Considering my dislike and boredom with E. M. Forster’s earlier novel, A Room with a View, I was greatly surprised by how much I loved this novel about British colonialism in India.

The central question of the novel is: Can an Indian and a British man be friends given the current colonial environment?

Aziz is a Muslim Indian doctor living in Chandrapore under British colonial rule. He wants desperately to believe that Indians and the British can be friends. He befriends newcomer to India, Mrs. Moore, inside a mosque. She has brought Miss Quested to India, a potential fiancé to her son, Ronny, the city magistrate. Miss Quested wants to get to know Ronny better before she agrees to marry him. In the meantime, she wants to see the real India.

Aziz gets invited to a tea held by the college principal, Mr Fielding, who is sympathetic to Indians compared to the more antagonistic and racist attitudes of the other British colonials who want as little to do with the natives as possible outside of using them as servants. There he discusses with the two ladies visiting the Marabar caves, despite not knowing much about them himself.

The trip to the Marabar caves occurs. Mrs Moore is disturbed by her experience in the first cave and wishes to rest. So Aziz goes with the guide and Miss Quested to visit the remaining caves. Miss Quested asks Aziz about his dead wife, which makes him lose control of his emotions. He hides in a cave to recover himself, but when he returns back to his guest, she is missing. He searches for Miss Quest, but cannot find her anywhere. He finds out that she left with Miss Derek, another British colonial, who comes to drop off Mr Fielding who accidentally misses the train out to the caves.

On her return to Chandrapore, Miss Quested falsely accuses Aziz of attempting to rape her. When his party returns home on the train, Aziz is arrested. The arrest flares up racial tensions between both groups. The British are confident the evidence points to Aziz’s guilt. Mr Fielding breaks with his fellow colonials and joins the Indian side, believing Aziz innocent and valuing his friendship over loyalty to his country and race.

Miss Quested generally believes she was almost raped, but on the stand during the trial comes to realize she might have imagined the whole event and believes Aziz is innocent. She drops the charge, angering both the colonials who still believe Aziz is guilty and the Indians who don’t understand why she would falsely accuse Aziz in the first place. Ronny breaks up the engagement with Miss Quested because it would hurt his career and there was never much love between them in the first place.

Aziz is embittered by the event and slowly his own anger grows towards the British. He feels he can no longer trust the British, and his friendship with Fielding, despite the man’s loyalty, slowly deteriorates from his distrust and wild suspicions that his friend is going to marry Miss Quested, his enemy. Fielding returns to Britain leave where Aziz is convinced that he is marrying Miss Quested in secret. Fielding does marry, not Miss Quested, but rather Mrs. Moore’s daughter who Aziz still reveres.

A few years later, Aziz is working in a Hindu kingdom away from centralized British rule. Fielding returns with his new wife, Mrs. Moore’s daughter, and been appointed to a higher post where is evaluating the educational system in India. At first, Aziz receives him coldly, extremely bitter towards the British, angry that his former life was destroyed by the false accusation, and still believing his former friend has married his worst enemy, Miss Quested. He learns the truth of his mistake that in fact Mr Fielding has married the daughter of the woman he reveres, which restores the friendship between the two men temporarily, although doesn’t change Aziz’s overall feelings about the British. He also comes to realize that despite the injustices done to him he actually likes his new life in the Hindu kingdom. Aziz and Fielding depart talking about their friendship and political, and coming to terms with all the social issues inherent in colonialism that hinder their friendship.  They are fond of each other, but realize colonialism prevents them from being truly intimate.

Despite being written by a British man, this book successfully tackles the difficult issue of colonialism. We see how service in the British rule encourages the administrators to adopt racist views, despite good intentions, which is especially visible with characters such as Ronny. Racism is an inherent part of maintaining colonial order. However, colonialism is presented in a complicated manner. While Aziz and other Indians resent their British occupier, the racist treatment as if they’re inferior, they do appreciate the improvements to the education system that colonial rule brings. Likewise, Indians are not show as a homogenous group. The British constantly try to view all Indians as the same, but in fact, India is a country of infinite diversity, full of religious conflict and disagreements among the populace (Muslims versus Hindu, Brahman versus non-Brahman, etc.). From British eyes all Indians are the same, reifying their own racial stereotypes they have about the populace; hence characters like Miss Quested foolishly come to associate the real India with Aziz. Meanwhile, Aziz’s knowledge doesn’t extend beyond Muslim history in India. He knows nothing about Hindu traditions and artifacts. From Aziz’s viewpoint, there is no single definable India. As part of their racist attitudes, the British view Indians as childish, emotional, and chaotic.
Aziz sees the failings of Indians as their intense suspicion of everything (which can be explained by their status as colonial subjects), but claims the British’s main failings is hypocrisy. The British stereotype Indians as overly emotional and childlike. To a degree this matches Forster’s depiction of Aziz and other Indians, which I suppose some could argue is racist or stereotypical; however, Forster also reveals that the British themselves fall into emotional outbursts and irrational racial fears after the supposed rape happens in the caves. This is yet another example of British hypocrisy. They will stereotype one group by associating them with certain behavior, but fail to see themselves engaging in those behaviors.

The Indians place emphasis on friendship, while British place emphasis on decorum. At the beginning of the novel nothing makes Aziz happier than trying to please his British friends. He goes out of his way to offer hospitality to his guests at great expense to himself; for the fatal picnic that ends with him in jail, the novel suggests he puts himself into major debt in order to please his guests. This creates an extremely likeable character, and his downfall becomes a true tragedy not only for its depiction of racism, but also because how antithetical the accusations of him raping his guest are to the truth of how far and what straits he went t to please his guests. He begins the novel by believing the British and Indians can be friends, although he resents British colonial rule. By the end of the novel he is bitter towards all the British, even Mr Fielding, his one European ally during the trial because he falsely believes Fielding has married his enemy, Miss Quested. This is one of Aziz’s personal failings, to judge a situation based on his emotions, without reference to the actual facts.Ultimately his anger soothes and he revives his friendship with Fielding, but both realize as the major epiphany of the novel that a true friendship between them can never exist until the political and social situation in British India vastly changes.

Hypocrisy over sexuality illustrated by Mr McBryde who criticizes Dr . Aziz desire to visit prostitute, despite doing so himself when he was Aziz’s age. Later in the novel, McBryde’s wife divorces him when he is caught cheating on her with another woman. Aziz jokes that he will probably blame the climate of India for his moral failings.

The final chapters of the novel occur during a major Hindu festival celebrating the birth and triumph of Krishna. Hinduism is always on the periphery in the novel, as most of the Indian characters are Muslim. The sudden presence of Hinduism shows an alternative to the belief systems and ideologies presented earlier in the novel, depicting a spiritual belief in which hierarchy are smashed and all living entities from the lowest insect to the highest ranking human are equal and the same. While Hinduism isn’t the solution, the ideas behind the celebration are shown as an ideal to achieve where true friendship would be possible between British and Indian, and colonialism would be impossible.

Like a good novelist, Forster shows the other side to this ideal.  Mrs. Moore’s is greatly disturbed by her experience in the cave in which all words and sounds are transformed into the same echo “boum.” She realizes this represents how all ideas, sounds, people, and things, are transformed into the same essence. This idea is so disturbing to hr as a British because it directly challenges the concept of an individual soul and individuality in general that is so important to Christianity and post-Enlightenment European identity. After the incident, she no longer cares about her family relationships or life in general because the cave has shown her the futility of all her cherished beliefs and the pieces of her personal identity.

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