A cultural apocalypse: Apocalyptic impacts of imperialism in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India

Abstract

First emerged as a religious term to designate the end of the world, the idea of apocalypse has evolved into manifold connotations that is associated with any cataclysmic event(s) and case(s) that end(s) up with the complete destruction of the present state with a new beginning. Although it is more often affiliated with the destruction(s) caused by climate crisis and advancements in science and technology, the destruction of a culture through cultural clash(es) between two opposing cultures, namely the East and West, and the results out of these that dehumanise the representatives of the weaker side/East can also be included in the analysis of apocalypse in a broader sense in the context of culture. It is within this focus of interest that E. M. Forster’s masterpiece A Passage to India (1924) has been evaluated as an example for the cultural apocalypse throughout the research, as a result of which the Indians - even their country - is plunged into total apocalypse and become subservient and considered nothing rather than a swine. Controlled under a civil station and isolated from the luxury and comfort the British are free to relish, Indians are drawn as character who are bereft of any freedom and respect from the British in their own land. Thus, the economic and political causes behind the ideology of imperialism that is also intertwined with capitalism in India have been considered as major consequences of the cultural clash that arise as a cultural apocalypse in the lives of native Indians.