Edward Morgan Forster lived most of his life in England, but traveled extensively during the 1910s and 20s, mainly in Egypt and India. He is probably best known today for the one novel he wrote about India, A Passage to India, though at the time this novel was considered somewhat of a departure from his earlier, widely successful novels based in England itself, including A Room With a View, Howards End, and Where Angels Fear to Tread.

A Passage to India was published in 1924 to immediate acclaim; it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction the year of its publication, and it has remained widely taught in classrooms throughout the Anglophone world ever since. A 1984 film adaptation by David Lean was also a critical success, and earned two Academy Awards. The novel's title comes from the "Passage to India" section of Whitman's Leaves of Grass (which can be accessed at the Walt Whitman Archive here). Whitman's poem concerns a spiritual journey and ambitious themes related to technology and progress; for Whitman, the British presence in India represents a technologically-driven marvel of modernity. Despite its title, Forster's novel is much more concerned with demystifying grand mythologies about the relationship of "East" and "West." If Rudyard Kipling once said that "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet," in Forster's conception of India East and West do in fact meet, become friends over dinner, and then argue about who pays the check. 

Indian readers have certainly been highly conscious of A Passage to India – some love it, while others have problems with the way Forster represents Indian culture and society. What isn’t debated is how seriously Forster took the problem of race and racism in India under the British colonial government (or the “British Raj” as it is sometimes described). Unlike Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad, for whom Africa is often just a background for European characters, Forster focuses directly on the problem of relations between Indians and the British in India. 

As a participant in the Cambridge-originated Bloomsbury movement, Forster was close to many of the movers and shakers in the British modernist literary scene, though his novels have been considered somewhat traditional in comparison to those of Woolf or Joyce. It might also be important to note that Forster was gay – though he was never ‘out’ during his lifetime. Some scholars have in recent years, looked for homosexual themes in Forster’s works, including A Passage to India. These are debatable, but even if we decide not to focus on that aspect of his biography, it does seem clear that Forster’s strong emotional attachment to Egyptian and Indian men he knew probably made a difference in how well he portrayed those societies in his fiction. 

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A Passage to India was a bestseller and made a major impact when it was first published in 1924. It has been especially influential in shaping the western image of colonial India, and for its sensitive and realistic portrayal of Indian characters. He wasn’t the first; many earlier British novelists had introduced Indian characters in their works, including especially Rudyard Kipling (whose novel Kim is considered a masterpiece), Arthur Conan Doyle (author of the “Sherlock Holmes” mysteries), Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone), and Flora Annie Steel (a highly successful novelist largely forgotten today). But usually the Indians came in as minor figures, shifty villains, or stereotypes of the “Guru.” (Some Indian critics of A Passage to India have claimed that, though Forster may be better than some of his peers, there are still stereotypes in this novel as well – something for the reader to judge). 

Forster's A Passage to India is based on Forster’s two trips to India, one of which occurred in 1912, and the second of which occurred in 1921-1922. The second trip was longer and more meaningful, and probably gave Forster much of the material that makes up A Passage to India. He had a number of Indian friends, including one he had somewhat of a romantic interest in. But through them he gained a good sense of what young Indians were interested in, and how they felt about the British at the time.  

The fictional town in the novel, Chandrapore, is based on a British-built suburb of Patna called Bankipur; the Marabar Caves in the text closely resemble the Barabar Caves north of Gaya (about four hours from Patna).