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Niki Botes
Blurring the lines between muddle and mystery: a study of Forster’s postmetaphysical hermeneutics
in A Passage to India:
Since the Classical period (in which philosophers such as Plato posited the existence of a universal and
fixed ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ beyond our material, mutable world [Vimal 2]), Western metaphysics has
essentially been shaped around the dichotomy of reality versus appearance; the idea of an immutable,
transcendental ‘truth’ versus the material world. It is thus a philosophy based on binaries such as truth
versus falsehood, God versus the Devil, masculinity versus femininity, the conscious versus the
unconscious, the West versus the East and so forth (Vimal 13).
However, by the end of the eighteenth century, with the advent of the romantic period,
philosophers started to question the Enlightenment ideals of ‘reason’ as well as the notions of classical
metaphysics (Giffin 170), which would, of course, lead to the philosophy of deconstruction in the postmodern world. Although, essentially, the modernist time in which Forster wrote, was one which was still
inscribed within the parameters of structuralist thought (Raschke 58), Michael Giffin states that “the
aesthetic ideology of the modernist novel” was ultimately guided and informed by postmetaphysical
thought (170). Postmetaphysics sought to deconstruct the ‘realities’ which were thus far considered as
ultimate truths, and essentially turned these ‘metaphysical truths’ into questions about “human
psychology and perception” (172). Seeing that our very language is inscribed within the binary thought
of classical metaphysics, depending on, for instance, the notions of presence and absence, the moderns,
before the advent of Derrida, were already struggling with the ‘limits of language’ in order to express a
new reality for which a “philosophical vocabulary had not yet been developed” (Raschke 58).
As many scholars have posited, Forster’s novels are, in the end, about human relationships: the
conflict of opposites, and the possibility, or not, of fusion between peoples with different historical and
political backgrounds, and thus, widely disparate ways of constructing meaning and ‘truths’ in their lives.
By placing his novel within the Indian landscape, which, as Forster states, resists classification and
escapes linguistic description or apprehension, he presents an interesting background against which to
interrogate different ‘realities’. By having a look at the structure of the novel, as well as the different
religions (and the characters who represent these theological stances) presented, and finally Forster’s
struggle with the ‘limits of language’ in the text, I would like to investigate the metaphysical notions
posited by Forster in A Passage to India, and whether he, in his philosophy, foresees a possibility for a
more harmonious existence between opposites.
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‘Mosque’:
Part One of A Passage to India, ‘Mosque’, starts with Forster describing the distinct separation between
the city of Chandrapore where the local Indians live (in which the “very wood seems made of mud,”) and
that of the little Civil Station on the rise of the British, “sensibly planned, with a red-brick Club on its
brow” (Forster 31 –2). The division between Englishman and Indian seems insurmountable as, for
instance, the Bridge party attests: although intended as a “party to bridge the gulf between East and
West” (49), it fails miserably, degenerating into a match on the tennis court, not between East and West
as hoped, but between the normal Club couples. The theme of the ‘invitation’ crops up time and time
again in ‘Mosque’, but seems to lead not to desired unity, but even more division: apart from the
invitation to the Bridge party, there is the invitation of the Bhattacharya’s to Mrs. Moore and Ms.
Quested, which is never realised; the invitation to Fielding’s place, which ends with everyone being
“cross and wretched” (94); and, of course, the invitation by Aziz to the Marabar Caves, which ends in
utter disaster. Perhaps, Forster muses in the novel “all invitations must proceed from heaven . . .
perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the
attempt” (58).
Within this broad division between the British and the Indians, there are, however, many more
divisions: India, herself, is in fact “a hundred Indias” (38), “which tries to keep men in compartments”
(141), of which the divide between the Hindu’s and the Moslems is but one, albeit the most auspicious
(White 135). Aziz, after having had an amicable conversation with the Hindu Mr. Das thinks “I wish they
did not remind me of cow-dung”; Mr. Das in turn thinks that “some Moslems are very violent” (Forster
265).The British themselves are not exempt from divisions: “major official looks down on minor official;
wives of major officials look down upon their inferior sisters. The soldier’s attitude differs from the
civilian’s” (White 136). There is even antagonism between the sexes, with the women disapproving of
the mild manner in which their husbands deal with the natives, and the husbands silently blaming their
wives for complicating life in India (136).
