The Presence of Krishna in E

A spirit is ever present throughout A Passage to India, E.M. Forster’s novel about the clash of Eastern and Western cultures in 1920’s India. Characters in the novel call out to the spirit in the hope that it, like Krishna, one of the many incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, will restore order and peace to the chaotic mix of cultures that is India under the British Raj. Because Krishna could take many forms and exist in many places at once, he was capable of bringing peace to many people in many places, simultaneously. The spirit present in Forster’s novel, however, is not so powerful.

The omnipresent spirit in A Passage to India seems to arrive in India with Mrs. Moore, an elderly British woman traveling with her son’s potential bride, Adela Quested. When Mrs. Moore meets an Indian doctor named Aziz in a mosque in Chandrapore, they feel an undeniable affection for each other. Aziz tells her, “You are an Oriental” (Forster 21). He recognizes that her spirit transcends cultural boundaries, and throughout the rest of the novel, he feels a deep connection with her. Aziz loves Mrs. Moore, not because she does him any great favors, but because he recognizes a powerful force within her that is untouched by the influence of her British heritage.

As Mrs. Moore and Adela explore India, they express a desire to see the true India. They want to see more than the club where the British meet to be amongst each other and away from native Indians. The two women are very out of place among the Anglo-Indian socialites, and, while reading the novel, I had hoped that they might bring change to Chandrapore and that Mrs. Moore might actually be the restorer of social harmony for India. I hoped she would be able to somehow bridge the different cultures of India. However, Forster shows that understanding and bridging India is extraordinarily difficult and, in some milieus, impossible. Mrs. Moore does, in some way, unite people, and Forster illustrates her power by alluding to the story of Krishna. Although Mrs. Moore’s influence is inferior to Krishna’s, her spirit, like the god’s, presides eternally over the troubled region, hoping to restore peace. After Mrs. Moore leaves India, Forster describes how a spirit traveled away from India but turned around near Suez, where “the arrangements of Asia weaken and those of Europe begin to be felt,” and returned to the East (285). The spirit of Mrs. Moore, truly “Oriental” in nature, will not leave the East. Mrs. Moore’s spirit has not completed its mission on Earth, so it must be reborn and manifest itself in someone else.

Forster first mentions Krishna when Mrs. Moore and Adela meet for tea with Aziz, Cyril Fielding, an English headmaster, and Professor Godbole, a Hindu. As the ladies are leaving, Godbole sings a song in which he addresses Lord Krishna from the point of view of a milkmaiden. In researching the Krishna legend, I learned that Krishna was raised among the gopas (milkmen) and the gopis (milkmaidens) in Vrindavan, a rural town in Northern India that is now a major Hindu pilgrimage site.

A bronze statue of Krishna playing his flute.

The young gopis, including Radha, Krishna’s future wife, who loved him most of all, became entranced by the divine flute, and would flock to the woods to dance with Krishna in what is called the rasa dance. Krishna made love to all the gopis simultaneously, existing in many places at once. The dance in the woods was not sensual, though. The gopis desired Krishna because they desired the love of God. The gopis represent the countless individuals in the human world who call to the spirit of Krishna to love them and restore peace in their lives.

In Godbole’s song, the milkmaidens begin to grow greedy and desire Krishna for themselves. When Krishna doesn’t come, they say, “do not come to me only. Multiply yourself into a hundred Krishnas, and let one go to each of my hundred companions, but one, O Lord of the Universe, come to me” (85). In the legend, whenever the milkmaidens become greedy, Krishna would vanish for a moment until the milkmaidens came to their senses. Similarly, the Krishna in Godbole’s song never comes to the gopis. Godbole explains that the milkmaidens cry, “Come, come, come” to their beloved god but are never answered. In the novel, the harmony embodied by the spirit of Krishna never arrives to unite India. Even close friends Aziz and Fielding cannot ignore the differences between the British and Indian cultures. At the end of the novel, the men end their friendship simply because of the cultural divide.

After Aziz, Adela, and Mrs. Moore go on an outing to the mysterious Marabar caves, the disparities between the British and Indian cultures cause utter chaos. At the caves, Adela becomes overwhelmed by her unhappy future with Mrs. Moore’s son Ronny and by the confusion she has encountered in India. She has some sort of hallucination and comes to believe, falsely, that Aziz had assaulted her in one of the caves. Disgusted by the Adela’s charging Aziz with assault, Mrs. Moore quietly leaves for England.

