Probing into the personal relationships between the colonizer and the colonized, with a humane perspective, has never been an easy task, especially when it is during the colonial phase with revolts arising against the rule. E M Forster was one such writer to study the relationships between Indians and the British. This effort resulted in a masterpiece – A Passage to India, published in 1924 and filmed into a poetic passage in 1984 by David Lean.

          Forster, very beautifully, explores the obstacle in the way of sympathetic communication between the English and the natives in British India. It is often commented on this novel that Forster had perhaps planned to discuss on friendship and religion and ended up writing a story.

          The two main, of a myriad possible, themes could be that of value and friendship between Aziz and Fielding and the attempts of two British women – Adela and Mrs. Moore to have a “passage to India.” The relation between Indians and Anglo-Indians form a vital element in projecting the social image of India.

The subject of the novel is raised in the beginning itself when at the dinner party of Hamidullah a question is raised whether friendship is possible with an Englishman or not? The conclusion ends in a negative tone. One of the important relationships in the novel begins when Dr Aziz meets Mrs. Moore in the mosque. This makes Aziz feels hopeful towards the possibility of such a relation. However, by the end of the novel, Aziz’s reply to Fielding that their relation cannot be continued reveals the fact that conquered and the conqueror could not be friends.

Throughout the novel, the bond between the Indian and the Englishman is continuously threatened because of failure in understanding. The snobbery on the part of the English colonials towards Indians themselves prevent any real mingling of the races and Indians and The English are no closer to unity at the end of the novel than at the beginning. Fielding, the one character who temporarily belonged to both the groups understands the futility of his liberalism and departs from India altogether.

Great races with different heritage and history, with no desire to understand them and with one of them always in the wrong place – that is the story of the relationship between the two. Fielding is set with Anglo-Indian and Aziz with Indian nationalism and thus, they are unable to continue their friendship.  However, their friendships point to the attempts, though futile, in trying to understand one another.

          Forster points out separation of race from race, sex from sex, culture from culture, even of man from himself to be reasons that underlies every failed relation. The concluding pages of the novel depicts the pain of the rupture of two diametrically opposite worlds, brought together by force,  in poetic terms that lies unmatched to in literature. Relations remain unknown and unexplored  in the novel, as the incident at the Marabar caves.

          David Lean, in his brilliant attempt to picture the poetic words of Forster, produced a visual magic. The background score in the film takes the viewer into the world of perplexed human relations. Nothing to match the words and the scenes of A Passage to India.

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