E.M Forster on Iqbal.

There is a famous couplet from Ghalib-

Qatra meñ Dajlah dikhāī na de aur juz meñ kul
Khel laṛkoñ kā huā dīda‑e‑bīnā na huā

“If you cannot see the Tigris in a drop, or the whole in the part, You are merely playing like children — you have not gained true insight.”

Ghalib was a pensioner of the British- Public School Boys, in the main- of whom Sanatyana would say- 'the world never had sweeter masters'. There's nothing wrong with boyish games or dreams of romance or the hope of serving Society so it rise to a higher level. 

Iqbal may not have been an Aitchison or Aligarh Old Boy, but he was qualified to teach Nawabzadeh at either institution. A brilliant student at Lahore University, his first job was as Arabic lecturer. He then received a Government scholarship which enabled him to get a second degree from Cambridge and a PhD from Germany. He also qualified as a barrister. His poetry already enjoyed great popularity in the Mushairas of the period even though it was theological rather than romantic. Initially, there was some apprehension that it was not orthodox. However, with 'jawab' (God's answer to the complaint made by the suffering Muslims) he showed he was not an atheist or an esoteric mystic but followed the school of Sirhindi albeit with youthful ardour rather than for some abstruse ontological reason. 

In his famous couplet-  “Man banda‑e āzādam, ‘ishq ast imām‑e man” (“I am a free servant; love is my guide)- he affirms 'Wahadat al Shudud' as opposed to Wahadat al Wajood'. 

You may say 'This is dualism. The self is not dissolved in the Absolute'. This is the creed of callow youth, rather than the terminus, in Tawhid, of a long life of increasing piety and self-abnegation. 

The reply is- 'Youth is youth. Old age will inevitably overtake youth- if God so wills. Why denigrate the thing while it lasts? If the Nation is yet young, why not let it develop in the romantic, the idealistic, the egotistic, manner that all youth develops? Why prematurely impose senility on a rising nation? Not everybody can subsist as a pensioner of the British, you know.' 

It is said that Iqbal, meeting Bergson, recited the hadith 'La tasubbu ad-dahr, fa innallaha huwad-dahr."

"Do not revile (or curse) time, for verily, Allah is time.' This chimed with Bergson's philosophy of duration and gave him delight. Here was a vitalist creed suitable for young nations emerging from Imperial swaddling clothes. Don't curse the times you live in or the fact that your people as yet lack maturity to regulate their own affairs in the best possible manner. Rather, embrace Love as individuation and Freedom from tutelage. 

Around the time Iqbal got his German PhD, some scholars had begun to speculate that Ibn Arabi had been influenced by, the Byzantine scholar, Maximus the Confessor, one of whose works was translated into Latin by Erigena, the Irishman stabbed to death by his Philistine Anglo-Saxon students, with the steel nibs of their quills. 

But, Maximus's anti-Origen work, came out just when the Arabs were rising. A young Nation prevailed over obscurantist Inquisitions of an arcane, wholly metaphysical, type. Monophysites in Syria & Copts in Egypt- not to mention Jews in Palestine- sided with their Islamic conquerors.

If the allegedly 'illiterate' Prophet of Islam could transmit an 'uncreated' Book, though his Race was young, then why hold to a Byzantine creed already trending towards 'Hesychasm' & other such mythical shite both Catholic & Protestant had long repudiated? 

The fact was, the crude, rude, English had become a great Nation- the greatest of all, in that their language has become 'Globish'- while, at that time, Erigena's Ireland languished as a 'spite slum'. 

EM Forster, who was two years younger than Iqbal,  had been the tutor of the brilliant grandson of the founder of Aligarh College- which initially was a British style Public School rather than a University. Sadly, Forster fell in love with his charge- a very handsome young man, who could not reciprocate. Later, this student of Forster- forced out of the management of Aligarh by petty intrigue- grew close to Iqbal. Sadly, he died prematurely.

I extract the following article by E.M Forster on Iqbal from the Republic of Rumi website. It suffers some factual errors & lays too much emphasis on supposed European influences on Iqbal. However, none can doubt that Forster was a friend of the Indian Muslims and sought to advance their cause. It should be mentioned that Forster, during the Great War, had lived in Egypt. Thus, he was bound to make an odious comparison such that Indian Muslims appeared less cultured or capable of national regeneration. 

E. M. Forster on Iqbal's 'Asrar-i-Khudi'

It is significant of Empire that we should wait so long for a translation from Iqbal,

His first poetry book had only been published five years previously. That's not a long time at all given that people were preoccupied with fighting a World War. 

Iqbal's English was excellent. He could have given the translation himself but did not do so because the English speaking public had little knowledge of Islam, let alone Sufi esoteric philosophy.  

the writer who has been for the last ten years such a tremendous name among our fellow citizens, the Muslims of India.

subjects, not citizens.  

They respond to him as do Hindus to Tagore, and with greater propriety, for Tagore was little noticed outside Bengal

But Calcutta was the capital. People from all over India came there to study or work. Bengali isn't very different from Braj or Maithili (in both of which Tagore had written) and the songs of Tagore would have been as familiar and as beloved to them as to the Bengali elite.

It must be said, Tagore had published much in different genres for decades before he gained world wide fame. 

until he went to Europe and gained the Nobel Prize,

by translating, or trans-creating, Gitanjali.  

whereas Iqbal has won his vast kingdom without help from the West.

Urdu, it is true, was more of a lingua franca. But Iqbal got his start through the British higher education system. His first job was as a lecturer in Arabic. I think Shikva may have appeared in print in 1909. It certainly attracted a lot of attention. The Jawab too may have been published in 1913 when Iqbal recited it to raise funds for the Turks who were fighting the Bulgarians. But, in book form, they only appeared in his 1924 collection 'bang-e-dara'.  

Lahore, Delhi, Aligarh, Lucknow, Bhopal, Hyderabad regard him as a profound thinker and a sublime poet.

Whereas Tagore was revered in Europe, China & the two Americas.  

Will London confirm their verdict?

No. There was nothing universal in Iqbal. Reform-minded Muslims may like him as may lovers of Urdu. But that is rather a small sub-set of the sub-continent's teeming millions.  

This question cannot be answered until it has been asked, and it has not yet been asked.

Because the answer was obvious. Iqbal was neither profound nor particularly sublime. Still, there can be no doubt of his innate talent.  

Mr. Nicholson’s welcome and excellent little book only touches a corner of the subject. When will he, or some other Oriental linguist,

or Oxbridge educated Muslim- Iqbal being one himself 

gives us the material for a critical judgment?

This would require a broad knowledge of Persian and Urdu literature as well as a familiarity with Islamic philosophy and practice.  

Meanwhile the following remarks may be of some slight help.

Poets in India cannot be spared from politics.

They were welcome to stick to religious or romantic themes. Tagore's poetry wasn't political.  

Would that they could! but there is no hope in the present circumstances; one could as easily part Dante from Florence.

Florence was indeed riven by political faction. But there were other parts of Italy where this wasn't the case. India was very large and there were plenty of places where traditional styles of poetry, on traditional themes, continued to flourish.  

As for the politics, they are triangular. There are two chief communities—Hindu and Muslim—and a ruling class of Englishmen. Owing to their common subjection and common Orientalism, the two communities sometimes draw together and oppose the English; owing to their different religions and to racial and social differences, they sometimes fly asunder.

It would be fair to say that many felt the 'British Umpire' was necessary to safeguard minorities.  

The English view these oscillations with cynicism, but they spring from instincts, deep if contradictory, that exist in every Indian heart. Shall the Indian look to the land he lives in, and try to make it a nation? Or shall he look to his own particular past—to Makkah if he be a Muslim, to the Vedas or Upanishads if Hindu and find in that his inspiration for the future?

The solution was obvious. Partition. Muslim majority areas could look to Mecca. Hindu majority areas could seek to revive the glory of the Gupta Age.   

Heaven forbid that we should assist him in his choice; either goal seems barren if we may deduce from the history of Europe.

Yet Ireland would be divided on religious lines a couple of years after Forster wrote this.  

But the choice itself is living,

or not being killed in a 'communal riot'. With hindsight, people should have been selling up and moving to a place where their own religion was in the majority.  

not to be sneered at, and we can see him hesitating over it even before the English came, advancing towards national unity under Akbar, retiring into religious diversities under Aurangzeb.

Akbar needed Hindus to hold his Muslim rivals in check. Aurangzeb thought he had enough power to dispense with any type of appeasement of 'kaffirs'.  

