The polyphonic voices in A Passage to India

At first glance, Forster seems the omniscient narrator revealing all the various characters and following the conventional plot driven novelist. However, as we read on, there is also a sense of the polyphonic voices emerging as characters reveal their subjective understanding of the awkward relationship between the British and Indians. Although Forster seemed to present the British rather negatively in their interactions with Indians (with the exception of Fielding, Mrs Moore and maybe even Miss Quested), I did not think that the narrator is steering our opinions towards a bias for or against either the Indians or the British. What Forster comments on is the problematic social, political and religious conflict that inevitably occurs when two cultures meet, let alone at an unequal playing field.

Perhaps the modernist aspect lies in the subjectivity of the novel? Reality is presented as subjective as the characters reveal multiple perspectives based on their limited understanding of what they see and experience in their interactions with each other. India is perceived by the British as a “muddle” because of their inability to ‘box-up’ India and understand its culture, for “no one is India”. The multiplicity and complexity of Indian culture varies too widely within its peoples that even the natives cannot provide easy classification (consider the caste system, religion and level of education) that “no one is India”.

“In her ignorance, she regarded him as “India,” and never surmised that his outlook was limited and his method inaccurate, and that no one is India.”

Similarly, the text does not allow us to label and assign its characters - Aziz, Mrs Moore and Miss Quested, into definitive categories since they are constantly evolving and developing. This perhaps hints at the ‘unfinalizability’ of the self; that the self cannot be completely understood and known as we recognize that people change as they gain new perspectives and understandings. Therefore the individual can never be fully revealed just as India can never be fully understood.