Not only is there separation between caste, race and sex, but also between man and creation. In
India there is “something hostile” in the soil (Forster 40), and a sinister sun, without beauty, shines upon
man (127). Plants, animals and insects are ambivalent to the lives of men: “it matters so little” to them
“what the minority that calls itself human, desires or decides” (126); and the universe itself, in its turn, is
indifferent, or even hostile, to the “concerns of all creatures” (White 137).
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The theme of the ‘invitation’ (mentioned earlier)—but one with limits, which thus signals
exclusion, borders and division as opposed to hospitality (which, after all, is meant to include)—is
further examined in the excerpt on the religious views of old Mr. Graysford and young Mr. Sorley, two
devoted British missionaries. As open-minded and warm-hearted Christians, they welcome all humans,
black or white, as well as all mammals into heaven. But at the mention of wasps, however, they become
uncomfortable and positively cannot abide allowing “oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud”: at some
point some things have to be excluded, otherwise “we shall be left with nothing” (Forster 58). By
stretching this social metaphor to absurd lengths, Forster is implying, with irony, that “Christianity
cannot afford to slacken its ‘inhospitality’ to chaos, because as soon as that happens the dualistic
thought of Western metaphysics, as well as the holy doctrines of the church, is invaded with
contradiction (Crews 171).
It is within the context of limits, of exclusion and division that Mrs. Moore is presented as quite
an enigmatic figure: she, after all, befriends Aziz in the Mosque (and he dubs her Oriental); and she is
kind to the Indian wasp, intuitively comprehending that “no Indian animal has any sense of an interior”
(Forster 55). But although she is able to blur the lines of distinction between Moslem and Christian,
between English and Indian wasp, and between inside and outside, her understanding has limits: “I like
mysteries but I rather dislike muddles” (86), she says. Mrs. Moore, albeit more loving and inclusive than
he follow countrymen, “sincere and authentic Christian as she is . . . upholds a world view that places
high value upon clarity and places limits on inclusiveness,” and she is wholly unprepared for the visit to
the Marabar Caves, which will reveal that muddle is mystery (Giffin 180).
Aziz, like Mrs. Moore, is a monotheist, to whom “barriers are very important, for they sustain his
understanding of self and world” (178). His word-view, like hers, is essentially dualistic: the contrast in
the dualism of the “ninety-nine names of God on the frieze” in black, as the frieze stands “out white
against the sky” (Forster 41), pleases him. Aziz is “rooted in society and Islam” (132): his world-view “is
dominated by a totalising discourse: the romantic, poetic, ideological and theological solipsism that
imagine a national unity under Islam” (Giffin 178).
Giffin states that Forster is just as critical of Islamic Imperialism as he is of British imperialism:
both systems are built on a metaphysical logic which wishes to impose “order upon chaos, reason upon
unreason, meaning upon nonmeaning, understood as the triumph of light over darkness” (175). Both
Christian and Islamic metaphysics, as monotheistic religions, present an essential dualistic
understanding of reality: one, which necessarily needs to erect barriers, and at varying points, exclude,
in order to define itself. Robert Barratt states that the monolithic world-view expresses itself in a
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language that is inevitably structured as a system of binary opposites, framed in terms of what is inside,
good, proper and primary as opposed to that which is outside, bad, improper and secondary (127). The
English, as well as Aziz, regard their own ideologies as the centre, and that which is different as
peripheral and somehow inferior. In this vein, Mrs. Turton, at the Bridge party, reminds Mrs. Moore that
“you’re superior to them, anyway” (Forster 61).
‘Mosque’ highlights the barriers which exist between people with different world-views, as well
as the difficulty of their language to not only signify to the ‘other’, but also to another: Adela wants a
thorough talk with Ronnie but does not even get that, Mrs. Turton speaks Urdu, but only in the
imperative, and Aziz misinterprets Fielding’s “Post-Impressionism, indeed!” (84). Yet, there is, through
the friendship between Mrs. Moore and Aziz, as well as Fielding and Aziz, a hopeful view by the end of
‘Mosque’ of the possibility of a ‘passage’ or ‘bridge’ of understanding, between people.
‘Caves’:
The Marabar hills is a barren place, without ornamentation or distinction, a place “even Buddha, who
must have passed this way . . . , shunned [as] a renunciation more complete than his own” (Forster 138).
