The colonial discourse in E. M. Forster’s a passage to India

Abstract EN

This paper differs from the research of scholars who misinterpret E.

M.

Forster’s political novel A Passage to India as a story about the importance of cross-cultural friendship between English characters and Indians, while at the same time, overlook the fact that Forster suggests this intimacy to justify the English imperial practices in India.

Forster never implies throughout his novel that the British occupiers do not have the right to rule India or that the Indians are equal to the British.

On the contrary, Forster presents Indians as the inferior race who can not govern themselves, and that the presence of the English colonizers in India is justifiable.

English characters are introduced as superior citizens and those who communicate with Indians will pay the price of sedition and anti patriotism.

The mutiny of the Indians in the novel represents the need for the liberation of India and the end of British oppression.