Touching Distance

Tapas or goulash? We live in times when the multi-cultural society is believed a simmering pot on the stove, aromatic and tasty, a homely dish. At other times, when the difference of ritual and belief are so wide as to threaten cultural comfort, each item of food is laid out separately on different plates. These cultures, too incompatible to allow for an easy mixing, a peaceful coexistence, are wisely kept apart. E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. When enemies think themselves friends.

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How get past the idea of the alien? Muslims and Hindus have lived side by side for hundreds of years, yet, when they meet it is a dialogue in a foreign language that neither comprehend. What hope for the British, whose hands on India’s clock have moved but a few minutes? Yet this belief - that it only takes time to acquire understanding - fails against the fact that time tends to increase misunderstandings not lessen them; the more signs we read the greater our ignorance when interpreted through our own history. Dr Aziz was born in this country but knows almost nothing about it; he prefers to retreat to the epic imagination when the Mughals ruled the sub-continent. Hindus are his friends, yet he has no interest in their religion, avoids their cultural practices, and ignores or wilfully misinterprets their beliefs. The dream is of an India where everyone will get along in an impossible unity. Benevolent Mother India herself to control her squabbling children. Yet to Aziz his religion, and all the mythology that has crystallised around it, that glorious Mughal rule, is an essential part of him. Why not the same for the other side? Mother India: which faith will she profess?1 The question is never asked. Better to lose one’s self in fantasies.

It takes about a year for the English to move from a mild tolerance - that first liberalism with its weak curiosity - to the arrogant bigotry of the Anglo-Indian; a sign they are now full members of the ruling class. The reasons are various. Never forget that the vast majority are conventional types. Then there’s education: these characters have been trained to rule a subject people. The herd pressure of the crowd - pressed tight between the walls of its officialdom - vastly increases in small communities, and is there anything smaller than a tiny ethnic elite? Conformity is inevitable. Most are not of the best quality, so are unlikely to be intellectually voracious. This refusal to learn the culture results in these Brits reading the signs wrong: contact with the local population is mediated through ignorance, which can so easily turn into prejudice. Thus the paradox that the more these officials learn the greater is their benightedness, for all is distorted by their own values and ideas. Nor forget the self-righteousness of rule, the superiority that comes with conquest. Leaders and conquerers naturally think themselves better than their victims and subjects. The British are here - by definition - to do good, to civilise the savage, to show a crumbling civilisation how to rebuild itself on new social and political foundations. Such attitudes do not make for intelligent engagement. These Englishman not the kind to relax themselves into an alien culture, to absorb its ways, its means of thought. Every act not that of an English gentleman confirms the superiority of their own culture, their rightness to rule. The longer they stay the more British they become, the distance between themselves and the native growing wider and wider. Few back home are this fanatical.…

…the amateur orchestra played the National Anthem. Conversation and billiards stopped, faces stiffened. It was the Anthem of the Army of Occupation. It reminded every member of the Club that he or she was British and in exile. It produced a little sentiment and a useful accession of will-power. The meagre tune, the curt series of demands on Jehovah, fused into a prayer unknown in England, and though they perceived neither Royalty nor Deity they did perceive something, they were strengthened to resist another day. 

The women are the worst. This is never explained. We assume some underlying sexual tension. Though there is also the distance: British wives and daughters practice their own kind of purdah, and so rarely meet the natives (servants are invisible) who thus become a strange and threatening mass. Not helped that the only knowledge they receive is through their husbands. Like learning a foreign language from someone who can hardly speak it themselves.

Such frictions are manageable for as long as the races and the religions are not intimate. Dr Aziz can treat the Rajah in the Rajah’s palace because the inner rooms are as secluded as an harem. He and Godbole can be friends because divisive topics are never discussed. But such friends are keeping their distance. Too close they clash too heavily. Then for the sensitive types, to touch the peculiarities, to feel the otherness of others, is to lose a sense of one’s self, those boundaries demarcating us from the world disappearing. Without the usual signs, our own border guards, we lose control of what we think; our instinct for limit and order goes, and the meanings that structure our life disintegrate. In the Marabar caves Mrs Moore hears only an echo which turns every sound into ‘boum, boum’. In losing our bearings, one’s identity dissolves, and terrors and hallucinations consume us. Mrs Moore feels worthless; all at once the pattern of her life is torn asunder as the Christian illusion evaporates. Miss Quested, a weaker character, and Dr Aziz, too open, too trusting, are also to see their lives collapse in these caves. The terror of the unknown overwhelms when too close to it. One has to be strong and wise to achieve intimacy with the alien.

