The contaminated, India and history

In light of the Gikandi and Levine readings that we did last week-- about how the colonized could be Westernized but the colonizers, in adopting the culture of the colonized, are seen as contaminated – doesn’t it seem particularly applicable to Passage to India and in particular, Fielding?

Consider the British’s reaction towards him: there is this distance between Fielding and his own people because he isn’t like them. In choosing to keep company with the Indians, the English, in particular the women shun him. ‘He had found it convenient and pleasant to associate with Indians and he must pay the price’ (VII 53). Fielding is an example of one whom the colonizers see as ‘contaminated’; in desiring to indulge in his relationships with Indians, he has become a misfit, one who neither fits-in with the British nor with the Indians. But Fielding isn’t the only one. How about Mrs. Moore, and Ronny’s reaction to her friendship with Aziz? Certainly it is frowned upon, as is Miss Derek because, as Ronny puts it, ‘[…] how a decent girl like Miss Derek can take service under natives puzzles me…’ (VIII 83). It makes one think about the kind of danger these ‘contaminated’ pose to English culture: what fear do the British have? They desire to keep and retain what they can of home in an alien land, yet they can’t avoid not coming into contact with the Indians. The only thing the British can do is to take precautions and ensure that their culture doesn’t become interchanged. Forster wrote that the British in India were like the exiled – I think for them to ensure that they don’t become further exiled, they have to preserve what they can of their own culture and essentially, their own identity.

I also find it particularly interesting how Adela keeps insisting on seeing the ‘real’ India. Many classmates have already asked in their posts, ‘what IS the real India?’ I don’t think we’ll ever know. The British, by colonizing India, has already changed what India was. For Adela to see the real India, she has to first see through the British, to see beyond the anglicized Indians, and even then what she sees may not be an accurate representation of what India is. Her surname itself is worth analyzing: Quested, as in questing for what India is, and yet the past tense of the name suggests that she has already decided what ‘real’ India should be before even reaching India (I hope I’m not pushing it too far). Why else will she keep rejecting the India that she’s shown and keeps insisting to see something else, something that comes closer to what she perceives the ‘real’ India to be? Then again, Forster also presents the idea of perceptions, how we always perceive things and tend to be biased towards our own perceptions. Aziz has his own romanticized image of India, so does Fielding, so does Ronny and every other character in the novel. Who is right and who is wrong? Or are they all correct? It’s like saying, “let us show you the real Singapore!” but what is the real Singapore? Adela is essentially a tourist in another country. She has been conditioned by her own country’s value systems and beliefs and has adopted her own views on India. Her perception is, in other words, already coloured. People tend to see what they want to see, and for Adela, Ronny, Mrs. Moore, Aziz etc., we’re presented with what they want to see their environment as. It’s like us being tourists to another country – we each have our own notions of what we want to see in that country, and what the ‘real’ country is about.

In a way, I think history is also like this. History is after all, ‘His Story’, and as stories go, they tend to be told by someone. And since it is told by someone, the story tends to have biasness that reveals the storyteller’s own conditioning and beliefs. Like how Levine could be said to be biased in her “Ruling an Empire”, I think all historians are biased, even if they strive not to come across as one. History is a story that is told from the point-of-view of someone who believes in his or her version of the history – much like how Adela believes in her own idea of the ‘real’ India.

-Yuen Mei-