Poets unless they belong to the school of roses and nightingales (gul and bulbul) cannot abstain from this choice;

If they served a Prince who wanted gul & bulbul but abhorred politics, they stuck to what paid them. However, there was a growing market for books & magazines and political themes were topical.  

but since they decide by emotion rather than arithmetic, their attitude is often unstable and vexes the politicians.

Princes and Politicians may not like market forces but they prevail in the end.  

Iqbal is a case in point. Born in the Punjab, where the feeling between Muslim and Hindu is especially high,

actually Lahore was very peaceful compared to some other North Indian cities. 

he came out at first on the religious rather than the nationalist side.

The first book published by Iqbal was Ilmul Iqtisad (1903/1904) - A study on economic principles in Urdu. After that came Asrar-i-Khudi (The Secrets of the Self) - published in Persian in 1915. His first 
Urdu Poetry Collection: Bang-e-Dara (The Call of the Marching Bell) was only published in 1924. 

Like his predecessor Hali, he wrote for his community.

Whereas Sarojini Naidu wrote for the global Anglophone market 

One of his early poems, ‘A Complaint,’ is addressed to God, and sets forth the great deeds of Muslims, their sufferings, their miserable recompense (“God, we have done all this for you, and for our reward the infidels have houris while if lightning falls from Heaven, it is upon us”). The poem was regarded as daring and had an immense success.

But it can be of no possible interest to non-Muslims.  

In due course, ‘A Reply to the Complaint’ appeared, in which God defends himself by not unfamiliar arguments, retorting that the Muslims are to blame for their own misfortunes, owing to their lethargy and formalism. Both poems breathe the spirit of Aligarh, the great Anglo-Mohammedan College, which was founded to regenerate not India but Islam.

Forster was greatly attached to the son of the founder of that College. But Iqbal was a product of Lahore University which was 'Orientalist' not 'Occidentalist'. Hasrat Mohani could be called Aligarh's greatest contribution to Urdu poetry. His style is much simpler than Iqbal who focussed on Nazm not ghazal. 

‘A Muslim Song’ begins ‘We are all Muslims, the whole world is our country: China, Arabia and Hindustan are ours,’ and then addresses such lost or ruined cities as Cordova and Baghdad.

Cordova had been lost to the infidel. Baghdad had not. 

Iqbal had, however, Hindu friends, who were distressed at the path he was taking and remonstrated. He changed, the other side of his aspirations came to the front (“We are all Indians, our country is Hindustan, we are its bulbuls, it is our garden” very popular among students).

No. Tarana-e-Hind was from 1904. Tarana-e-Milli is from 1910 (i.e. after Muslim League was set up).  

This was followed, in 1916, by ‘A New Temple,’

Naya Shivala was written in 1905.  

in which the same idea is expressed with greater art.

It is stupid. On the other hand, people still sing 'sare jahan se accha'.  

Weary of the narrowness of Muslim divines, the poet calls to the Brahmin priest to turn from his narrowness, and to join him in building a temple more lofty than any the world has yet seen, the Temple of India. The glory of the Courtyard from Makkah shall inhabit that temple; the image in its shrine shall be gold, shall be inscribed Hindustan, shall wear both the Brahmin thread and the Muslim rosary, and the Muezzin shall call worshippers to prayer upon a horn.

After which everybody will drink brandy-soda & eat bacon sandwiches lovingly prepared by a Rabbi.  

A national anthem. Some of the poet’s admirers are pleased with ‘A New Temple,’ others displeased, and there is much discussion as to how he will evolve. If an outsider may venture an opinion, he will not evolve but revolve.

What can you do? Indians are like that only.  

He has felt, with great sensitiveness, the alternatives that Destiny is now offering to India, and one would expect him to continue hesitating between them, as in the past.

Iqbal wasn't stupid. He knew that the age of multi-ethnic Empires had passed. There was no alternative to 'responsible' (if not wholly representative) self-government.  

The above poems, like most of Iqbal’s work, are in Urdu, the language in which Anglo-Indians shout to their servants, and which they do not suspect of any other function.

No. If they held Government employment, they had to pass exams in that beastly thing. 

But he has also written in Persian, and this brings us to an interesting point. A cultivated Indian writer has more than one language lying ready to his pen, and he will select that which is appropriate to his subject-matter, and even to the state of his mind.

The question is whether native speakers will like his Persian or English or whatever. If you can write lyrically, the vernacular language is your best bet. 

If a Muslim is conciliating Hindus, he will certainly write in Urdu, which is becoming their common speech

From about 1900, Hindi (written in Devanagari) was given equal status with Urdu & began displacing it amongst Hindus in U.P.  

and which furthermore contains a Sanskrit element, within limits variable. The Hindu will, conversely, write in Hindi, which resembles Urdu, though not in script, in vocabulary.

There would be little point writing to a guy in a script he did not understand. In Punjab, Urdu was made the official language in 1849. 

But if the poet feels religious rather than nationalist, if he sings not of a new India but of the glorious past of his community, then a more antique and concentrated medium may attract him; if a Muslim he may turn to Persian or even Arabic,

It was too late for Persian. Arabic remained the theological language but it was limited to senior ulema.  

if a Hindu to Sanskrit.

Again, the market would be limited. However, none can deny that vernaculars were becoming Sanskirtized. The British played a role in this. Their own language had become standardized by emulating Classical models. 

Thus The Secrets of the Self, the Persian poem under review, though published between ‘Our Hindustan’ and ‘A New Temple,’ is totally opposed to them in spirit. It is addressed to Muslims only, is philosophic, separatist; on its literary side it depends upon classical Persia; and though there are non-Muslim elements in it they do not come from Hindustan: no, from a very different quarter.

In India there was a long standing convergence between Sufi Islam & indigenous Vedanta. Dara Shikoh was its leading exponent. There are plenty of things a Hindu might like about 'Asrar'- e.g. the condemnation of Aurangazeb's conquest as motivated by 'land-hunger', rather than piety.  Shias too would be happy with the praise of Hazrat Ali. I suppose, Iqbal's attack on Plato was orthodox from the Sufi or Ghazzali point of view as well as in keeping with the Nominalist British tradition. 

The novel aspect of Iqbal is the similarity to Nietzsche's philosophy. Iqbal has the Himalaya mountain demand that the Ganges river become 'hard'- like the 'water of a jewel'. It should move so swiftly that it becomes a mighty storm of which the Ocean becomes afraid.  This is like 'the hammer speaks'. It is also deeply silly. The Punjab depends on its rivers. If they turn into raging torrents, the populace would drown. Similarly, if coal becomes as hard as a diamond, it will not be able to burn and provide warmth & steam power & electricity.  

Still, we may say 'Iqbal expresses youthful ardour. The years will mellow him'. 

For Iqbal completed his education in Europe; he had degrees from Cambridge and Munich, and keeps in touch with Western philosophy. And like other of his contemporaries he has been influenced by Nietzsche; he tries to find, in that rather shaky ideal of the Superman, a guide through the intricacy of conduct.

Iqbal repudiated this view. He was a reformer rather than an iconoclast. His point was that Muslims had lost creativity and the spirit of individual enterprise. But this was equally true of Hindus or Sikhs who were prospering under the British. Their chains of gold had crushed their spirit.  

His couplets urge us to be hard and live dangerously; tigers, not sheep;

did he advocate cannibalism? 

we are to beware of those sheep who, fearing our claws, come forward with the doctrine of vegetarianism.

Any sheep which tried this would be swiftly eaten.  

In an amusing fable he sets forth the consequences:

The fodder blunted their teeth And put out the awful flashings of their eye…Their souls died and their bodies became tombs. Bodily strength diminished while spiritual fear increased. The wakeful tiger was lulled to slumber by the sheep’s charm: He called his decline Moral Culture.

Plenty of Sufi adepts lived very ascetic lives. But none doubted their spiritual power.  

We are to shun culture.

No. Islam stresses the need to gain cultured habits and etiquette.  

And though Love is indeed good, it has nothing to do with Mercy,

Save if Mercy proceed from love of the Creator 

Love is appropriation. It is stealing as opposed to begging.

Actually, the khirqa (Sufi cloak) demanded from the preceptor is better than the one freely bestowed by him. It indicates a higher state of spiritual knowledge.

It is the enrichment of the Self. If we seek love in this way, a new type will be born, a champion will come forth from this dust.

Iqbal was vigilant against Messianic movements like the Qadianis. Champions are one thing but Prophet Muhammad was the seal of the prophets.  

Appear, O rider of Destiny!

Appear, O light of the dark realm of Chances!…

Mankind are the cornfield and thou the harvest,

The leaves are scattered by Autumn’s fury:

Oh, do thou pass over our gardens as the Spring!

