Pandering and Performing in A Passage to India

--Leong Hui Ran

A thing that struck me as I read through the first part of the book was the recurrent references to plays. We are introduced to Adela and the rest of the Anglo Indians at the club, during and after the staging of a play, Cousin Kate. I found it interesting that other than the regular staging up plays, the Club generally is this utterly un-arty bunch. It seems to me that their reasons for performance, other than amusement were those of reinforcing their identity as the British, the civilised and cultured. So here we see not just a performance on stage, but that of a performance of identity for the British. References to plays crop up from then on. Take the scene in Chapter 7, where Fielding comes back from his walk to the college and sees the 2 Indians, a Moslem and a Hindu, Adela and Ronny. “A scene from a play, thought Fielding.” Moreover, Fielding’s living area is a 3-walled structure, suggesting a stage. Aziz, can be seen as a highly performative and pandering character in this scene, a highly sensitive character who acts and bends his words and actions to suit the characters around him, undermining Adela’s hope that he is the key to finding the “real India”. However, he is not the only one we find. Ronny himself is likened to a public school boy, an impressionable “the red-nosed boy” who acts out what his more experienced counterparts direct him to do. Thus, the suggestion that the Self is rather a series of performances manifested. There is in fact no one essential “self” and also no one “essential India”. Thus, Professor Godbole’s song I found was poignant in its enigmatic and non-intelligibility. In its nature, it transcends the ability to be essentialised into any one genre and sentiment, it transcends “essential-isation”.

On another note, just a thought I had about the significance of Miss Quested’s name. “Miss Quested, what a name!” remarked Mrs Turton (Chapter 3). I’m struck by the past tense in her name. As some of my classmates have suggested, Miss Quested is unable escape perpetuating the imperial gaze in her “quest” to discover the real India. I readily concur and it is my opinion that the past tense in her name is significant in relation to this. Miss Q’s “quests” are ends in and of themselves as she is unavoidably interpellated and “pre-disposed” to know and discover India in her English, middle class manner. In that case, the question that arises as well is the question of the knowledge and representation of the Other. Can one ever represent or discover the “Real India”? Or is the quest rather, futile, as we as readers of books, people, reality already have made and ended the “quest” in being who we are, interpellated social beings? I think so and I think that’s what the modernist aesthetic in this novel has raised for me, especially through the narrative voice, which I feel is symptomatic of the modernist movement, showing a plethora of subjective voices and psyches and sometimes (for eg. In the case of Prof Godbole) unable to be omniscient and all-knowing of the character’s psyche. Therefore, the idea that all that one sees and interprets is fragmentary and subjective

PS: I’m not using page numbers as my edition’s some obscure Reading Classics edition. BTW, speaking about Miss Quested. On a fun note, does anyone remember this cartoon, Jonny Quest? It was my favourite cartoon growing up. The theme song kept ringing in my head as I read. Regressive and digressive moment for me, LOL!