The 'Temple' of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India

Abstract

This paper aims at a re-evaluation of the 'Temple', the final part of E. M. Forster's novel A Passage to India. Unlike its first two parts – 'Mosque' and 'Caves' – it is still, more often than not, perceived as somewhat lacking, a failure in general literary terms and, more specifically, even superfluous in terms of the novel's composition. To read the novel in this way is to misunderstand it, to favour the external, the event, over the internal, the innermost experience. This paper thus contributes to redirecting the reading of the novel from the political, sociological, postcolonial – as is usually the case – towards the contemplative, even mystical. It is argued that only such an approach does justice to the full scope of the novel, which is a symphonic movement from a world of fragmented visions and agonizing multiplicity towards a vision of ultimate unity. Due to spatial limitations, only the Hindu framework of the 'Temple' is here taken into consideration, with the festival of Gokul Ashtami as its focal point.