Receive form our downcast brows

The homage of little children and of young men and old.

When thou art there, we will lift up our heads,

Content to suffer the burning fire of this world!

Is Iqbal appealing to the Occulted Imam or praying for the arrival of the Mahdi? I think he is merely saying that India's Muslims needed a great leader who would help reform their customs and eliminate social evils- e.g. untouchability.  

As a guide to conduct, Nietzsche is at a discount in Europe.

That would change. 

The drawback of being a Superman is that your neighbours observe your efforts, and try to be Supermen too, as Germany now realizes.

Sadly, this was the one thing they didn't realize.  

But this is no place to criticize Nietzschean doctrine. The significance of Iqbal is not that he holds it, but that he manages to connect it with the Quran.

He stresses 'Khilafat'- Man's Vice-regency or relative autonomy 

Two modifications, and only two, have to be made: he condemns the Nietzsche who is an aristocrat, and an atheist; his Superman is permitted to spring from any class of society, and is obliged to believe in God.

So, God isn't really dead. Nietzsche was.  

No further difficulty occurs. There is a text in the Quran which says: “Lo, I will appoint a vicegerent upon earth,” and another text relating that the vicegerency was offered to Man after Heaven and the Angels refused it. Legalists quote these texts in support of the Caliphate;

the Khilafat movement in India was proving very important politically. Strangely, it enabled Hindus & Muslims to unite- albeit briefly.

Iqbal in support of his Superman. It is our duty to imitate the divine attributes, and to pass through Obedience and Self-Control to His vicegerency.

Iqbal is saying that Humanity is the Viceregent & can alter its own condition by its own efforts. This does not contradict the doctrine of predestination. God wills that we make our willpower stronger so as to improve our common lot.  

God’s vicegerent is as the soul of the universe, His being is the shadow of the Greatest Name. He knows the mysteries of part and whole, He executes the command of Allah in the world.

Iqbal was expressing the educated Muslim's rejection of the, then current, notion that Islam is fatalistic.  

But likeness to God does not mean union with Him. On the contrary. The Hindus are wrong: so are the Sufis, so even is Iqbal’s own master, the great poet Jalaluddin Rumi. The nearer the Superman approaches god the fuller he grows his own individuality. The desire to merge, to renounce the Self, is a sign of decay, and the doctrine has been evolved by subject races as an anodyne.

In India there had been a dispute between those who affirm  Wahdat al-Shahood, which holds creator & creation are distinct from Wahdat al-Wujud, which believes there can be a mystical identity at the end of the arduous quest. Iqbal's position is compatible with Sirhindi & closer to the Deobandi position than that of the Barelvis. Properly taught, Iqbal's poetry is perfectly orthodox though reformist and modern in spirit. 

It may be remarked in passing that Iqbal by no means turns the Pantheistic position; he says that the Self ought not to seek union with God, but he is not clear as to whether it might succeed if it did try; the spectre of Hinduism still haunts him.

No. I think it is the spectre of Ibn Arabi. The safer course is to say that God can do what he likes. We are in no position to lay down the law for him.  

But this again is a side issue. What is so interesting is the connection that he has effected between Nietzsche and the Quran. It is not an arbitrary or fantastic connection; make Nietzsche believe in God, and a bridge can be thrown. Most Indians, when they turn to the Philosophy of the West, do not know what will be useful to them. Iqbal sure has an eye.

Iqbal was repeating a claim by Sarmad- viz. that saying 'there is no God' gets you half-way to affirming 'there is no God but God.'  Ludicrously, this would later cause him to praise Lenin and then Mussolini. 

In another poem, The Mysteries of Selflessness, he treats of Islam as an ideal society,

Attar's Nishapur was like a 'Welfare State' except in that people were assisted to earn their own living & to rise up in a trade or profession.  

a Catholic Church, in which the Believer can lose himself and touch a life greater than his own. How is the Superman to fit in here? It will be interesting to see, and perhaps Mr. Nicholson will give us a translation. But The Mysteries of Selflessness is likewise in Persian, and what we really need is a translation of the Urdu poems, for it is on them that the poet’s reputation rests.

This raises the question as to in what style they should be translated. There were plenty of older folk could turn anything into heroic couplets or sonnets or whatever. But perhaps the poems would appear to better advantage in more modernist dress. Perhaps that is the path Iqbal would have taken at a later point if he had translated his work himself. I may mention, Iqbal later became close to Yusuf Ali- an ex- ICS officer who translated the Quran quite poetically and who did valuable propaganda work for the Brits during the Great War. It is said that Iqbal was responsible for his appointment as Principal of Islamia College in Lahore, where he served from 1925 to 1927 and again from 1935 to 1937.

That reputation is unchallenged, although purists at Delhi

which still hadn't fully recovered from the Mutiny. In those days a smart kid- like Lala Hardayal- went to Lahore University after getting his first degree from St. Stephens. Still, there was some snobbishness amongst the 'ahl-e-zaban'. I believe it was known that Iqbal's father was a tailor and that the family had only recently converted to Islam.  

complain of his provincialisms and party leaders regret that he will not come properly to heel. One thinks of him as a sensitive and shifting personality,

he didn't want to choose between 'watani' & Islam-pasand politics- i.e. Nationalism vs Pan-Islamism. We may say that Pakistan's dream of an Islamic NATO is Iqbalian. 

in whom is possibly the divine fire, as a nightingale vexed by political watchwords which he cannot ignore because of the realities that lie behind them. Neither India nor Islam is at present a garden,

Ghalib had said India was an Eden without an Adam. He himself was the nightingale of an unseen garden.  

and the voice of Iqbal rings clearer when his conscience is lulled and his own true country—though it be a but a mirage—beckons across the arid sands where Muslim and Hindus and Englishman manoeuvre.

Iqbal did hope to reach Persian and Tajik readers. The late Ayatollah Khameni was a great lover of his poetry. 

My song is of another world than theirs; This bell calls other travellers to take the road. How many a poet after his death Opened our eyes when his own be closed, And journeyed forth again from nothingness When roses blossomed o’er the earth of his grace

Such sentiments can be found elsewhere but Iqbal made them fresh and relevant to the rising generation. Not for nothing is he acclaimed as the Poet-Prophet of Pakistan.  Hasrat Mohani, by contrast, was a founder member of the Indian Communist party though ordinary people now remember his for one or two romantic ghazals. Mohani lived to see an independent India which was moving slowly but surely to the Left. As for Pakistan, it is now fighting with Afghanistan while trying to broker a peace deal between Iran & the US.

How would Iqbal have reacted to current events? This is my guess-

Iqbal's sher on the Ramadan War

Hairat khud hairaan hai ki gul‑e‑Shiraz,

Kiya shagufta, missile se, dasht‑e‑Hijaz.

Bulbul‑e‑Lahore ki hai itni buland aawaaz,

Har khisht‑e‑Hospital‑e‑Kabul hui gudaaz.

Amazement is bewildered that the Roses of Shiraz

As missiles, so blossom in the deserts of Hijaz

So strong is the song of Lahore's bulbul

It blows up Hospitals in far Kabul!

Iqbal would be proud that when Iran bombs Saudi Arabia, Pakistan too contributes its mite to the cause of Islamic solidarity by blowing up a Hospital in Afghanistan.

Paul B Armstrong on EM Forster.

 Paul B Armstrong, though a Professor of English Literature, has a high IQ. He views E.M Forster as a practitioner, avant la lettre, of Richard Rorty's brand of 'liberal irony'- 

According to Rorty, "liberal ironists" combine commitment with a sense of the contingency of their own commitments.

Perhaps Rorty believed that people who weren't 'liberal ironists' believed their own commitments weren't contingent on their being alive. That is why they would commit to returning from the grave to attend their great great grand daughter's bat mitzvah.  

They believe that "cruelty is the worst thing we do',

 Non-liberals think cruelly plucking out and eating the eyes of little babies is the nicest thing we can do. 

even though they recognize that this conviction, like all values, is culturally relative, contestable, and without absolute foundations. 

A Liberal has the same oikeiosis- i.e. class, culture, community and country- as a Conservative. Her political views or ideology, on the other hand, is not a function of oikeiosis. It is a free choice. Many Liberals start off as Revolutionary Radicals before moderating their views. The foundation of this oikeiosis is a set of what John Maynard Smith called 'uncorrelated asymmetries'. Smith, like Haldane started off on the Left.   Others- like Gladstone- may arrive at Liberalism from the opposite, i.e. a theological, direction. The essential commonality Liberals share is an optimism regarding the effects of 'social engineering'. They see the upside of removing 'Chesterton's fence' because the reason it was erected may have ceased to apply long ago. 