Closeness is not impossible. Fielding and Aziz are friends. Yet the relationship is more fragile than it appears, and is layered with many misunderstandings.

‘You can talk to Miss Quested about the Peacock Throne if you like - she’s artistic, they say.’

‘Is she a Post-Impressionist.’

‘’Post-Impressionism, indeed! Come along to tea. This world is getting too much for me altogether.’

Aziz was offended. The remark suggested that he, an obscure Indian, had no right to have heard of Post-Impressionism - a privilege reserved for the Ruling Race, that. He said stiffly, ‘I do not consider Mrs Moore my friend, I only met her accidentally in my mosque,’ and was adding, ‘A single meeting is too short to make a friend,’ but before he could finish the sentence the stiffness vanished from it, because he felt Fielding’s fundamental goodwill. His own went out to it, and grappled beneath the shifting tides of emotion which can alone bear the voyager to an anchorage but may also carry him across it onto the rocks. He was safe really - as safe as the shore-dweller who can only understand stability and supposes that every ship must be wrecked, and he had sensations the shore-dweller cannot know. Indeed, he was sensitive rather than responsive. In every remark he found a meaning, but not always the true meaning, and his life, though vivid, was largely a dream. Fielding, for instance, had not meant that Indians are obscure, but that Post-Impressionism is; a gulf divided his remark from Mrs Turton’s ‘Why, they speak English,’ but to Aziz the two sounded alike. Fielding saw that something had gone wrong, and equally that it had come right, but he didn't fidget, being an optimist where personal relations were concerned, and their talk rattled on as before.

Because both have goodwill, can feel the essential honesty and goodness of the other, their friendship survives such misinterpretations. Nevertheless, such misreadings are always there, grit under the sole of a sandal. If life goes wrong the feelings - so strong, so unstable - are apt to concentrate just on those things that are not understood, now given a negative meaning. To be in somebody’s company, to see and feel their kindliness, it is easy to believe them friendly. When absent we’re apt to imagine them through our ideas, these coloured and clipped by the commonplaces of one's culture. Mrs Moore is turned into a Hindu saint, because the populace believe she could have saved Dr Aziz. The actuality of an old and disgruntled woman has been replaced by a fantasy. Our hero comes to dislike Fielding because his friend remained independent after the trial; this dislike fuelled by the mistaken belief that the Englishman has married his enemy Miss Quested. Around this dislike a fable is spun about how Fielding persuaded Aziz not to press for damages so that he himself could acquire the woman’s fortune. Nonsense. But to be expected when there’s so little understanding between them. Feeling itself is not enough to engender trust. We must have some conception of how others think. Then group pressure crowds out civility: Aziz’s Hindu friends are keen to blacken the English reputation. With so little contact and with the differences in belief and thought enormous - and exacerbated by the trial - it is inevitable Aziz loses faith in his friend.

‘What is the matter, pray?’

‘Your hands are unkind.’

He started and glanced down at them. The extraordinary youth was right, and he put them behind his back before replying with outward anger: ‘what the devil have my hands to do with you? this is a most strange remark. I am a qualified doctor, who will not hurt you.’

‘I don’t mind pain, there is no pain.’

‘No pain!’

‘Not really.’

‘Excellent news,’ sneered Aziz.

‘But there is cruelty.’

Our man has become mean. Intelligence and justice are thrown out of the house when one’s life is at stake: my side or no side: Aziz needs his friend to be entirely in his camp. It is not to be. When the verdict is given, and the crowds leave the court, Fielding bumps into Miss Quested, and feeling protective he takes her home, where - against his will - he listens to her story, and sympathises with her plight. A shared culture helps, but it his innate decency, and that maverick detachment, that is the reason for such magnanimity. Aziz wants it both ways: Fielding to be a true Englishman and an intimate; but as he saw from the first this man is neither; and being a little eccentric he is not quite respectable; this a factor in Aziz’s disenchantment, for Aziz is a conventional man, with all the limitations this implies. Nice. Liberal. But also conformist and conservative. To be friends with Miss Quested and Mrs Moore brought out his generous side, but, lacking the detachment of this Englishman, he will always be a prisoner to his feelings and  prejudices. The great irony of the book is that of all the characters Dr Aziz and Miss Quested are closest in character. It is why disaster strikes. Two amateur swimmers swim too far out into the bay.