A visitor finds it “difficult to discuss the caves, or to keep them apart in his mind, for the pattern never
varies, and no carving . . . distinguishes one from another” (138). It is a place of illusion where everything
seems “cut off at its root” (152): Miss Quested, noticing a dark object screams “Snake!” and Aziz
confirms that it is a highly dangerous black cobra. But when she looks through Ronnie’s field-glasses, she
notices that it is nothing but a “withered and twisted stump” (152). Tracy Pintchman points to the
allusion at Hinduism, as the ‘tree stump confused with the snake’ trope is a well-known metaphor in
Advaita Vedanta philosophy, in which it refers to the concept of illusion or maya (69). More than
mystery, the caves thus represent the ultimate muddle to those, such as Christians and Moslems, whose
dependence on form and distinction prevent them from comprehending their meaning (74). Aziz
“despite his gay, confident talk” (Forster 153) finds the caves completely foreign to his comprehension,
and he feels lost without the guidance of Professor Godbole.
After visiting one of the caves Mrs. Moore exits feeling disconcerted and “muddled”: she has
heard an echo “entirely devoid of distinction”, the only recognisable sound “as far as the human
alphabet can express it” being ‘boum, or ‘bou-oum’, or ‘ou-boum’ (158 –59). The theme of the ‘echo’
appears early on in the novel already, when Mrs. Moore muses on God: how she has constantly had Him
in her thoughts since she travelled to India, but yet it has become less and less efficacious to “pronounce
His name” as “outside the arch there seemed always an arch, beyond the remotest echo a silence” (71).
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Thus, instead of receiving an ‘answer’ from her god, he recedes ever more away: in India, she starts
realising the limits of her Christianity (Pintchman 63). Her god, like Godbole’s Krishna to whom he
beckons “come, come, come” (Forster 96), neglects to come.
The echo she hears in the cave murmurs to her that “pathos, piety, courage” are all the same,
and so is filth, that “everything exists, but nothing has value” (160). This causes “all distinctions of
feeling and of moral value” to become confused and meaningless in her (Brower 119). The doctrines of
her Christian church, as well as the comforting belief in a majestic, great universe as backdrop, and
eternal setting to our little lives on earth, all fade into nothingness, into ‘boum’. Yet, a serene
acceptance of the world as enough onto itself, is also denied her. Rueben Brower explains the
conundrum of Mrs. Moore’s ‘double-vision’:
All heroic endeavour, and all that is known as art, assumes that there is such a background, just
as all practical endeavour, when the world is to our taste, assumes that the world is all. But in the
twilight of the double vision, a spiritual muddledom is set up for which no high-sounding words
can be found; we can neither act nor refrain from action, we can neither ignore nor respect
Infinity. (120)
The ‘muddle’ of the echo in the cave, thus has disastrous effects for Mrs. Moore, as it collapses
“the oppositions by which she determines values” (Pintchman 65). Forster muses later in the novel that
European culture desires “that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity, have a form, and
India fails to accommodate them” (Forster 215). The English react negatively to the echo, and the
Muslim with indifference, as the monolithic understanding of both parties are unable to imagine that
the muddle of nothing, of negation, are aspects of God (Giffin 180).
The Hindu faith claims that Self and Not-Self, Atman and Brahman, Good and Evil, are actually
one, and not dichotomous, opposing entities as eschewed in Christianity and Islam (Crews 177).
Godbole, infuriating Fielding, who wants answers of the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kind after the Marabar
incident, says that good and evil “are both of them aspects of my Lord” (Forster 186). The ‘boum’ which
Mrs. Moore hears in the echo, is an inversion of the Hindu ‘Om’ or ‘Aum’. Giffin quotes Ganguly who
explains that “Aum is all this—what was, what is, and what will be. It is also what is beyond the three
divisions of time, that is the unmanifest ground of the manifest universe. All this is Brahman, of which
Aum is the sound symbol. The self is BRAHMAN” (181). For the Hindu, the highest experience can only
be achieved through the annihilation of value, hierarchy or division (Crews 177).
This is then also what Mrs. Moore experiences: an annihilation of all value and distinction. But,
her world-view is unable to comprehend this revelation, and thus, for her, it is experienced as all-
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negative—resulting in apathy and, ultimately, death. What she and Adela experience in the Marabar
caves are, for them, beyond signification: they do not have the concepts or the language with which to
make sense of either the Indian landscape or its hermeneutics. For an instant, both have a glimpse of
the Unity which lies beyond our world of illusion, beyond the maya, but are unable to assimilate it.
