INTRODUCTION TO E. M. FORSTER
Born on New Year’s Day 1879 in London to an architect, Edward Morgan Forster was a British
Novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He attended Tonbridge School and later King’s
College, Cambridge. It was in the college that for the first time he was free to follow his own
intellectual inclinations; and he gained a sense of the uniqueness of the individual, of the
healthiness of moderate skepticism, and of the importance of Mediterranean civilization as a
counterbalance to the more straitlaced attitudes of northern European countries. After graduation
he started writing short stories. Since he started writing, his novels included a strong strain of social
comment, based on acute observation of middle-class life. Forster believed that if men and women
were to achieve a satisfactory life, they needed to keep contact with the earth and to cultivate their
imaginations. Forster was intellectually a Victorian. Many of his novels examine class difference
and hypocrisy.
Forster travelled twice to India in 1912 and 1921; the trips helped him begin and complete
A Passage to India (1924), which has since been read as an important early document of postcolonialism. In 1921 he went to India, to work as a secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas State
Senior. He had begun his work on A Passage to India before this time, but on reading his notes in
India, he was discouraged and put them aside. After returning to London from India, he completed
the novel. The book was published in 1924. This was his last novel. It is considered to be his
magnum opus, his masterpiece. It brought him his greatest success. He was nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 16 different years. It won him the Femina Vie Heureuse and the James
Tait Black Memorial prizes in 1925. In 1960 it was adapted for the stage and afterwards ran for
110 performances. Although Forster was "delighted" with the adaptation, most of the American
critics felt the play did not measure up to the novel. In the 1930s and 1940s Forster remained a notable broadcaster on BBC Radio and a public
figure, he advocated individual liberty by writing articles, sitting on committees and signing letters.
Forster was homosexual and a lifelong bachelor. He had a long-term relationship with Bob
Buckingham (1904–1975), a married policeman. Forster was not friends with many, his circle
included a limited number of people.
Early in his writing career, Forster attempted a historical novel but was not satisfied with
the result and never published it. For some time, he even turned to literary journalism. Forster's
work is frequently regarded as containing both modernist and Victorian elements. He published
five of his novels in his life including, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey
(1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924). The
last one earned him the most fame. In addition to essays, short stories, and novels, Forster wrote a
biography of his great-aunt, Marianne Thornton (1956); a documentary account of his Indian
experiences, The Hill of Devi (1953); and Alexandria: A History and a Guide (1922). At the age
of 91 Forster died on 7 June 1970. Maurice, a novel with a homosexual theme, was published
posthumously in 1971 but written many years earlier.
From 20th century writers, among Joseph Conrad, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf,
and D. H. Lawrence, Forster is also included in British modernists. Forster portrayed with irony
the insensitivity, self-repression, and philistinism of the English middle classes. He showed how
little the rootless and self-important world of contemporary commerce cared for the more rooted
world of culture, although he acknowledged that commerce was a necessary evil. “Forster made
a distinctive contribution to the modernist transformation of fiction.” (Davies, 1990).
 

INTRODUCTION TO “A PASSAGE TO INDIA”
The novel, “A Passage to India” takes as its subject the relationship between East and West, seen
through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj. Forster connects personal relationships
with the politics of colonialism through the story of the Englishwoman Adela Quested, the Indian
Dr. Aziz, and the question of what did or did not happen between them in the Marabar Caves.
Forster makes special mention of the author Ahmed Ali and his Twilight in Delhi in his Preface to
its Everyman's Library Edition. A Passage to India was adapted as a play in 1960, directed by
Frank Hauser, and as a film in 1984, directed by David Lean.
Published in 1924 when the cracks in the British Empire were just emerging, the novel
centers on the trial of an Indian doctor accused of raping an Englishwoman. The work was the last
of Forster's novels, and a thematic departure for him as well. Set in India in the early 20th century
when it was still a British colony, the novel challenges the claim that British had a right to colonize
India. The novel examines racism and colonialism as well. It also portrays the relationship between
the British and the Indians in India and the tensions that arise when a visiting Englishwoman,
Adela Quested, accuses a well-respected Indian man, Dr. Aziz, of having attacked her during an
outing. Aziz has many defenders, including the compassionate Cecil Fielding, the principal of the
local college. During the trial Adela hesitates on the witness stand and then withdraws the charges
saying that it was just a confusion. Aziz and Fielding go their separate ways, but two years later
they have a tentative reunion. As they ride through the jungles, an outcrop of rocks forces them to
separate paths, symbolizing the racial politics that caused a breach in their friendship.

Major Perspectives of the novel:

Perspectives of the Novel
i. Colonialism
ii. Imperialism
iii. Power
iv. Justice and Judgement
v. Race
vi. Gender
vii. Friendship
viii. Religion
ix. Contrasting Regions
x. Separation
xi. Culture
xii. Division and Unity