For the Liberal, the Social Contract- even if founded on indefeasible principles- is considered incomplete and capable of improvement. Binmore sees the essence of this creed in the folk theorem of repeated games. Anything achievable coercively is achievable non-coercively through incentive compatible mechanism design. 

One might say that it was ironic that Liberals often backed policies which cut against their own economic interests. The Marxist view was that the eclipse or expropriation of the propertied class, which had nurtured this ideology, was inevitable. Progressive members of the Bourgeoisie were turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. Sadly, Marxism was stupid shit. Ironically, Hegel's critique of romantic irony leant romance to coprophagy. 

I will try to suggest Forster's affinities to a paradoxical "liberal irony" by imagining the position he would take in the debate between Jiirgen Habermas and Jean-Francois Lyotard over the politics of legitimation. 

Forster would not participate in such a debate. He knew that the English conception of legitimacy- which involves 'the Crown in Parliament'- was quite unlike anything to be found on the Continent- not to mention the revolutionary notions prevalent on the other side of the pond. 

Like Rorty, Forster would like Lyotard's skepticism about the untranscendable heterogeniety of different perspectives

 English literature is unlike French literature in that there are no boundaries between genres. Lyotard believed that ' Phrases from heterogeneous regimens cannot be translated from one into the other. They can be linked one onto the other in accordance with an end fixed by the genre of discourse'. Racine wouldn't put a smutty joke into a tragedy. Shakespeare would. As for perspectives, one's own might be beyond words because one is an Anglo Saxon, not a fucking cheese eating surrender monkey.

with Habermas's affirmation of mutual understanding and uncoerced exchange as desirable ideals.

 Nobody in their right mind would want to exchange ideas with a fucking Kraut.  

Like Trilling, both Rorty and Forster believe that political action must be pragmatically contradictory and ironic about the ideals it pursues

 because it is important for an Englishman to have a sense of humour. Otherwise, he might be mistaken for some disgusting type of foreigner. 

not because "balance" is the most "realistic" attitude but because "truth" is always deferred.

 At least, till the ladies have withdrawn to the drawing room and the men are left to their port and cigars.  

Forster's description of the British official class in a small Indian town was easy to understand for the English- or, indeed, the Indians. Indeed, the thing was legible to a ten year old boy in his first year at boarding school. His own beloved elder brother or cousin would ignore him or order him about or beat him just for the fun of it. This was how the seniors established their authority. Mrs. Moore is a bit stupid. Ronnie should have said to her, 'Mum, if I am nice to any Indian, the story will get around that the fellow is my 'bag man'- i.e. he must be paid off if a favourable judgment from me is required.' If you want to befriend Indians go do it somewhere where your son isn't the magistrate. Take this chap Aziz. Did you know he is a pal of barrister Habibullah? If you accept hospitality from him, the story will get around that I am in the pay of the Muslim faction in the town. The Chief Commissioner will recommend my transfer to some shithole where I will die of dysentery or malaria. Please don't ruin my career.' 

The reason Ronnie doesn't say this is because, firstly, he is as stupid as shit and, secondly, he isn't close to his mother. She had remarried and had two kids with her second husband. 

Armstrong quotes E.M Forster's response to criticism by the 'Anglo-Indians'. : "If I saw more of Anglo-India at work . . . I should of course realize its difficulties and loyalties better and write about it from within. Well and good, but you forget the price to be paid: I should begin to write about Indians from without".

In other words, he would not be able to portray their resentment. The solution to the underlying problem had already been implemented- Elections and 'Dyarchy' where elected Indians would exercise increasing control. The Indian Civil Servant could then become just as civil as the British official. But this would not make for a very interesting novel more particularly for the Americans who actually had a colour bar and, in many States, a ban on inter-racial marriage. 

Armstrong writes- 

 This response suggests that knowledge is inevitably exclusionary,

Forster admits that 'telepathy' or something yet more mystical or magical might be a real thing. Some analytical philosophers dabbled in Psychic research back then.

one's perspective necessarily setting one at odds with other standpoints.

One's interests or affiliations or 'oikeiosis' might do so. Perspectives are easily changed. Oikeiosis- where you belong- isn't.  

If such conflicts are unavoidable, however, then the ideal of mutual recognition between knower and known would seem doomed.

This is why when Dr. Watson knew he was talking to Sherlock Holmes, Holmes would be all like 'Queen Victoria! How nice to see you! Have a cuppa.'  

Even if two parties overcome their opposition, their convergence only sets up differences between themselves and some other party. Because knowledge is necessarily perspectival, one can recognize another only by refusing recognition to someone else.

If Holmes recognizes Watson he will no longer be able to distinguish between Mrs. Hudson and the hat stand.  

The conflicts marking the reception of A Passage to India

there was no conflict. Lord Reading, as Viceroy, had made a big deal out of lifting the 'colour bar'. Moreover a Labour administration had been formed. It was obvious that Dyarchy would soon turn into Provincial Autonomy. The next step would be the creation of a Federal Government. Instead of conflict between Indians and Europeans, the big problem faced by the Viceroy was Hindu-Muslim riots. In that respect, Forster's work was an own goal. It harmed the cause of his pal Masood while allowing that some Hindu Mahatma might have super-powers.  

suggests that the novel offers a strategically ambiguous positive response to Edward Said's question: "How can one study other cultures and from a libertarian, or a non-repressive and non-manipulative perspective?"

The answer was- leave such matters in the capable hands of the Secretary of State and the Viceroy. India had been admitted to the League of Nations and would become self-administering and self-garrisoning just like the settler colonies.  

(24). A liberating, non-instrumental understanding of others 

is nonsense. Understanding some other bloke doesn't liberate shit. Britain had to fight a long and bloody war to liberate Belgium.  

coincides with the ideal of a non-reified knowledge based on mutual recognition

like Holmes recognizing and being recognized by Watson. This may be a non-reified knowledge but it just isn't very interesting.  

which the novel endorses and, for some readers, achieves.

Englishmen don't have to understand each other to reach a good enough political modus vivendi. Forster had voiced the doubt in the mind of a lot of people at that time as to whether darkies could rule themselves in the Western manner. Still, Imperialism was boring and not particularly profitable. Some sort of deal would have to be done before the Indian masses turned to Bolshevism.  

These epistemological dilemmas not only mark the history of A Passage to India's reception but also are central themes in the work itself.

Nobody was greatly concerned with such dilemmas. The fact is a nice English lady had been the head of the Indian Home Rule League. She was also the head of the Theosophical Society and was promoting a darkie as the Universal Messiah. Forster does have a mystical character- Prof. Godbole- and the world was learning about India's Mahatma. But, what did this have to do with the price of potatoes? At the end of the day, that's what matters.  

I suppose Armstrong belonged to a generation of academics who were often mistaken for hatstands or urinals by their stoned students. They would plead for a bit of respect and recognition in between suggesting that when you encounter alterity- i.e. meet some one else- you should not immediately kill and eat that person. Why not play a game of badminton or offer each other rape counselling? 

Forster's "double turn" in affirming and contesting the possibility of non-reifying knowledge

i.e. understanding that Mrs. Hudson is a person. She is not a thing- like the hatstand.  

can be seen in the novel's contradictory treatment of Anglo-Indian claims to interpretive authority from "experience."

Forster went to a boarding school. He knew that experienced Masters- or even Prefects- exercised authority in a manner that was effective enough, provided they had gauged the circumstances correctly. But those circumstances were changing. The Secretary of State and the Viceroy had recognized this. Already, a general election had been held. There was 'Dyarchy'. Authority was shared with elected Indian politicians.  

Much is made of the irony that appeals like the Collector's to his "twenty-five years' experience of this country' entitling him to speak with "the whole weight of ... authority'
result in disastrous misreadings.

There is no disaster. The Collector did a good enough job. It was his wife who failed in her duty to explain to Mrs. Moore and to Adela that young Ronny's career would be spoiled if they accepted lavish hospitality from an Indian belonging to one political faction. A Magistrate must be seen to be impartial. This means his Mummy and Wifey, too, must hold themselves aloof from those who might be suspected of wishing to influence the outcome of trials.  

It must also be said that Ronny made a big mistake in letting the Superintendent of Police act as the prosecutor even though the defendant had hired a high powered barrister. The Collector probably wasn't as attached to Ronny as he made out. His own 'bundobast' was good enough. Anyway, he wasn't on the judicial side. It did not harm to show that those duffers are as thick as shit. 