What a handsome little Oriental he was, and no doubt his wife and children were beautiful too, for people usually get what they already possess. She did not admire him with any personal warmth, for there was nothing of the vagrant in her blood, but she guessed he might attract women of his own race and rank, and she regretted that neither she nor Ronny had physical charm. It does make a difference in a relationship - beauty, thick hair, a fine skin. Probably this man had several wives - Mohammedans always insist on their full four, according to Mrs Turton. And, having no one to speak to on that eternal rock, she gave rein to the subject of marriage and said in her honest, decent, inquisitive way: ‘Have you one wife or more than one?’

The question shocked the young man very much. It challenged a new conviction of his community, and new convictions are more sensitive than old. If she had said, ‘Do you worship one god or several?’ he would not have objected. But to ask an educated Indian Moslem how many wives he has - appalling, hideous! He was in trouble how to conceal his  confusion. ‘One, one in my own particular case,’ he sputtered, and let go of her hand. Quite a number of caves were at the top of the track, and thinking ‘Damn the English even at their best’ he plunged into one of them to recover his balance. She followed at her leisure, quite unconscious that she had said the wrong thing, and not seeing him she also went into a cave, thinking with half her mind ‘Sightseeing bores me’ and wondering with the other half about marriage.

Thinking about love, then talking about marriage as she enters a dark cave - foolish foolish woman. Despite the author’s insistence on Miss Quested’s respectability we do not believe that sex is not present here. It has snaked its way into her subconscious and will soon bite into her thoughts. A man and woman have got too close and confused themselves. First Aziz panics and runs into the cave; later Miss Quested loses control, and her overwrought imagination, fuelled by guilt and who knows what else - did she want the good doctor’s sensitive hands on her body? - hallucinates an assault. She is unlucky. If running down the hill she had met Mrs Moore all would have been cleared up. Instead she meets Miss Derek, who immediately lets her prejudices rampage: of course Miss Quested has been attacked by a native. Once in the embrace of the Anglo-Indians this becomes a certainty. Only when confronted with the question in the courtroom can she see with clarity: the attack was a figment of my mind. The heroine of the novel. The only person to do a volte-face and outface her own side. Of course she is ostracised. 

When they were driving out to Dilkusha, hours late, he said to Amritrao, who accompanied them: ‘Mr Amritrao, have you considered what sum Miss Quested ought to pay as compensation?’

‘Twenty thousand rupees.’

No more was said, but the remark horrified Fielding. He couldn't bear to think of the queer honest girl losing her money and possibly her young man too.

Dr Aziz is lovely, but he is no hero. He too is a chauvinist with little sympathy for the other side. Perfectly natural during a conflict when all tolerance evaporates in the heat of argument and attack, and everybody must choose sides, even Fielding. However, the Englishman can never be wholly Indian in this dispute. This distance rankles, and will grow wider. Especially on the good doctor’s side, who has grown to hate the English, whose prejudice and ugliness the trial has publicly displayed. They have treated him abominably and he is right to be angry. However, a real hero would be able to transcend even this experience. Aziz is just an ordinary man. He has the ordinary man’s decencies. Like Miss Quested when put to the question he will tell the truth. Under Fielding’s influence he writes a sympathetic letter to his old foe.

Fielding is to lose a little of his lustre. A touch of eccentricity, a bit of an outsider, yet he remains the official Englishman for Aziz. After his marriage some of that independence withers away, and when later they meet again his character has become more respectable. Paradoxically this brings them closer.

All the way back to Mau they wrangled about politics. Each had hardened since Chandrapore, and a good knock-about proved enjoyable. They trusted each other, although they were going to part, perhaps because they were going to part. Fielding had ‘no further use for politeness,’ he said, meaning that the British Empire really can’t be abolished because it’s rude. Aziz retorted, ‘Very well, and we have no use for you,’ and glared at him with abstract hate.

‘Abstract hate’. This is how people can live side by side. Our friends have found the common meeting point that goes deeper than fellow feeling. At last to express their differences; so produce understanding and trust. No need now for careful words and the dissimulation of good intentions. To know another’s way of thinking and to accept it. At last  to acknowledge one’s own prejudices and accept the others on equal terms…it is the closest they have been. But too close to live side by side. They are never to meet again. If they did their differences would create antagonism, for some thoughts cannot be said every day. Like this chance meeting on the polo ground, such closeness must be fleeting. 

The Englishman has become part of India. India. Three neighbours in a street who never cross the threshold of each other’s homes.

Review: A Passage to India

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1. This was the attraction of secular nationalism: the worship of the nation to transcend all the conflicts of ethnicity, race and faith.