Notes to the other quotations April 6, 2008

Notes to the other quotations:

 

I. Quotations taken from E.M. Forster’s novel “A Passage to India”:

 

1. “There is no person in existence as the general Indian.” (p. 236)
   • an Indian criticises the British: India has individuals, not like the British think: everyone is similar to the others

 

1. “How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world’s trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls “Come” through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only am appeal.” (p.120/121)

 

1. “We can’t keep engagements, we can’t catch trains. What more than this is the so-called spiritually of India?” (p. 97)
   • ironic comment on India from an Indian
   • question: Why are the British in India when they just have spiritually?

 

II. A quotation taken from Rudyard Kipling’s novel “Kim”:

    

“… the mixture of old-world piety and modern progress that is the note of India today.”

1.  
   • a Britain who is proud of the progress they brought to India

 

IV. Quotation taken from Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses”:

 

1. “In an ancient land like England there was no room for new stories, every blade of turf had already been walked over a hundred thousand times.” (p. 144)
   • there is no more room for the Britain to develop

ð     legitimation

 

2.      “Wherever the English settle, they never leave England” (p. 153)

1.  
   •  The British forced their culture on the Indians

 

V. An extract taken from Walt Whitman’s poem “Passage to India”:

 

“Passage to India!

Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?

The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,

The races, neighbors, to marry and to be given in marriage,

The oveans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,

The lands to be welded together.

 

A worship new I sing,

You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,

You engineers, you architects,, machinists, yours,

You not for trade or transportation only,

But in God’s name, for thy sake of soul.”