Xi'an's Og

Feeling I had missed a classic of English literature and curious to see Forster’s views on colonial India, I started this book on a plane to India and finished it before I returned. The writing style is excellent, the characters are complex and, for the most multifaceted, the setting is inspired by Forster’s visits to India and hence realistic, the story timeline is well-set, for the most (ie except for the last part), and the scenario is engaging and realistic, but, obviously, what makes the book a masterpiece is its depiction of the British Raj from many perspectives, from British enforcers of its colonialism to British critics of said colonialism, to Indians trained in Britain, to completely local Indians, with the clash of multiple cultures and religions. Victorian prudery mixes with racial prejudices, resentment against discriminations leads to early (?) germs of fighting for independence, and the characteristic reaction of such a discriminatory and racist society to a claim of sexual impropriety on a British woman from a native man. This central event of the book is brought in both very subtly and unexpectedly (for those like me who had no initial idea of the story), with an equally subtle uncertainty about what really happened that remains till the end. If anything, the book may be delivering a pessimistic message on the impossible friendship between individuals from the ruling and oppressed groups, despite it being scandalous at the time for even suggesting such a friendship was conceivable. (The attached cover of the Penguin Classic edition is amazingly close to the excursion episode!)

This entry was posted on July 16, 2025 at 12:25 am and is filed under Books, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags book review, Britain, British Raj, Chennai, Chennai Mathematical Institute, E.M. Forster, imperialism, India, Indian independence, Penguin Classics, religions, systemic racism, tea, Victorian society, Walt Whitman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.