LITR / CRCL 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Student Text-Dialogue Presentation, 2003

·        Dialogue between Passage to India & The God of Small Things

leader: Mindi Swenson
respondent: Charley Bevill
recorder: Rosalyn Mack  
Presentation Tuesday June 17, 2003

Question to class: 

What do you think the author’s political implications of these two novels, A Passage to India, The God of Small Things, are? 

Political Implications of both novels

A Passage to India and The God of Small Things

A Passage to India

Point One:  Forster is embarrassing the British in the novel.

I see that Forster uses the mistreatment of the Indians by the British as trying to embarrass the British, almost making a mockery of their whole system of governing in India.  One critic says that Forster uses these misunderstandings as a political weapon.  The British separate themselves so completely that they never fully see what they could have done had they worked closer together.  This is imperialism at it’s worst. 

Quote One:  Page 42  At the bridge party, Mrs. Turton embarrasses her new guests, she states, “You’re superior to them, anyway.  Don’t forget that.  You’re superior to everyone in India except one or two of the Rani’s, and their on an equality.”

“Please tell these ladies that I wish we could speak their language, but we have only just come to their country.”

“Perhaps we speak yours a little,” one of the ladies said.

 “Why fancy, she understands!”, said Mrs. Turton.

Quote Two:  Page #47 Miss Quested states, “This party today makes me so angry and miserable.  I think my countrymen out here must be mad.  Fancy inviting guests and not treating them properly.

Point Two:  Aziz is used as a political pawn throughout the novel for Forster.

            I found an article by Frances B. Singh entitled “A Passage to India, The National Movement, and Independence”.  Within this article he describes The Young Party Movement in India.  The Young Party included mostly western trained professionals.  Aziz in the novel has many of these affinities associated with The Young Party Movement.  He is a western trained professional, and a poet.  Throughout the novel I believe he is used as a political instrument.

            Quote One:  Page 9, Aziz states, “Why be either friends with the fellows or not friends?  Let us shut them out and be jolly.”

            Quote Two:  Page 361, “Down with the English anyhow.  That’s certain.  Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say.  We may hate one another, but we hate you most.  If I don’t make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it’s fifty-five hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea….”

The God of Small Things

I only have one point which I want to bring out as I was confused to the matter of the politics in the novel; however, I did find the following,

Point One:  During my research I found that there are some communist leaders that believe the Marxist leaders in the novel were based on real people.  Roy attempts to display them in the book in a bad light according to some critics.  For EMS Namboodiripad, a veteran communist Party of India-Marxist leader has pointed out that there is an “unrealistic presentation” of the communist movement in Kerala by the author was indicative of her antipathy to the movement. 

The character Comrade Pillai  based on Namboodiripad said that there was no one in his party who remotely resembled that character—and if there were one, he would be now have found himself thrown out. 

Quote One:  Page 255 “On another wall was a framed photograph of Comrade Pillai garlanding Comrade E.M.S. Namboodiripad.  There was a microphone on a stand, shining in the foreground with a sign that said Ajantha.”

Quote Two:  Page 266 First big paragraph.

Class Discussion:

White:  Certainly you see the politics of two different stages.  The unifying opposition is removed and you’re left with “we hate each other.”

Charley:  One of the metaphors is on page 320.  What I saw there was the spider was like India and the garbage was the caste system.  The garlic skin represented colonialism and the spider reflected both and eventually found a new wardrobe – India is finding a new way of Shaping Itself.

White:  A lot of poco states went communist.  The colonial states were capitalist so when the pocos looked for natural enemies of capitalism they went for communism.  It was a way of creating their own identity.  A number of African states went communist as well.

Kayla:  Where does Chacko’s factory fit in?

Kim:  A kind of residual capitalism.  You’ve got the factory and ornamental garden as the remaining touch of colonialism. 

White:  Communism tries to cope with the caste system through the brotherhood aspect of communism.

            Growth and modernization go hand in hand.  Modernizing the factory ruins the business.  Chacko’s trying to grow the business brings the factory to bankruptcy.  Connection to Ghandi - Ghandi was very antimodernist.  He favored a return to traditional India; instead of becoming an industrial society, they would become a “village society”.

            Small is Beautiful – book advocating restraint of modern growth.

Mammachi running the factory as a cottage industry assumes a parallel state with Ghandi.

India’s a kind of democracy with capitalism grafted on top.  Sure the 1970’s India has loosened its control and is going global very quickly.

India’s semi-communist and that affects everything from commerce to education. 

Mindi:  Forster makes it very clear that the English need to leave.  They’ve been there so long yet remain separate.  They have never advanced together.

White:  Very prophetic because the next would war does precipitate their exit from India. You’ve got Aziz’s statement about how England had already been involved in one war and the next will be the end for them.