There is no 'double turn' or 'differance'  in Forster. There are misunderstandings and there is some light comedy of manners. Old women tend to be stupid. They lack savoir faire. Still, their instincts may be sound. Mental and moral health require a balance between Instinct and Intelligence. But what might that be could not be spoken of by those whose Love 'dared not speak its name'. Still, there was the plain, Anglo Saxon, tradition of co-existence. Forster had been a conscientious objector during the war. But he served his country in Egypt in a non-military capacity. Different men have different notions of duty. But they can all do their duty well enough. Russell thought it his duty to dissuade America from entering the War on the side of England and France. The Government did its duty by sending him to jail. There was no lasting bitterness. This is because England's Revolution- the one it terms Glorious- was bloodless. Not so, the French or Russian or even the American Revolutions. There is no need for palinode or aporia where accommodation is easily enough achieved. That's what happened in India. There was some bitter polemics and political theatre but a peaceful, boringly constitutional, transfer of power.

It must be said, Forster remained a friend of India- and Indian students at Cambridge- to the end of his long life. It was the Aligarh Muslim that he let down- albeit unconsciously and without malice aforethought. Disappointment in love can have that effect. 

 

Lowes Dickinson & E.M Forster's India

Goldsworthy 'Goldie' Lowes Dickinson was a senior member of the Cambridge Apostles. He was considered, for some mysterious reason, to be a great political scientist. Forster took his philosophy from G.E Moore & his view of India from Goldie.

Lowes Dickinson 1913 wrote in 'Civilizations of the East'. 

Between India, on the one hand, and China or Japan, on the other, there is as great a difference as between India and any western country.

There was a greater difference between America and England, at that time, then there was between China and Japan. But Japan & India had many similarities though Japan was more influenced by China than India. However, in Religion, both had been greatly influenced by Buddhism. 

The contrast that has struck me is that between India and the rest of the world.

At its borders, India melted into its neighbours. There was tension between the purely Sinitic literary and bureaucratic culture and an Indo-Burmese, or Indo-Khmer, or Indo-Thai, or, in Vietnam, between the Cham culture in the South and the more Sinitic North. But there was also continuity. The same could be said of the manner in which India in the North West melted into an Islamic Persian or Turkish civilization.  

There I do feel a profound gulf.

It was because there was no such gulf that the British Raj could expand into Burma and South East Asia as well extend its hegemony into Persia, Iraq, Aden, etc.  

A Chinese, after all, is not so unlike an Englishman, and a Japanese not so unlike a Frenchman. But a Bengalee is strangely unlike anybody outside India.

The Bengalee who settled in Japan- e.g. Ras Behari Bose- became Japanese. Its caste system was more rigorous than India's. It banned the butchering of all four legged animals- not just cows. It had no Brahmins but did have untouchables. Bali had Brahmins but no untouchables. 

China has a literary culture to which some Indians had assimilated in ancient times. But so had Korea and Manchuria and North Vietnam and Japan. But Indonesia had more in common with India than China. There was considerable Chinese immigration into South East Asia. Indeed, under the Raj, there was Chinese immigration into India. This diaspora tended to do very well compared to the indigenous people.

It is not an accident, it is a consequence of their attitude to life, that there are no Hindu historians.

There were few independent historiographers as opposed to court historians. But this was a function of the market for well written works of history. Greece had such a market. So did Rome. China, from the time of Sima Quian, had it. This meant that as merchants got richer, some of their sons read such classical works of history and, at a later point, men of letters could make money by publishing historiographical works. This also happened in India. The difference was that purely Indic Empires had failed at an earlier period and so a pan-Indian historiographic tradition had failed to maintain itself. Still, the Jains preserved historical traditions from pre-Mauryan times and there were always Court Pundits who could produce good enough Dynastic Chronicles which linked up with the traditional 'Itihasas' which were of a legendary type. But, this was equally true of British or French or German history. 

Contrast the Mahometans, contrast the Chinese, contrast the western nations. How can you write the history of a nightmare ? You don't do that. You try to wake up.

Nonsense! The printing press and the creation of a market for history books resulted in an Indian historiography similar to that of Europe coming into being. The difference between a Hume or Macaulay and an Indian or British author writing about Indian history, was that the latter but not the former, insisted on the great antiquity of Indian civilization.  

 Indian religion is thus very " inhuman " compared to Christianity;

Hinduism has incarnation and hypostatic union just like Christianity. God literally is man- i.e. human.  

and very much more in harmony with the spirit of western science than with that of western religion.

This nutter is saying Hinduism is scientific. The fact is, thanks to the Eugenic turn that Darwinism took, Indian Caste seemed based on a true theory- that of Racialism and Aristocracy as exemplified by the 'English Mistery' and other such far-Right fringe groups.  

And this fact is exemplified not only by the religious and philosophic literature of India,

of which Goldie was wholly ignorant 

but by its art.

the market determines what is considered art 

Hindu sculpture and architecture — I have examined it from north to south, and from east to west — is disquieting and terrible to a western mind.

Goldie kept screaming and shitting himself every time he beheld a temple or entered a cave. Sadly, Viceroy Sahib refused to entertain his complaint that Rabindranath Tagore had brusquely sodomized him while he was inspecting Chola bronzes. In many ways, Forster's depiction of Adela Quested's hysteria is modelled upon that of Goldie's unspeakable trauma. 

It expresses the inexhaustible fertility,

like that of Queen Victoria who produced nine children 

the ruthlessness,

British ruthlessness was well displayed during the Boer War 

the irrationality of nature;

Oh dear. Goldie didn't understand Darwin. Nature- whether Biological or Chemico-Physical, is entirely rational.  

never her beauty, her harmony, her adaptability to human needs.

Indian art and philosophy and religion pays a rich tribute to 'Prakriti's' beauty, harmony, and all nurturing hospitability.  

Man, in the Indian vision, is a plaything and slave of natural forces;

No. Natural forces are part of God's Lila- or play. Darwin's vision involves natural forces. First there has to be the formation of the planet. Then there are billions of years of geological changes. Natural forces are expressed by a fitness landscape such that evolution by natural selection occurs. Some glimmering of this doctrine can be found in various ancient philosophical traditions.  

only by ceasing to be man does he gain freedom and deliverance.

i.e. gets to Heaven. I suppose Goldie & Co. resented the 'Oriental' character of their country's Established Church. 

And this brings me to the second point in which Indian religion contrasts with that of the West. To an Indian saint or philosopher the whole world of matter is unreal,

This is the idealist doctrine of the British Hegelians. McTaggart argued that Time and Matter are unreal. Goldie drew on that shitty tradition to publish his own stupid shite.  

and the whole of human history illusory. There is no meaning in time or the processes of time; still less is there any goodness in it.

Unless God so wills. Occasionalism is as Christian as it is Islamic or Indian.  

In some way, unexplained and inexplicable, the terrible illusion we call life dominates mankind.

It is easily explained. Men have carnal appetites which divert them from what is spiritually or morally good- in the opinion of pedants. 

To be delivered from the illusion — from life, that is, and activity in time — is the object of all effort and all religion.

No. The object of effort is to get a better re-birth. Liberation itself may be effortless and instantaneous. 

In this sense the Indian religion is pessimistic.

In no sense is it pessimistic. You can gain Liberation just now, at this moment. Why bother? Nirvana is Samsara. Suffering or Bondage is delusive. 

There is, of course, an important distinction between Buddhism and the Brahminism it supplanted for a time and then succumbed to.

Brahmins who didn't want to get married clamoured to become Buddhist monks. Sadly, Muslim conquerors saw the Buddhist Sangha as a threat.  

Gautama Buddha, it would seem,

to a shithead 

was a thorough-going sceptic and rationalist;

because sceptics and rationalists found great religions based on the notion that they offer salvation beyond death- right? 

he believed neither in God nor in the soul; and the object of his teaching was to deliver men from life to annihilation

which death does anyway- unless you have kids. That's the way death is defeated and life sustains itself- for a time. 

by instructing them how to eliminate desire.

by becoming a monk or nun. The trick is to get the peasants to pay for monasteries. In Japan, Buddhist temples assisted the bakufu administration in a manner similar to that in which the Established Churches of Europe assisted the Government at the parish level. 

Brahminism, on the other hand,

offers rituals or, if you don't like rituals, philosophical or devotional methods of transcendence. Lord Buddha is regarded as an incarnation of Lord Vishnu. 

wishes to deliver them from false life to true life. 

 Life eternal as part of God. 

