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A vast number of people moved from rural to urban regions in the latter part of the nineteenth century as a result of the effects of industrialization and urbanization, which in turn led to the collapse of the pre-industrial lifestyle and economy. Conflicts on an emotional and intellectual level were also fostered by the decline of the old systems and constraints, as well as the structured and organized way of life pertaining to the pre-industrial era. Many novelists of this transitional period, such as Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, George Gissing, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, and E. M. Forster, questioned the social, economic, political, religious, moral, cultural, and artistic institutions along with their established conventions. However, Forster, looking beyond the national boundaries, used references to other cultures, religions, alien settings, bi-national characters, and diverse traditions after traveling particularly to Italy and India. Forster’s two visits to India, one in 1912 and the other in 1921, gave him an experiential knowledge of the country. In his discursively complex international novel, A Passage to India (1924), besides religious and socioeconomic differences, Forster uncovers significant cultural problems that can be observed in India’s arbitrary imposition of a corrupted imperial system. In the novel, Forster explores the chronotopic cartographies of India and England in terms of their similarity and difference using individuals, mores, and settings. Thus, this paper aims to analyze how the theme of the East/West dichotomy in Forster’s A Passage to India creates liminal spaces and characters discussing the false perception of India by the British. |
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