Friendship vs. Colonialism: Investigating how E.M. Forster uses Empathy in A Passage to India

Author: William Predmore

Field of Study: Arts and Humanities

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 55

Timeslot: Morning

Abstract: Upon its publication in 1924, E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India was recognized for its insightful and sympathetic portrayal of Anglo-Indian relations. More recently, the novel’s reception has been shaped by postcolonial readings, highlighting its engagement with colonialism, racial tensions, and cultural disparities. The friendship the novel centers around– and ultimately its failure, induced by a rape accusation– serves as a polarizing event for critical interpretations. Is the failure of sympathy in the novel significant in any anticolonial sense, as Zakia Pathak’s criticism argues? Or does it exist as an apolitical distraction as Nirad Chaudhuri implies? Investigating these critiques, this paper bases its argument on Forster’s beliefs about politics and friendship, as stated in his essay “What I Believe”. This paper will posit that the inability of the main characters to forge meaningful friendships across a colonial divide serves as a protest, in it of itself, against the machine of colonialism.