The real point of distinction is (not metaphysical but) that the West believes that all effort ought to centre upon the process of living in time ;

Nobody believes any such shite. If you are alive then, without any conscious effort, you are living in time. Goldie was a homosexual. He did have to make an effort to ensure he could carry on with the process of living and loving without having to do time in His Majesty's prison. Had he been French or Turkish, he wouldn't have had to bother because sodomy had been decriminalized.  

that that process has reality and significance; and that the business of religion is not to deliver us from effort by convincing us of its futility, but to sanctify and justify it.

Meaningless shite. We say 'this is real', or 'this is significant'', when we mean to say this is worth paying attention to. What Goldie is blathering on about is not significant. It is not real. It is stupid shite which pseudo-intellectuals indulge in.  

No modern western man would regard as an admirable type at all — still less as the highest type — a man who withdraws from the world to meditate and come into direct contact with the Universal.

Nonsense! The more modern and the more western the dude, the stronger his interest in mystic masters from the East. The Theosophical Society was founded by a Russian and an American. It was modern and cosmopolitan. Goldie's pedantic cult of sodomy was ancient, provincial, and as boring as fuck.  

But an Indian who is uncontaminated by western culture still regards that as the true ideal of conduct;

No. You only go in for that shite after your kids have kids of their own. After a period of retirement, you are welcome to spend your time meditating in a Himalayan cave as a 'sanyasi'.  

and views all activities in the world as lower and inferior, though, for undeveloped men, they are necessary and pardonable.

Where was this nutter getting this shite from?  

With this view of religion the history and institutions of Hinduism harmonise. The Vedas, it is true, reflect an attitude to life similar to that of the Western Aryans;

i.e. Iranians. They invented the devil, Paradise, Purgatory and Bodily Resurrection. But such ideas came to the West through the Jews.  

but this essentially active, positive, optimistic view gradually clouds over.

Muslim conquest had thrown a damper over the spirits of even the Greeks.  

The cause, perhaps, is the influence of climate, of a Nature too strong for man. 

Nature, in India, was kind. That was why India was so densely populated.

India, never a nation,

like the UK at that time. The Scots and the Welsh and the Irish were separate Nations. Catholic Ireland went its own way. There is, currently, an independence movement in Scotland. 

never a unity, split up by racial, religious, caste distinctions,

like England, at that time except that caste was called class.  

fell, and was bound to fall, an easy prey to a western power.

No. It 'fell' to a commercial power- the East India Company. As Disraeli said in 1857, it wasn't conquered. It was administered according to its own immemorial customs and traditions.  

That that power should be England is one of the ironies of history;

No. England was the best at oceanic trade and at one point became the 'workshop of the world.' This was Economics pure and simple. What was surprising was that a commercial venture proved good at providing basic 'nightwatchman State' public goods.  

for of all the western nations the English are the least capable of appreciating the qualities of Indian civilisation, and the most capable of appreciating its defects.

No. The English were good at trading and, for commercial reasons, became good at administration. Indian Princes and landlords prospered under British rule though the economy as a whole stagnated. 

To an Englishman, practical efficiency, honesty, and truth are the chief and indispensable goods.

This is true of all businessmen- up to a point.

To an Indian, as, in a less degree, to other Orientals, all these things are indifferent.

No. The Indian business class worked closely with the British. The problem was that the productivity of the labouring class was not rising. A.O Hulme set up the Indian National Congress in the hope that it would campaign for measures which raised agricultural productivity.  

On the other hand, an Englishman has no conception even of the meaning of a philosophic or religious problem.

Nonsense! The Brits spent a lot of time debating religious questions. Goldie himself debated philosophic problems of a foolish type.  

The notion that the material world could be a mere illusion is one that could never appeal to him as even intelligible (Berkeley, it must be remembered, was an Irishman, and Hume a Scotchman).

So, Britain was not one Nation- unlike India.  

His religion, when he has one, is a transfigured morality, not a mysticism.

That may have been true of the devotees of G.E Moore. But Goldie himself was a member of the Council of the  Society for Psychical Research. 

Tagore wrote to his friend William Rothenstein about Goldie's book-

‘Lowes Dickinson’s Essay on the Civilisations of India, China and Japan has made me feel sad. Not only he is entirely out of sympathy with India, but he has tried to make out that there is something inherent in an Englishman which makes him incapable of appreciating India—and to him India by her nature will be a source of eternal irritation.

In Calcutta, one of the leading experts on Tantra was Sir John Woodroffe- who had served as the Tagore Professor of Law. It was obvious that some Englishmen greatly appreciated India. Others did not. But, like Goldie, they were useless shitheads.  

Of all the countries in the world India is the East for him—that is to say an abstraction. Possibly he is right in his observations—but then it is a hopeless misery for India till the end of this chapter of her history

Tagore & Co. were laughing all the way to the Bank. The East Bengali Hindu would suffer greatly when the Brits left.  

and it is utterly bad for those who have come merely to govern her from across the sea.

They were well enough paid. Moreover, India made a sizable contribution to the Empire's defence in both world wars. It must be said, this was a two way street. Thanks must go to Churchill and the British forces for defeating the Japanese invaders.  

I only hope Dickinson is not right and that it was heat and hurry and dyspepsia that blotted out the human India from his sight leading him into the blank of a monotonous mist of classification.’

I think Goldie, like G.E Moore, had a deep hatred of Hindu India. In particular the doctrine of Advaita- which, at that time, was linked to German Idealism- was anathema to them. Van Norden reports as follows-

When the Indian philosopher Surendra Nath Dasgupta read a paper on the epistemology of Vedanta to a session of the Aristotelian Society in London, Moore’s only comment was: ‘I have nothing to offer myself. But I am sure that whatever Dasgupta says is absolutely false.’ The audience of British philosophers in attendance roared with laughter at the devastating ‘argument’ Moore had levelled against this Indian philosophical system.

The Cambridge Apostle was aware that the Germans had overtaken them in STEM subjects. But the Germans were also great Indologists. Meanwhile, their own academic credentials were being called into question. If Bengali babus in Calcutta can get top marks in the same sort of Examinations as Oxbridge alumni- indeed, there were already Indian Senior Wranglers- then perhaps there was less to their elite paideia than met the eye. Indeed, the whole bunch of them might be a complete waste of time. 

Sadly, so was Jawaharlal Nehru. R.A.B Butler says his economic and political ideas were influenced by both Goldie & Meredith Townsend about whom I have written elsewhere. 

E.M Forster's Oriental

 E.M Forster was a 27 year old Cambridge graduate when he was hired as the Latin tutor for a 17 year old Indian Muslim lad whose father had been a judge and whose grandfather had founded Aligarh Muslim University. The boy was a bit bumptious and preferred tickling his tutor to studying. It would be a feather in his cap to convert an Englishman to the true faith but to dominate, or merely patronize, an older man was an acceptable consolation prize. This involved saying this like-"My dear Forster, all Englishmen are Christians. It is very sad. The English are a tragic race. I feel deeply sorry for them. I would like to help them, but they are too numerous; there is nothing to be done.' The obvious riposte would be to say that Indians talk nonsense. This makes it easy for foreigners to rule them though they are too numerous to count. Incidentally, how much sand do you actually have in your vagina? Would it be enough to tempt T.E Lawrence to pitch his tent there? If not, perhaps you might try talking in a less effeminate manner. 

It appears that Ross Masood believed his own father, who suffered alcoholism and mental illness, may have been homosexual. His own family blamed an English friend of his for leading him into wicked ways. Indeed, he had named his son 'Ross' after this friend.

Ross Masood explained his rebuffing of Forster as involving his horror at 'de minoritate patris sui’- the 'minorism' (homosexuality) of his father. Whatever the truth of the matter, the British government was concerned that Ross be a worthy heir to his grandfather. For some reason they did not spell out, they didn't want Ross to go to Cambridge, as his father had done, but to go to Oxford instead. Sadly, though serving briefly and brilliantly as Vice Chancellor of Aligarh, factionalism in the College forced Ross out. He formed a close friendship with Iqbal but died young. As for his friendship with Forster, alas!, it was counterproductive to the great cause to which he and his grandfather had dedicated themselves to. 

