A Passage to India disseminates a horde

E.M.Forster in his celebrated novel A Passage to India disseminates a horde of messages, one of which is liberal-humanistic attitude that can help stall SEPARATION, which is again a major theme of the novel. Like Whitmans cry Passage to more than India, Forsters novel is more than an historical novel about India it is a prophetic work in which Forster is concerned not only with the path to greater understanding of India but also with mans quest for truth and understanding of the universe he lives in.Forster shows in the novel how mans attempts to realise unity are continually dominated and shattered by forces he cannot control. On this theme of Separation, Lionel Trilling comments, The theme of separateness of fences and barriers , the old theme of Pauline epistles, which runs through all Forsters novels is in A Passage to India, hugely expanded and everywhere dominant. The separation of race from race, sex, culture from culture is what underlies every relationship.In this context, the some obvious of these separations is that mingled with the Indians and the English. The earlier part of the novel is concerned with showing the wide disjuncture between the rulers and the ruled, between the white Englishmen and the colored Indians.As pointed out in the first chapter of the novel, Chandrapore is divided into two sections the English Civil Station and the Native Section, the one having nada to do with the other the Civil Station shares nothing with the urban center except the overarching sky. This division in landscape is symptomatic of the wide gulf that separates the rulers from the ruled. Is it possible to be friends with an Englishman ?the Indians ask and Forsters answer in the novel is a clear NO as long as the English remain unfeeling, proud and autocratic towards the Indians. Even the Bridge Party thrown to bridge the gulf between the English and the Indians ends in a fiasco. After having invited the Indians to the Bridge Party ,the English do not bot her to go out and meet them.It goes without express that after such humiliation, the Indians harbor nothing but a collective attitude of fear and hatred in response to the collective attitude of despite shown by the Englishmen. Love and fraternal feelings could have been the right way of treating the modest Indians, feels Forster.Another dramatic instance of separation in the novel is that which comes to exist between Aziz and Fielding. present is a crucial situation in which an Englishman sets aside his snobbishness and attempts a genuine rapport with a warm, impulsive Indian, and yet final understanding is shown to be impossible. It is, perhaps, because the primary barrier between them had been their identities one a member of the ruler class while the other was a member of the subject race. As Arnold tympani points out, on that point are political pressures of imperialism which distort the relationship between Aziz and Fielding.But the ebb and flow of their relationship is d isturbed by more serious factorsdifferences of background and value by the clash of standards on beauty, propriety and emotional expression. Kindness, kindness and more kindnessthis prescription of Aziz about the racial problem does not seem to go a long way a trust in the power of affectionate friendship is not enough to bridge the growing hiatus between close friends even.Further there is the glaring contrast in their characters between the liberal Englishman traveling light and the impulsive Aziz rooted in society and Islam. While gracility and spontaneous affection breaks down the initial barriers between them, there are signs that Fieldings immature imagination and Azizs sensitiveness are overtaking to bode ill for their future relationship.And this is what exactly happens later. Misunderstanding crops up between them in their attitudes towards Adela and leads to the break in their relationship.After Azizs release from the prison, Fielding asks Aziz to withdraw the savagely revengeful demands clamped on Adela and Aziz refuses and they part ways. When they are reunited at the end ,their ways of life have changed too radically Fielding supporting the Anglo Indians and Aziz ,Indian nationalism.Apart from these major schisms there are other minor separations and gaps in the novel . Men themselves are segregated from the rest of the creation. Young Mr. Sorley ,an advanced Christian Missionary ,accepts that God in his divine love brooks no separations and will extend his hospitality to the animals too, to the monkeys and jackals. But he is less sure about wasps and cannot at all have got into Divine Unity things like oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud.Or for that matter the bacteria inside Mr. Sorleys head We must exclude something from our gathering or we shall be left with nothing, he nervously insists. And yet the forced exclusion is inane because men, after all, are only a small part of Creation It matters so puny to the majority of living beings what the majority that calls itself human , desires or decides.