The Tension of the Social Relations between the Colonizer and the Colonized in Forster’s a Passage to India

Abstract

Colonialism is a practice of dominion which involves the subjugation of one people to another. The British colonized India and left an impact on many different levels of life and culture. E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, referring to colonialism, explores the relationship between the colonized, an Indian doctor, and the colonizer, a British schoolmaster. This paper aims to explore Albert Memmi’s concepts of colonialism as presented in his The Colonizer and the Colonized (1974) and examine Forster’s characters according to these views. One basic issue is the cultural misunderstanding between the colonizer and the colonized. Different types of characters in the novel embody a number of Memmi’s ideas. The colonizer is characterized by profit, privilege and usurpation. Lack of communication comes at the core of the relationships seen in the social context between the English and the Indian, since colonial India suffers from mistrust and racial hatred.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n10p27