LITR / CRCL 5734:
Colonial & Postcolonial Literature
Student Text-Dialogue Presentation 2005
Anuruddha Ellakkala
Dialogue between Passage to India and Train to Pakistan
“E. M. Forster's 1924 novel, “A Passage to India,” mirrors the ending power of the British authority in India. First, the British became exhausted because of W W II. Second, their own tactical separations of Indian people into religious groups and these separations turn back to the British in a harmful way. In addition, the new Indian national political movement, and the British education system that they have established in India, turned India into an unfriendly ground for the British in the19th century. In the mean time, Indians protested for their independence. Forster shows how this national political movement alienates the British from India. Meantime, he shows “the national bourgeoisie steps into the shoes of the former European settlement: doctors, barristers, traders, commercial travelers, general agents, and transport agents” (Fanon 1580). For example, Hamidullah, Aziz, Panna Lal, Godbole, Amritrao, Das and Mahmoud Ali present these modern and hybrid Indian bourgeoisie’s voice, in A Passage to India.
Selected quotation
from webpage:
“Before British rule, Hindus and Muslims were able to live together peacefully (Pande 50). Yet the British separated the once peaceful religions by favoring the seemingly more peaceful Hindus and Sikhs over the Muslims and enforcing their belief systems upon each religion. The problems that began in the novels A Passage to India and A Train to Pakistan have still not been solved in present times because of the partition of India into Pakistan and India.” (School projects on A Passage to India)
“By the end of the 19th century several nationalistic movements had started in India. Indian nationalism had grown largely since British policies of education and the advances made by the British in India in the fields of transportation and communication. However, their complete insensitivity to and distance from the peoples of India and their customs created such disillusionment with them in their subjects that the end of British rule became necessary and inevitable” (Reasons for Partition)
“What do the Caves mean or suggest within the narrative? Furthermore Forster, from the self-confessed perspective of the enlightened Western visitor, suggests that the Caves themselves are symbolic for the "alien" "otherness" of India itself: complex, ungovernable, bewildering, enigmatic…” (School projects on A Passage to India)
Quotations from A Passage to India:
In chapter 9
Hamidullah: “‘Excuse the question; but if this is the case how is England justified in holding India?’”
Fielding: “‘There they were! Politics again. It’s a question I can’t get my mind on to,’ ‘I’m out here personally because I need a job. I cannot tell you why England is here or whether she ought to be here. It’s beyond me.’”
Hamidullah: “‘Well-qualified Indians also need jobs in the educational.’”
Fielding: “‘I guess they do; I got in first,’ said Fielding, smiling.’”
Hamidullah: “‘Then excuse me again – is it fair an Englishman should occupy one when Indians are available? Of course I mean nothing personally.” (Forster 97)
Chapter 38
“Then he shouted: ‘India shall be a nation! No foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be one! (Forster 293).
“‘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….’” (Forster 293)
Train to
Pakistan
Khushwant Singh’s 1956 classic novel, “Train to Pakistan,” is the voice of conventional and uneducated Sikhs and Muslims who lived together in harmony for hundreds of years in Mano Majra, an isolated village. In contrast to the people of Chandrapore in “A Passage to India,” the people of Mano Majra hated Indian independence. It ruined their domestic life and the peace of Sikhs and Muslims in this rural village and dragged them to the horror of civil war. Apparently, they like British rulers rather than the Indian. The train in the novel symbolized their peaceful era under British rule. Similarly, after Indian independence in 1947, the same train symbolized their chaotic situation under their new Indian and Pakistani governments.
Selected Reading form Train to Pakistan:
“By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of monsoon India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.” (Singh 2)
“All this has made Mano Majra very conscious of trains. Before daybreak, the mail train rushes through on its way to Lahore, and as it approaches the bridge, the driver invariably blows two long blasts of the whistle. In an instant, all Mano Majra comes awake. Crows begin to caw in the keekar trees. Bats fly back in long silent relays and begin to quarrel for their perches in the peepul. The mullah at the mosque knows that it is time for the Morning Prayer. (Singh 4)
“Sometimes, sir, one cannot restrain oneself. What do the Gandhi-caps in Delhi know about the Punjab? What is happening on the other side in Pakistan does not matter to them. They haven’t had their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters raped and murdered in the streets.” (Singh 21)
The sub inspector: “I am sure no one in Mano Majra even knows that the British have left and the country is divided into Pakistan and Hindustan. Some of them know about Gandhi but I doubt if anyone has ever heard of Jinnah.” (Singh 22)
Meet Singh says to Iqbal Singh: “Everyone is welcome to his religion. Here next door is a Muslim Mosque. When I pray to my Guru, Uncle Imam Baksh calls to Allah” (Singh 36)
Muslim asks Iqbal: “‘what is happening in the world? What is all this about Pakistan and Hindustan?”” (Singh 47)
Lambarder says, “‘we liked English officers. They were better than the Indian.’” (Singh 48)
The Muslim said. “Freedom is for the educated people who fought or it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis.” (Singh 48)
Lambardar answered, “‘this is your village as much as ours.’” (Singh 125)
“Sikh and Muslim villagers fell into each other’s arms and wept like children.” (Singh 127)
“What were the people in Delhi doing? Making fine speeches in the assembly! Loud-speakers magnifying their egos; lovely-looking foreign women in the visitors’ galleries in breathless admiration. “He is a great man, this Mr. Nehru of yours. I do think he is the greatest man in the world today. And how handsome! Wasn’t that a wonderful thing to say? ‘Long ago we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure but very substantially.’” Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, you made your tryst. So did many others.” (Singh 176)
Selected quotation
from webpage:
“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity” (Jawaharlal Nehru 1947).
“The Congress leaders felt
by June, 1947 that only an immediate transfer of power could forestall the
spread of Direct Action and communal disturbances. Sardar Patel rightly said,
"A united India even if it was smaller in size was better than a
disorganised and troubled and weak bigger India." (Modern India history)
Question: Do you think the Indian people in both novels have same voice against their colonizer? Do you agree that Train to Pakistan represents the voice of conventional and uneducated Sikhs and Muslims more than Passage to India? Why?
Question: In our
earlier textual dialogue we saw Achebe's Things
Fall Apart as a response to Conrad's Heart
of Darkness. If Forster represents the voice of
Even if Train to Pakistan may not directly respond to Passage to India, how does the sense develop that it responds in some way?
Question:
Background: "For example, Hamidullah, Aziz, Panna Lal, Godbole, Amritrao, Das and Mahmoud Ali present these modern and hybrid Indian bourgeoisie’s voice, in A Passage to India."
Who are the "modern and hybrid" characters in Train to Pakistan? What are the marks of their modernity and hybridity?
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