Summary
E. M. Forster’s novel of India, read by Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism as using India to represent material that according to the canons of the novel form cannot in fact be represented — vastness, incomprehensible creeds, secret motions, histories, and social forms (Culture and Imperialism, PDF p.227 / printed p.200).
Details
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The novelty of Aziz’s trial in the novel, in Chapter Two’s account, is Forster’s admission that its court is a “fantasy” compromising British power (real) with impartial justice for Indians (unreal) (PDF p.102 / printed p.75).
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Mrs. Moore and Fielding are Europeans who go beyond the anthropomorphic norm in remaining in that terrifying new element; Fielding experiences India’s complexity but then returns to familiar humanism, coming home through Suez and Italy to England after the trial (PDF p.227 / printed p.200).
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In its last section the novel deliberately imports into India the habitual novelistic domestic resolution: Fielding marries Mrs. Moore’s daughter. Yet he and Aziz — a Muslim nationalist — ride together and remain apart: “‘They didn’t want it,’ they said in their hundred voices, ‘No, not yet,’ and the sky said, ‘No, not here.’” There is resolution and union, but neither is complete (PDF p.227-228 / printed p.200-201; the closing words as Said quotes them).
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Godbole’s and Aziz’s diametrically different resistances to empire are acknowledged — Aziz the Muslim nationalist, Godbole the almost surrealistic Hindu — and the Indian animosity displayed during Aziz’s trial is associated with the emergence of a visible Indian resistance, which Fielding reluctantly perceives in Aziz, one of whose nationalist models is Japan (PDF p.228 / printed p.201).
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Like Conrad’s Africa, Forster’s India is a locale frequently described as unapprehendable and too large: “nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else” (PDF p.228 / printed p.201; as Said quotes Forster).
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The crux of the novel is the sustained encounter between the English colonials — “well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds, and undeveloped hearts” — and India (PDF p.228 / printed p.201; as Said quotes it).
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Chapter Three, I’s full reading (completed in part 6): British “officialism” tries to impose sense on India through orders of precedence, clubs, restrictions and military hierarchies, and Ronny Heaslop holds that intimacy between English people and Indians always ends in disaster, while Mrs. Moore’s taking off her shoes in the mosque establishes a friendship forbidden by the code (PDF p.229 / printed p.202).
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Forster divides India into an Islamic part and a Hindu part: the Muslims, closer to Western culture, are emphasized, the Hindus (including Godbole) peripheral as if not amenable to novelistic treatment, and Islam as represented by Aziz apprehends order and a specific God where the Hindus believe all is muddle (PDF p.229-230 / printed p.202-203).
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Mrs. Moore is killed by her vision; Aziz becomes a nationalist whom Forster cannot connect to the larger movement for Indian independence; to the Indians roused at the trial she is less a person than a mobilizing phrase: “Esmiss Esmoor” (PDF p.230 / printed p.203).
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The novel founders on the undodgeable facts of Indian nationalism: its structure of attitude and reference permits affection and intimacy with some Indians while making Indian politics the charge of the British and culturally refusing Indian nationalism a privilege it gave willingly to Greeks and Italians (PDF p.231-232 / printed p.204-205).
Related pages
Culture and Imperialism, E. M. Forster, Imperialism, Modernism