Levine, Forster and the Indian Animal

The indian animal, having "no sense of an interior", to which the interior is "a normal growth of the eternal jungle" (35)- This is an idea from Forster's A Passage to India that struck me as most interetsing and that made me see parrallels in Levine's Britain in India. The lack of an interiority or perhaps civility on the part of the Indian is an opinion held by the British, exemplified in Ronny in the nivel, who remarks "Nothing is private in India"(33). This notion of everything being thrown out into the open, the Indian ways of excess and abundance and "cultureless" behaviour, and Mrs Moore's reactions to the indian wasp in her room, all point to Britain's idea of itself being in many ways more cultured, more civilised and more knowing and discerning than the indians. which make its rule over india easier. Yet, the inherent paradox in this came clear to me in Levine's essay. The truth is that Britain's rule will always be one pinned down by fear and insecurity. It is not completely a ruling that stems from or is motivated by an attempt to aid India and modernise it. It is more of a desperate claim for power, where as Levine suggests, "India became more and more important not only for its products but increasingly as a symbol of Britan's overseas power after the loss of America". Hence, any labelling of the indians as people who lack civility and interiority may be seen as means to claim and foreground this sense of power and superiority.

Therefore, to the British( and Miss Quested is an embodiment of this), the "real India" is everything but the indina people themselves. They want to look for the essence of India while it stands in front of them. And on the other hand, to the Indian, everything is India, and everything can be adapted to, even the wooded peg in a British official's house. Hence, while Levine's criticism of the British and their dependency of India is starkingly obvious, Forster seems a little more subtle in his approach. .