The BBC Broadcasts

Abstract

It would have been expecting too much for critics to agree about a novel as complex and as close to the Imperial bone as A Passage to India was in 1924. Forster understood Muslims and misunderstood Hindus. He understood Hindus but misunderstood Muslims. He was drastically unfair to Anglo-Indians. Or, he had skilfully balanced their devotion to duty against their shortcomings. Or, he was scrupulously fair to both Anglo-Indians and Indians. There is a good deal about ‘the Indian mind’ and India’s eternal mysteries. The Indians in the novel were ‘children of Nature’, or they were ‘all miserable creatures’, or they were ‘neither primitive nor uneducated’. The novel left one with ‘a sense of disappointment’ because it was difficult to know ‘what it is about; … all the details are good but the ensemble is fuzzy, or wuzzy.’ Or, on the other hand, there is ‘no silliness, no lapse, no wobbling.’¹