When, at the ensuing trial, the Indian lawyers say that they should have been able to call Mrs. Moore as a witness, the Indians in and surrounding the courtroom begin to chant her name. Their chant of “Mrs. Moore!” evolves into “Esmiss Esmoor,” the name of a Hindu goddess. Then, the chanting ceases “as if the prayer had been heard” (251). As Adela sits on the witness stand, perhaps the spirit returns just long enough for Adela to retract her testimony against Aziz. In fact, as Adela and Fielding ride away from the courthouse, Indians in the street adorn the pair with garlands, and some refer to Adela as Mrs. Moore. In discussing this scene with Masha Petrova, a practicing Hindu, I learned that in India, “one often gives garlands to Hindu murthis (representations of Gods and Goddesses) as a means of respect and reverence” (Petrova interview). Perhaps Forster intended to depict Adela as an Earthly representation of Mrs. Moore’s spirit.

After the trial, the spirit again seems absent. A more definitive peace is still needed in India. Dr. Aziz and the other characters learn that Mrs. Moore is dead. After mourning her, Aziz joins Godbole in Mau, a predominantly Hindu region without a large British presence. Fielding returns to England briefly and marries Mrs. Moore’s daughter, Stella. Adela, too, returns to England. Aziz continues to feel bitterness toward her, and he begins to resent Fielding for communicating with Adela after the trial. However, when Fielding comes to visit Aziz with Stella and Mrs. Moore’s other son, Ralph, during the Festival of Krishna, Aziz’s resentment dissipates. He, at first, grudgingly allows Fielding back into his life. Aziz then meets Ralph and finds a strange charm about him, and he pays the young man the same compliment he did Mrs. Moore: “You are an Oriental” (Forster 349). When Aziz takes Ralph on a boat ride to view the Festival of Krishna, the two men collide with Fielding and Stella, and amid the chaos of the crash, Aziz and Fielding again become friends. Aziz can again see the spirit of Mrs. Moore, now living within her children, and Fielding's connection with Ralph and Stella connects him with Mrs. Moore. Both men feel that “there seemed to be a link between them at last” (357). Aziz is also able to forgive Adela because he remembers that she acted very bravely on the witness stand and was, after all, a friend of Mrs. Moore. In a letter to her expressing his forgiveness he tells her, “I shall henceforth connect you with the name that is very sacred in my mind, namely, Mrs. Moore” (359). The universality of Mrs. Moore’s spirit helps to restore peace in Aziz’s life.

In A Passage to India, Mrs. Moore seems to act as Krishna did, but on a smaller scale. If Mrs. Moore is Krishna, Aziz is her Radha, who loves her. The chanting people of Chandrapore are her gopis. Krishna could multiply himself and move throughout India, bringing harmony and security to all. Mrs. Moore, a mere mortal, only exists in one place and touches only a small circle of people in her lifetime. However, her spirit does live to spread harmony because it survives within her Ralph and Stella. Still, something in the novel goes unanswered. As Godbole takes part in the celebration of the birth of Krishna, he sees Mrs. Moore in a vision. Though he never felt any special connection with Mrs. Moore, he “impelled her by his spiritual force to that place where completeness can be found” (321). Though Mrs. Moore’s spirit cannot heal all cultural differences in India, it can achieve completeness be relieving Aziz of his bitterness. The Festival of Krishna celebrates the rebirth of the beloved god. The appearance of Mrs. Moore during the birth ceremony suggests that her spirit, too, will experience a rebirth. Before she finds completeness, she must help her friend Aziz. Though she eventually brings peace to Aziz’s life, India, as a whole, India still awaits greater spiritual healing. India “calls ‘Come’ through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august” (150). No answer arrives until the end of the novel, when Fielding and Aziz, riding side by side on horseback, wonder whether they can remain friends and whether their cultures can coexist. Forster replies, “No, not yet,” as some indescribable force pulls the two horses apart and the men part ways forever (362). Mrs. Moore’s influence helped heal Aziz, but healing India’s wounds requires a much stronger force. Mrs. Moore’s spirit can finally rest, complete, because it has succeeded in its individual task.

While reading A Passage to India, I felt a certain uneasiness. I, like Mrs. Moore and Adela, was a Westerner observing a complicated country that I knew relatively little about. By researching the story of Krishna, I feel I was able to gain a little more insight as to the meaning of the novel. Mrs. Moore represents the power to unite people of different cultures. Like Krishna, she acts as a divine force that seeks to bring harmony to India. Unlike Krishna, however, Mrs. Moore cannot unite all the people of India. She touches only a small group of people and helps them to understand their relationships with one another. As I learned about Krishna, I gained great respect for the Hindu culture. Hindus value understanding, peace, and balance in all aspects of life. Studying Krishna and A Passage to India has revealed to me E.M. Forster’s and the Hindu people’s shared desire for social harmony.

Ganguly, Adwaita P. India: Mystic, Complex, and Real- An Interpretation of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. Delhi: Motila Banarsidass, 1990.

SriHari. Epic Characters of Mahabharatha: Krishna. Trans. Prof. G. S. Mudambadithaya. Bangalore: Bharatha Samskruthi Prakashana, 2000.

Woodward, Kenneth L. The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2000.