Cultural Boundary and Ethnic Identity in A passage to India

Abstract

Based on an Indian doctor Aziz’s experience in contact with the British people and the subsequent “Aziz’s Incidents”, A Passage to India reflects the cultural clash between the suzerain and the vassal state and the crisis of ethnic identity caused by cultural conflict during the colonial times in India. Obviously, the Indian “Cultural Other” was marginalized and repressed by the British “Culture itself” at that time, human weakness revealed once again attributed by ethnocentrism. After the novel was published, it once aroused strong repercussion from readers, academic circles such as Criticism of Orientalism was incessant, the author Foster was also pushed to the top of the critical wave and was acused constantly. In fact, study shows that Aziz’s story was both universal and symbolic, it was an inevitable result of the cultural boundary which existed between Britain and India during the colonial period, and this problem was the key factor for the unequal ethnic groups’ identity between British people and Indian people.