Masood's good turn to his former tutor was to encourage him to write a novel set in India. Sadly, that novel showed the Indian Muslim in a very poor light. Forster did for them the complete reverse of what T.E Lawrence did for the Arab Muslim. The Indian Muslim was lazy, bigoted, and lived in a fantasy world. More even then the English, they were an alien element in India. Political power must pass to the Hindus.  The Arab Muslim had his faults. But they were the faults of a virile, if somewhat mercenary, tribe. David Lean would make a great film on Lawrence and his Arab friends. Lean's 'Passage' is beautiful to look at. But, as Ghalib had said, he depicts an Eden with no Adam in it. There are some old women and there are some men who are old women or who are on their way to becoming old women. There are no battles. There is merely a Court case which is badly conducted. In 'Lawrence', Alec Guinness portrays the dignity and diplomatic skills of the subtle Arab Sheikh. In 'Passage' he hams it up as Peter Sellers. The lowest blow is that Aziz is played by a Bengali Hindu. During Forster's own life-time, Zia Mohyeddin had taken that part in the stage and the BBC versions of the novel. 

I don't know if the young Ross Masood could be said to have led on the older man. What is certain is that Hell hath no fury like a homosexual scorned. Also, don't tell an Englishman he has an Oriental sensibility. Call him the Queen of Sheba and leave it at that. Otherwise he will create a fiction in which you transfer the love you denied him to his own, very ancient, mother. 

Early on in Forster's novel, Aziz gives the following definition of an Oriental. He had just met an elderly widow who listened sympathetically as he poured out his tale of woe to her. He exclaims

“You understand me, you know what others feel. Oh, if others resembled you!”

Rather surprised, she replied: “I don’t think I understand people very well. I only know whether I like or dislike them.”

“Then you are an Oriental.”

The widow is English. It appears some English people are 'oriental' because they like some people and dislike others as if by instinct. However, in the Holy Quran, Muslims are warned against friendship (which is not the same as liking) even with other 'people of the Book'. 5:51 'Oh, believers, do not take the Jews or Christians as friends. They are but one another’s friends. If any one of you take them for his friends, he surely is one of them. Allah will not guide the evildoers.'

Interestingly, by the end of the Book, Mrs. Moore, the elderly widow, seems to have lost her Christian faith. It is suggested that, if, in limbo, her spiritual difficulties are dispelled, it is through some Hindu theistic ritual performed by the eccentric Prof. Godbole. Forster, it seems, had the certainty of being in the right which the Edwardians had inherited from the Victorians. There is a story about the Indian philosopher Surendra Nath Dasgupta who 'read a paper on the epistemology of Vedanta to a session of the Aristotelian Society in London. Moore’s only comment was: ‘I have nothing to offer myself. But I am sure that whatever Dasgupta says is absolutely false.’ The audience of British philosophers in attendance roared with laughter at the devastating ‘argument’ Moore had levelled against this Indian philosophical system.' Prior to the Great War, it was possible to believe that God was an Englishman and though the English could offer no explanation as to why this was so, they could be sure that anything foreigners thought or believed was absolutely false. 

Forster appears to have been influenced by Lowes Dickinson's jaundiced view of India- the Chinese were good chaps, the Japanese were a fine people, but the Indians were utterly shite- and he does sometimes use the term 'Oriental' in the racialist manner of the period. This is a typical expression of it.

Like most Orientals, Aziz overrated hospitality, mistaking it for intimacy, and not seeing that it is tainted with the sense of possession.

The British in India were very hospitable to each other. Indeed, as Forster would show, in a crisis, hospitality triumphed over notions of hierarchy. But such hospitality never involved 'intimacy'. Forster was a classicist. He knew the ancient Greek code of Xenia. There were mutual obligations between Host and Guest. But baring your soul was neither required nor greatly desired. Still, it might happen after strong drink was taken. In that case, the polite thing was to pretend to have forgotten the entire matter the next morning. 

What Forster is actually commenting on is the desire of those lower down in the social hierarchy to play host to those of a superior station. There is an obvious materialist motive to such tuft-hunting hospitality. Aziz desires 'nadims' (boon companions) but munadamah has nothing to do with hospitality. If you are wealthy, people will come to you for food and shelter while creating bonds of munadamah among themselves. If the rich turn niggardly, they may have to resort to the Tavern or the Tea Shop. 

I suppose, even today, an African or European visiting India may be annexed by a noveau riche family. They will be paraded around to show their neighbours that the family is connected to Yurop Amrika, Afrika, Jaapaan. But we find this type of one-upmanship involving hospitality to the alien more acutely in Benson's Mapp & Lucia stories where a dark skinned Indian Yogi is briefly lionized. Sadly, the fellow turns out to be a low caste curry-cook. He flees when he hears the wife of a former Governor of Madras is due to visit.

Aziz was educated in India, but his friend Habibullah is a Cambridge man, just like Forster. Yet, after Adela recants her testimony, he remains unsympathetic to her. Let us see what Forster has to say about a Cantabrian Oriental- like his friend Ross Massood.

 Miss Quested had not appealed to Hamidullah.

Nobody liked her. Yet, she is the purest acolyte, in Forster's fiction, of what Keynes called G.E Moore's religion which had so influenced Russell, Forster and the Bloomsbury set. 'It was not, to my mind, an attractive creed because it 'closely followed the English puritan tradition of being chiefly concerned with the salvation of our own souls.... There was not a very intimate connection between "being good" and "doing good" ... But religions proper, as distinct from modern "social service" pseudo-religions, have always been of that character; and perhaps it was a sufficient offset that our religion was altogether unworldly -- with wealth, power, popularity or success it had no concern whatever, they were thoroughly despised.'

It is easy to despise what you have a sufficiency of. Adela, like Forster himself, had just enough money not to be obliged to take uncongenial work. 

If she had shown emotion in court, broke down, beat her breast, and invoked the name of God, she would have summoned forth his imagination and generosity—he had plenty of both. But while relieving the Oriental mind, she had chilled it, with the result that he could scarcely believe she was sincere, and indeed from his standpoint she was not.

For Fielding, she is sincere. For the 'Oriental', Hamidullah, she is not.  Why? It turns out, in Forster's muddled mind, this had something to do with the Islamic rejection of Incarnation. 

For her behaviour rested on cold justice and honesty; she had felt, while she recanted, no passion of love for those whom she had wronged. Truth is not truth in that exacting land unless there go with it kindness and more kindness and kindness again, unless the Word that was with God also is God.

 So, a Christian country can be content with 'cold justice and honesty'. Muslims however don't have an incarnate Lord and Pantocrator and thus must have truth sugar coated in kindness and then dipped in the honey of yet more kindness before being covered in the chocolate of a kindliness specially imported from Belgium. 

But Islam has a Khalilullah (Abraham as the friend of God) just as much as it has a Hamidullah (Praise- God Barebone). 

And the girl’s sacrifice—so creditable according to Western notions—was rightly rejected, because, though it came from her heart, it did not include her heart. A few garlands from students was all that India ever gave her in return.

Her fiancee's  Native Christian servant did try to blackmail her by alleging she had an affair with Fielding. She didn't pay him off and so he blackguarded her to her fellow passengers and thus ruined her voyage home. Still, Adela is the one character in the novel who succeeds in getting the fuck out of India. As Mahatma Gandhi was telling the Viceroy at that time, nothing good comes of the mixing of the Europeans and the Asiatics. They merely take on each others' worst qualities. But this was also B.V. Keskar's point about the manner in which Muslim musicians had destroyed the pure, spiritual, Hindu, Shastric, music. Taking over A.I.R, he would ensure that Godbole's successors would learn to sing Tukaram's hymns in a purer style. What had previously been muddled would now be magisterial. As for the English Courts and Colleges and Hospitals and Houses of Parliament, the Hindus would quietly take them over and impose Sanskrit names on everything. The English language too would be Indianized. As Forster would complain, it had become unintelligible to the Englishman. 

Returning to the question of who is Forster's Oriental, we find it is, it can only be, Mrs. Moore. Aziz is a Muslim and Islam is an international religion- albeit one which, like the Brits, might have to pack its bags and clear out of India. Habibullah is a Cambridge educated barrister. Indeed, like Forster, he may have been an Apostle.  He will end up a High Court Judge and write concurring or dissenting judgments alongside Brother Judges named Burton or Turton. Mrs. Moore is oriental. She dies in that Red and incarnadine Sea which the Jews crossed dry-shod with Moses. 

Released from prison, Aziz says of her-

“I have seen her but three times, but I know she is an Oriental.”

“You are so fantastic. . . . Miss Quested, you won’t treat her generously; while over Mrs. Moore there is this elaborate chivalry. Miss Quested anyhow behaved decently this morning, whereas the old lady never did anything for you at all, and it’s pure conjecture that she would have come forward in your favour, it only rests on servants’ gossip. Your emotions never seem in proportion to their objects, Aziz.”

