Otherness of other in the Eyes of Another: an orientalist Study of E.M. Forester’s A Passage to India

Abstract

Orientalism discusses the binary differences of occident and orient. Edward Said has established this notion in the field of literature in his well known book Orientalism .In this book he has discussed the position of exotic other which involves the religious class between Christianity and Islam that almost began in the seventh century and continues till today. This paper puts forward a comprehensive study of the novel A Passage to India under the cannon of an oriental text from an occident perspectives. Race has functioned as one of the most powerful and yet the most fragile shaper of human identity. The racial identity is actually shaped by perception of religious, ethnic, linguistic, national, sexual and class differences. In the novel A Passage to India E.M. Forster depicts the problem with seeing two cultures as occupying the same world, is that they can be measured with each other and even one preferred to another as a reflection of the world. In this binary world, racial confrontation, transgression and opposition surface repeatedly. The colonized are aware of an authority, of an imposition and hostility between two races, which need to be resisted. In this novel post-colonialism comes to represent a conflict –within one’s own self and the conflict in the outside world. There is a quite genuine hatred of muddling, and a suspicion that whatever they do, they will produce disaster. So, the novel presents a masterly study of racial antagonism of two great races with different heritage and history.