Formatting in Forster’s A Passage to India

Abstract

This paper highlights the complicated relationship between the colonizer and the colonized in a typical colonial context as manifested in Forster’s masterpiece, A Passage to India. It also exposes the stereotypes which the Orientals are depicted with and the constant process of ‘formatting’ or brainwashing by the British. This article pursues Albert Memmi’s theory as promoted in his book The Colonizer and the Colonized as well as those of other cultural philosophers. The concept of difference in resemblance observed by Homi Bhabha as working in this novel shows how desperately Forster struggles to reconcile the differences between the nomenclature ‘English’ and the other one, known as, ‘Anglicised’. This paper by applying post colonial concept of formatting to A Passage to India attempts to study the complex web of human relationships ramified through identity crisis, racial conflict and the complexities of colonial discourse in a hybrid context.