Benita Parry argues that Mrs Moore and Adela find themselves in “an untranslatable sphere” as they are
inscribed in their language, culture and religious ideology, rendering them unable to recognise the
‘otherness’ of India, or extract meaning from it (187). For David Dowling, the symbol of the ‘arch’ in A
Passage to India represents “human comprehension through language” (257). Giffin argues that our
language is our horizon; similarly Wittgenstein’s dictum states that “the limits of my language are the
limits of my world” (257).
The limits of language to firstly affect effective communication, and secondly to signify ‘truths’
which are beyond Western hermeneutics, are evident throughout the novel. Dowling quotes Molley
Tinsley who points to the muddled syntax of the novel:
Forster’s sentences . . . fight closure as consistently as they undermine climax. Numerous final
ellipses as well as three ‘etcs’ violate the rhetoric of well-made sentences, and more than a
dozen times in the course of the novel Forster adds extra elements to his sentences by means of
a simple, unsubtle, ‘also’. (256)
As a novel which tries to represent the unrepresentable, it is appropriate that the limits of
language are explored on an Indian landscape, albeit it fictitious, as this landscape is a space of which
the mind could not “take hold of” (Forster 148). The Marabar hills are described as beyond time, space
or language: “Nothing, nothing attaches to them, and their reputation . . . does not depend upon human
speech” (138). Fittingly, Godbole is silent when pressed by Aziz and the two ladies at Fielding’s party to
describe the Marabar caves. Yet, unlike the English or Aziz, Godbole does not interpret the echo in the
caves as muddle or absence of meaning. Instead, for him it signifies an opportunity to experience
Divinity (Pintchman 74).
‘Temple’:
The Gokul Ashtami ritual celebrates a god who “is, was not, is not, was” (Forster 281). It is a celebration
which amounts to colourful, distasteful chaos, in which there is “nothing personal” (Pintchman 282): it is
a “muddle . . . a frustration of reason and form” (Forster 282). Hindu India is one which is able to abide
contradiction, and who prays to a god who has been “born centuries ago, nor can ever be born” (283),
as Hindu belief is inspired by a divine love of all things, divorced from the values and hierarchies
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inherent in monolithic religion. Godbole, during a ritual dance in which he attempts to access this
infinite love, suddenly recalls Mrs. Moore, and then a wasp, and perhaps a stone. In ecstasy he is able to
extend his all-encompassing love to Mrs. Moore and, also the wasp, but alas, his love cannot grasp the
stone also.
James McConkey explains the dual realities of Hindu metaphysics which underlies Godbole’s
desire to ‘attempt the stone’. Brahman, the unseen metaphysical absolute, is manifested in the triad of
Vishnu, Siva and Brahma. Brahman can only be approached through the triad, but as Brahman has no
attributes, such an approach would, however, be impossible. The triad is, like the phenomenal universe,
but illusory; ultimately the absolute can only be approached through the loss of one’s ‘self’ or
individuality. Our identities, ego and sense of ‘self’ is inscribed in language, culture and ideology: we are
thus ensconced in maya, and it is only when our souls are able to separate itself from the physical realm,
that it is possible to identify with the absolute. One is thus able to partake in absolute love to the extent
that one is able to negate oneself: although Godbole’s quest at self-negation is extensive, it is
necessarily lacking. Perhaps complete negation of the self and this physical realm, Forster seems to say,
is not humanly possible (160).
The rebirth and reconciliation in the final pages is only possible though love, which again, is only
possible “through as great a denial of self and the physical world” as mankind is able to accommodate
(160). But is this the message which Forster is ultimately positing in A Passage to India? McConkey and
other critics warn against overemphasising the importance of Hinduism in the novel, stating that Forster
did not accept Hinduism, but simply borrowed from its metaphysics to espouse his own philosophy.
Forster was, in fact, at times quite critical of Hinduism: McConkey quotes Forster, who writes about a
Gokul Ashtami festival he attended, stating that “there is no dignity, no taste, no form, and though I am
dressed as a Hindu I shall never become one” (162).
