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Examples Of Colonialism In A Passage To India

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In A Passage to India, the colonialists are definitely the stronger race and have authority over the locals. This authority gives them power which they use against the inferior race, the Indians (Boehmer 1995: 10). The Indians are considered weak, outcast, and second rate. They are believed to be different from Europeans, especially the English. Even though the British might have their own different categories like social class and religions, they are united as opposed to the local natives (Boehmer 1995: 67). There is very little social integration between the colonialists and the Indians. Yet there are incidents in the novel that show that the Indians are more sophisticated than the colonialists. Forster had spent a long time in India before …show more content…

The Possibility of Friendship

A Passage to India is an investigation whether there could be an invisible bond of value rather than an investigation of a political bond. The novel considers whether it is possible for personal relationships between the locals and English to develop to mutual satisfaction. Forster’s text considers whether the English can connect with the Indians, and vice versa (Forster 1979: 26).

Racist attitudes towards the Indians

Throughout the novel there are examples of racist attitudes and oppression by the Anglo- Indians towards the natives. Major Callendar boasts about torturing an injured Indian youth by putting pepper on his shattered face; Mr Mc Bryde expresses supercilious views of the lust the Indians show for white women; Ronny Heaslop is ignorant; Miss Dereck shows anger towards her Indian employers; and Mr Turton is arrogant towards the …show more content…

They are not to blame, they have not a dog’s chance – we should be like them if we settled here” (Forster 1979: 176). Mr Turton states that he has “never known anything but disaster result when English people and Indians attempt to be intimate socially” (Forster 1979: 182). Contact, in his opinion, would be allowed, as well as courtesy, but intimacy should not be allowed. Such intimacy is only negative. Only mutual respect and esteem can enable them to socialize with each other.
The British feel that it vital for them to stick to the unwritten rules on how they behave towards the locals. These unwritten rules, which the locals are bound to follow in their relations with the colonialists, safeguard the interests of the British, making them the white superiors. Any modification of these rules would risk the whole system

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