becomes confused as to Aziz's guilt. At the trial, she is asked point-blank whether Aziz sexually assaulted her. She asks for a moment to think before replying. She has a vision of the cave in that moment, and Aziz isn't there. With laudable honesty and bravery, she proclaims her mistake. The case is dismissed.

All the Anglo-Indians, who had eagerly rallied to her support, are shocked and infuriated by what they view as Adela's betrayal of the white race. Mrs. Turton shrieks insults at her, and Ronny Heaslop soon breaks off their engagement. Adela stays at the sympathetic Fielding's house until her passage on a boat to England is arranged. After explaining to Fielding that the echo was the cause of the whole business, she departs India, never to return.

Although he is free and vindicated, Aziz is angry and bitter that his best friend, Fielding, would befriend Adela after she nearly ruined his life. The two men's friendship suffers in consequence, and Fielding soon departs for England. Aziz believes that he is leaving to marry Adela for her money, which Fielding had dissuaded Aziz from suing her for. Bitter at his friend's perceived betrayal, he vows to never again befriend a white person. So Aziz moves to the Hindu-ruled state of Mau and begins a new life.

Two years later, Fielding returns to India and to Aziz. But he is a married man with children now. His wife is Stella, Mrs. Moore's daughter from a second marriage. Aziz, now the Rajah's chief physician, at first persists in his anger against his old friend. But in time, he comes to respect and love Fielding again. However, he does not give up his dream of a free and united India. In the novel's last sentences, he explains that he and Fielding cannot be friends, at least not until India is free of the British Raj. Even the earth and the sky seem to say, "Not yet."