Forster completed this novel in 1924, having, himself, first set foot in India in 1912. The novel is all about colonial and native relations and the massive gulf that divided even the most enlightened on both sides. At the center of the plot is Miss Quested, brought out to India as a possible bride by Mrs. Moore, the mother of an Anglo-Indian, Ronny, a magistrate stationed in Chandrapore. “In front, like a shutter, fell a vision of her married life. She and Ronny would look into the club like this every evening, then drive home to dress; they would see the Lesleys and the Callendars and the Turtons and the Burtons, and invite them and be invited by them, while the true India slid by unnoticed. Colour would remain—the pageant of birds in the early morning, brown bodies, white turbans, idols whose flesh was scarlet or blue—and movement would remain as long as there were crowds in the bazaar and bathers in the tanks. Perched up on the seat of a dogcart, she would see them. But the force that lies beyond colour and movement would escape her even more effectually than it did now. She would see India always as a frieze, never as a spirit.” Though it often looked this way to the British, India’s indigenous residents were by no means a homogenous monolith. “Hamidullah had called in on his way to a worrying committee of notables, nationalist in tendency, where Hindus, Moslems, two Sikhs, two Parsis, a Jain, and a Native Christian tried to like one another more than came natural to them. As long as someone abused the English, all went well, but nothing constructive had been achieved, and if the English were to leave India, the committee would vanish also.” Turton, the District Collector, advises a British newcomer, “I have had twenty-five years’ experience of this country…. And during those twenty-five years I have never known anything but disaster result when English people and Indians attempt to be intimate socially. Intercourse, yes. Courtesy, by all means. Intimacy—never, never.”
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