A Passage to India

'That Marabar Case' was an event which threw the city of Chandrapore. into a fever of racial feeling. Miss Quested, on a visit from England to the man she expected to marry, showed an interest in Indian ways of life which was frowned upon by the sun-baked British community. And the prejudice which most of them felt and expressed against any social contacts between the British and the Indians appeared, at first, to be justified when she returned, alone and distressed, from an excursion to the caves in the company of a young Indian doctor. He was arrested on a charge of attempted assault, but when the case came to trial Miss Quested withdrew her accusation and the doctor was set free. Was she the victim of an hallucination, a complex, an unidentified intruder, or what? In this dramatic story E. M. Forster depicts, with sympathy and discernment, the complicated Oriental reaction to British rule in India, and reveals the conflict of temperament and tradition involved in that relationship. The cover shows Indore, Central India, where, a stone bridge spans the river Soor, from a drawing by William Simpson in India, Ancient and Modern by permission of the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (photo Rodney Todd-White)