Painting a Picture,well kind of.

(just a reminder, my page numbers are from some SUPER OLD edition )

Painting a picture:
A Passage to India for all its delving into religion, landscape, colloquialism and a myriad of description of clothes and culture still remains as a book of the West. In this sense, we see some resonance in Fanon’s idea that “the colonizer fabricates the colonial subject”(Fanon, 2). This seems to occur both within the book, where the British have a clear, set view of the Indians; “there you have the Indian all over: inattention to detail; the fundamental slackness that reveals the race” (CH8:80) as well as beyond the book, i.e. Forster as a British writing about India. This idea perhaps goes beyond just the question of Western exoticization of the East, or even of a possible skewered and/or inaccurate description, but leads us to ask the following:
(i) whether or not
(ii)and to what extent
we should question
(I)the validity of representing (II)and the right to represent
something/someplace/someone(s) that is not of the self in modernist fiction that ambitions to incorporate a certain mimesis.

Could the fact that Forster’s novel is a fiction be a certain cover under which to blur the lines between expression of feelings toward the whole colonialism/imperialism/empire building notion and a certain escapism on his part to express the other-worldliness of the East in that “licentious Oriental imagination”(CH31:267)?

In the later parts of the novel we see Aziz shedding a certain layer of his insecurity when he becomes a little more outspoken( possibly smarting from his ordeal) when he says “ ‘Discussion of the past is useless.’he said, with sudden sharpness in his tone”(CH30:262-263). This departure from Fanon’s suggestion that “the colonized subject is constantly on his guard and made to feel inferior” (16) suggest that in the later parts of the novel we see a very different India in terms of its inhabitants, both British and Indian. They perhaps, do not move any closer together nor any further apart, but grow increasingly different in their own realms. What I found very apt about Fanon’s “On Violence” was the description of “Atmospheric violence: this violence rippling under the skin”(Fanon 31) as reflecting Post-trial Chandrapole. While there is uneasiness, it is not overbearing and everyone moves on in their own roles; Adela leaves, Fielding retreats from his ‘middle ground’ between British and Indian to mingle more with English women and eventually marries, Ronny returns to his job. There is certain wariness and a general lack of goodwill to each other except for due course in civility and propriety, which rings a bell with Levine’s point on the British ‘law and government’ being ‘the noblest expression of humanity’(Levine 104).

I guess what I’ve been wondering about this week is the idea behind the idea of a place being about its people, in this case about India being about both the British and the Indians( and how they act/are portrayed/received). It struck me that when Fielding was asked about seeing the “Real India”, he said “ try seeing Indians” ( CH3: 27). Do people make a place, and does it only encompass the natives? Or is the idea that we are supposed to take away remain that of how and who treats the natives is what really matters?

*help me out, im abit confused!