Today, in one FB Study Group (MEG, IGNOU) the following question was posed:
“…can anyone please explain these question from the British Novel assignments…Suggest the political and artistic implications of placing the conclusion of ‘A Passage to India’ within the Orientalist paradigm.??
…I couldn’t find any text in the study material …Any help is highly appreciated!! ”
Now, in answer to this question, I would say-
to understand and apply oneself to any question, one must first pick out the most important term around which the question has been framed…in the case of “A Passage..” it is Orientalism….what is the Orientalist Paradigm?..it is that fixation that Europeans in general, and European writers in particular, had in their mind and put across in their works, about India, China and such Oriental countries….about the difference these cultures have from the Occidental cultures (European) ..about being mysterious about religion, behavior and lifestyle….
Throughout ‘A Passage..” the relational dynamics of the 3 characters, Aziz, Godbole and Fielding is an expression or cipher of this Oriental -Occidental clash or paradigmatic inability to reach out and understand one another. While the Indian faction, Aziz and Godbole, are much different from each other in their personal beliefs and practices, they are shown to understand and hence share a kind of unison – which is reflected in their being together in the same environ at the end….the Hindu state of Mau…
However, Fielding, who has throughout been the one most inclined to be receptive and unconventionally friendly towards Indians, particularly Aziz, continues to be estranged from the psyche or thought patterns of the same, shown in his failure to be able to logically fathom Aziz or Godbole’s political and religious fervor (respectively)..even to the end, the symbolic inability of Fielding and Aziz’s horses to move together is significant of the inability of the Occidental and Oriental to be able to comprehend each other, entirely, in spite of their willingness to do so….
This is the placing of the conclusion of ‘A Passage to India’ within the Orientalist paradigm by Forster.
In order to answer this question, we will have to elaborate on the political and cultural -artistic two dimensions shown in the novel- in the persona of Aziz -Godbole and Fielding. We shall need also to reflect upon the personal dimension of the writer, who in his life too, had travailed in like fashion…..
The important thing is to also read the novel closely, particularly the concluding chapter XXXVIII, which bears much significance in concluding the expression of Forster’s complex political cultural query on India, from the European’s point of view.
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