Passage to India!
Lo, soul, sees’t thou not God’s purpose from thy first?
The earth to be spanned, connected by network,
These races, neighbors, to marry and to be given in marriage,
The oceans to be crossed, the distance brought near,
The land to be welded together.
Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”
INTRODUCTION
The conception and perception of India as a place calls for a study from both a colonizer and colonized perspective. In what ways do we experience place? How does colonization influence what place means? What happens when multiple histories operating within a single place compete with one another, and where do people fit in such a scheme?1 Place not only refers to India’s physical landscape but encompasses its language, history, culture, and traditions. Understanding place begins with identifying the person, or group of persons who is appropriating the space, whether it be the colonizer or the colonized. Polar oppositions, such as “self” versus “other” and authenticity versus hybridity, lead to colonial discourse. Once the binaries are identified, senses of place are established and discourse is set in motion.
To name a space is to understand it and to control it. Language is the fundamental site of struggle for postcolonial discourse. This thesis will discuss and articulate examples of the colonizer’s and the colonized construction of place and the discourses that arise by the use of language in terms of binary formations. The projection
1 These questions were put forward in Dr. Cilano’s course syllabus at UNCW Spring 2003 English 563:
“History, Identity, and Place.”
2
and representation of India as a “mystical place” is a stereotypical image reinforced over time in literary works. Language and literature are together implicated in constructing the binary of a European “self” and a non-European “other.” In examining E. M.
Forster’s 1924 novel, A Passage to India, we see that British visitors, Miss Adela Quested and Mrs. Moore,