The Eurocentric point of view in Passage to India

My post will be in relation to Prof Koh's quoting of Ashis Nandy quote that "All representations of India are ultimately autobiographical". I think this is necessary and to attempt to do otherwise can only be false, imperialistic and narrow-minded. I read Forster's Adela as a cautionary tale against people who impose general readings of India on their audience. One can consider the way Forster portrays India as The Other. Adela's intellectual vanity in insisting on trying to "see the real India" is punished by the primal chaos of the Marabar Caves. The search of an "authentic India" results in a trip to the caves, after which she is physically and emotionally affected. The caves are, I think, a distinctly modernist symbol: mystical, irrational and beyond definition.

This outcome suggests that any attempt to classify, define and label this Other is problematic and impossible. The Western mind, even with all its good intentions and healthy curiousity, still seeks out an exoticised India which is romantic and idealised. The West cannot penetrate the cultural, emotional and social landscape of India. In the novel, various people comment on on the strange the Indian thought and behavior of the Indians. Even the physical landscape in itself is bewildering. The modernist technique of multiple points of view in the narrative then offer a possible solution - one may never grasps at a complete India, but can at least view it from different perspectives that gesture toward a (fragmented?) whole.