Cultural misunderstanding in A Passage to IndiaOne of the major themes of EM Forster's novel, A Passage to India, is cultural misunderstanding. Different cultural ideas and expectations regarding hospitality, social etiquette, and the role of religion in daily life are responsible for misunderstandings between English and Muslim Indians, English and Hindu Indians, and between Muslims and Hindus. . Aziz tells Fielding at the end of the novel: "There's no point in discussing Hindus with me. Living with them doesn't teach me anything more. When I think I'm boring them, I don't do it. When I think I don’t bore them, I do” (319). Forster shows how these repeated misunderstandings turn into cultural stereotypes and are often used to justify the futility of attempts to bridge cultural divides. When Aziz offers his collar stud to Fielding in an "effusive" act of friendship, Heaslop later misinterprets Aziz's missing stallion as an oversight and extends it as a general example: "...there it is 'Indian everywhere: inattention to details; the fundamental looseness that reveals race" (82). The cultural misunderstanding culminates in the experience of the Marabar Caves and one thing this episode seems to reveal is the extent to which cultural misunderstanding, particularly of Indians by the British , is deliberate, even necessary, if the British actually tried to understand the Indians, the cultural barriers might weaken and the British might begin to see their equal humanity, which of course would make the British role as ruler more difficult. conqueror. This is why Mrs. Moore is so revered by Aziz and the other Indians She is too new a visitor to have hardened, having not been there for six months Aziz and...... middle of paper. ......this, the more unpleasant and scary She cared much more now than then She could forget the crush and the smells, but the echo began in an indescribable way. to undermine its hold on life. Arriving at the moment when she was feeling tired, he managed to whisper: “Pathos, piety, courage, they exist, but they are the same, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value. If one had uttered vile remarks in this place, or cited high poetry, the comment would have been the same: “ou-boom”. If one had spoken with the tongues of angels and pleaded for all the misfortune and misunderstandings of the world past, present and future, for all the misery that men must endure, whatever their opinion and position, and even if they dodge and bluff, it would amount to the same thing, the snake would go down and come back to the ceiling" (149-50).