According to McConkey, Fielding and Godbole in the novel, represent the “disparity to be found
between Forster’s commitment to human relations and his commitment to the insight and love gained
through a remove from those relations” (161). For Forster, the conundrum is thus that it is impossible to
identify with the absolute, or gain an awareness of unity, whilst valuing the physical, human realm;
conversely, without “the agency of the earth”, it is impossible to build any meaningful relationships
amongst men (161).
Frederick Crews argues that even if it is Hinduism which is most successful in affording man a
passage to the absolute, and even if it offers a more inclusive view of the universe, it still cannot “silence
the voice of Western humanism” (174). Although Forster does exhibit postmetaphysical notions in A
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Passage to India, notable in his criticism of the construction of codes and values of certainty based on
totalising and dualistic thought, he does not, however, posit that we should completely do away with
such thought. It is impossible to function on this earth plane without any semblance of structure, order
or form, and although language divides people and often fails to signify, we still need it in order to make
sense of the world around us and each other (174). We need a notion of selfhood in order to function
and cannot completely dissolve our identities into ‘nothingness’ in order to merge with the absolute.
Fielding, once he has quite the Indian shores for a while and has been able to amply recover his sense of
proportion in Venice, thinks to himself that “without form, how can there be beauty?” (Forster 278).
Not one of the religions or world-views portrayed in the novel seems to afford man any real or
lasting ‘passage’ to the absolute:
Christian righteousness helps us to misconstrue both God and man; Moslem love can scarcely reach
beyond the individual personality; rational skepticism is willful arid; and the Hindu ideal of oneness,
though it does take notice of the totally of things, abolishes the intellectual sanity that makes life
endurable to the Western mind. (Crews 183)
Forster muses in the novel on whether the human spirit has ever been able to “ravish the
unknown” despite all its effort and arrives only at an ambiguous answer: man, Forster argues, “may
think, if he chooses, that he has been with God, but, as soon as he thinks it, it becomes history, and falls
under the rules of time” (285).
Ultimately, A Passage to India does not posit any lasting ‘passage’ through national barriers, or a
harmonious relationship with earth either (Crews 168): although there are hints at reconciliation
between man and earth, as well as the hope for unity and understanding between men, this does not
come to fruition. Friends again, Aziz and Fielding go for their last ride in the Mau jungle, and as they
come upon a cobra, draw rein in order to give the snake “elbow-room” (Forster 311): this gesture, the
amicable banter between them as well as Aziz’s letter of reconciliation to Adela, all allude to harmony
and unity. Yet, the novel ends in an ominous tone: Fielding asks “Why can’t we be friends now . . . It’s
what I want. It’s what you want” (316), but the horses, the earth and the birds do not want it. And the
sky, with finality says “No, not yet . . . No, not there” (316).
Works cited:
Barratt, Robert. “The Caves of Deconstruction.” The Journal of Narrative Technique 23.2 (1993):
127 –35.
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Brower, Rueben A. “The Twilight of the Double Vision: Symbol and Irony in A Passage to India.” 1951. E.
M. Forster: A Passage to India. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury. London: MacMillan Education. 1970. 114
–31.
Crews, Frederick C. “A Passage to India.” 1962. E. M. Forster: A Passage to India. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury.
London: MacMillan Education. 1970. 165 –85.
Dowling, David. “’A Passage to India’ through ‘The Spaces between the Words’.” The Journal of Narrative
Technique 15.3 (1985): 256 –66.
Forster, E.M. A Passage to India. 1924. London: Penguin Books. 1989.
Giffin, Michael. “Some Fusions and Diffusions of Horizon in a Gadamerian Reading of A Passage to
India.” Literature and Theology 12.2 (1998): 170 –86.
McConkey, James. “The Prophetic Novel: A Passage to India.” 1957. E. M. Forster: A Passage to India.
Ed. Malcolm Bradbury. London: MacMillan Education. 1970. 154 –64.
Parry, Benita. “Materiality and Mystification in A Passage to India”. Novel: A Forum on Fiction 31.2
(1998): 174 –94.
Pintchman, Tracy. “Snakes in the Cave: Religion and the Echo in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India”.
Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 75.1 (1992): 61 –78.
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2006.
Vimal, Ram Lakham V. “Western Metaphysics and Comparison with Eastern Metaphysics”. Vision
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White, Gertrude M. “A Passage to India: Analysis and Revaluation.” 1953. E. M. Forster: A Passage to
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India. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury. London: MacMillan Education. 1970. 132 –53.