If emotions are kept in proportion to their objects then Benthamite Utilitarianism is a good enough theory. Even if 'higher' emotions represent Moore's 'intrinsic values' and are 'non-natural' (i.e. not reducible to objects), still, because proportionality is maintained, there is 'correlation' (or what we now call Granger Causality) such that, for all practical purposes, Utilitarianism of a sufficiently perspicacious type is a true theory.  

“Is emotion a sack of potatoes, so much the pound, to be measured out? Am I a machine? 

Aziz is expressing the disquiet felt by Moore & Russell at Victorian Utilitarianism. Were they able to overcome it? Keynes came to the view that, though Moore's religion, as a private matter, had inoculated the Apostles against Marxism, it failed as a public philosophy. 

One reason for this is because emotions can be 'non-rival' and 'non-excludable'- just like public goods. This takes us into the theory of externalities and preference revelation etc. Keynes's own contribution to Economics to point out there was a 'fallacy of composition'. Normally, it is good to save money. But if everybody saves money, there will be too little spending. Incomes will fall. Everybody is worse off. 

Aziz says 'I shall be told I can use up my emotions by using them, next.”

Having an emotion is 'economic' in the sense that there is an opportunity cost. But you can broaden or restrict the scope of your emotion 'for no extra charge'. 

“I should have thought you could. It sounds common sense. You can’t eat your cake and have it, even in the world of the spirit.”

But that which is spiritual, or- indeed- epistemic may be non-rival and non-excludable. If Russell learns Einstein's theory, it does not stop anyone, or everyone, from learning it.  Economic theory suggests that 'public goods' will be undersupplied by the market. This is a matter for public policy. There is a collective action problem or opportunity. Could Moore's Religion help? No. It was useless. In the Thirties, some who adhered to Forster's philosophy of 'only connect' also decided, as he had counselled, to betray their country rather than betray their friends- except, there were no friends. There was only the KGB and, behind it, the Gulag. 

“If you are right, there is no point in any friendship;

i.e. the Sufi conception of God as the friend, or the practices of the 'Society of Friends' (Quakers),  are egregious.

it all comes down to give and take, or give and return, which is disgusting, and we had better all leap over this parapet and kill ourselves.

God forbids suicide.  

Is anything wrong with you this evening that you grow so materialistic?”

Something was wrong. Mrs. Moore was dead. 

“Your unfairness is worse than my materialism.”

Injustice is indeed worse than acquisitiveness.  

“I see. Anything further to complain of?”

Complaint- 'shikva'- is a sign of intimacy. You complain if your wife ceases to complain about you. She says 'shut up!' and puts the baby in your lap and goes for her bath. Baby bites your nose. You are happy. There is a new tyrant (zalim) in your life of whom you can complain when he is asleep and thus deaf to entreaty. 

He was good-tempered and affectionate but a little formidable. Imprisonment had made channels for his character, which would never fluctuate as widely now as in the past.

Would that were true. Forster is in love with Aziz and will make him caper about in antic fashion till the end of the book.  I suppose, Forster had heard G.E Moore singing Ich grolle nicht. Sir Syed Ross Masood, even when transformed into the lower middle class Dr. Aziz, remains the zalim whose heart is harder than a diamond. Ghalib could have taken up the conceit from Heine. What makes them different  is the passion and seriousness Schumann brings to the lyric. Otherwise, as both Ghalib & Heine well knew, there are few maiden hearts upon which a 20 carat diamond ring can't inscribe a pledge of troth. 

“Because it is far better you put all your difficulties before me, if we are to be friends for ever. You do not like Mrs. Moore, and are annoyed because I do;

You are jelly. That means you love me. But we can all love each other. Did you know 'raqib' which means 'rival', when applied to God, actually means 'protector'? The existence of the rival spurs us on. Otherwise, we would grow complacent and take love for granted.  

however, you will like her in time.”

This is the pure Aligarh creed explained to me by a young Banker in 1982. Two people become friends. Then each seeks one more friend. Now there are four friends. Soon there will eight and then 16 and, by and by, the whole world will be connected through friendship.  

When a person, really dead, is supposed to be alive, an unhealthiness infects the conversation.

Save when we hear 'Christ is risen!; and reply 'He is risen indeed!'  

Fielding could not stand the tension any longer and blurted out: “I’m sorry to say Mrs. Moore’s dead.”

Two months later Godbole would see her. Perhaps she is in limbo or what the Muslims call 'barzakh' and the Hindus 'antarabhava'. Godbole believes he is the instrument by which her Spiritual difficulties are dispelled.  

But Hamidullah, who had been listening to all their talk, and did not want the festive evening spoilt, cried from the adjoining bed: “Aziz, he is trying to pull your leg; don’t believe him, the villain.”

“I do not believe him,” said Aziz; he was inured to practical jokes, even of this type.

Fielding said no more. Facts are facts, and everyone would learn of Mrs. Moore’s death in the morning. But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality. An experience of his own confirmed this. Many years ago he had lost a great friend, a woman, who believed in the Christian heaven, and assured him that after the changes and chances of this mortal life they would meet in it again. Fielding was a blank, frank atheist, but he respected every opinion his friend held: to do this is essential in friendship. And it seemed to him for a time that the dead awaited him, and when the illusion faded it left behind it an emptiness that was almost guilt: “This really is the end,” he thought, “and I gave her the final blow.” He had tried to kill Mrs. Moore this evening, on the roof of the Nawab Bahadur’s house;

Why?  Aziz and the Indians seemed to be attributing Adela's recantation to Mrs. Moore's spiritual influence. But, that is the picture Forster himself conveys to his readers. Adela has an echo ringing in her ears. When she says 'maybe Aziz didn't do it' it eases. Mrs. Moore seems to understand the nature of the echo. She flatly declares that Aziz didn't do it. Her son bundles her out of the country lest she be called as a witness. The Superintendent of Police (who ought not to be prosecuting the case because a senior barrister was appearing for the Defence) made the mistake of mentioning Mrs. Moore. This meant the Defence could demand her appearance. The crowd takes up the demand 'Esmiss Esmoore!' Hearing this chant enables Adela to see more clearly, with her mind's eye, what actually happened. She recants and the echo disappears. 

Forster's character, Fielding, can't know what the author has told the reader. It appears he thinks that 'killing Mrs. Moore' will cause Aziz to think less of her and more of Adela. He will see that it was Adela who had restored his freedom. The problem here is that she- by virtue of belonging to the Occidental community- was the one who had put him in jail. This was a case where the Orientals had to stick together just as the Occidentals stuck together. Mrs. Moore, in this case, is Oriental. What of Fielding? He too affirmed Aziz's innocence and had to resign from the Club. Had the trial had a different outcome, his career in India would have been over. Instead, because Aziz was exonerated, his stock had risen. Yet, because he remains in India (as, sadly, Mrs. Moore's other two children now seem destined to do) his fate is to become more and more Occidental. Why? Godbole's school is a sham. The Indians are hopeless. The White Man must keep carrying his burden even if, ultimately, it crushes him. 

but she still eluded him, and the atmosphere remained tranquil. Presently the moon rose—the exhausted crescent that precedes the sun—and shortly after men and oxen

and Civil Servants and School Masters 

began their interminable labour, and the gracious interlude, which he had tried to curtail, came to its natural conclusion.

The natural conclusion of the 'Sahib's' life was to return to a penurious retirement in England where the butcher and the baker would show him scant respect. 

Forster, thankfully, wasn't a Sahib. But, like Moore, he seems to have believed that what one knew must always accord with one's belief. Perhaps there really is an 'Oriental' type of mind capable of affirming 'Moorean sentences'.

Aziz did not believe his own suspicions—better if he had, for then he would have denounced and cleared the situation up.

Forster had shown White officials operating on the basis of suspicions which they did not themselves believe. Why? Their behaviour was strategic. Having a suspicion and it being common knowledge you have that suspicion alters outcomes. This was certainly the case for the Boarding School Master. Kipling and others have suggested that suspicion of 'beastliness' could itself create that which it sought to detect and curb. Boys who would not have thought of buggering each other might take up that hobby if the beaks keep banging on about it.     

Suspicion and belief could in his mind exist side by side.

As could morality and spirituality and a sense of humour. Fielding, however, tells Aziz that he himself is absolutely devoid of morals. Such statements provoke suspicion. Indeed, the beak who pretends to be friendly with the boys, may well be spying on them. 

They sprang from different sources, and need never intermingle.

This is always the case. Suspicion is aroused where things appear different from what they ought to be. We start considering why this is the case and formulate hypothesis. The one in which we place most credence is our belief. But beliefs can be strategic or imperative.  

Suspicion in the Oriental is a sort of malignant tumour, a mental malady,

This is paranoia. It can afflict a person of any background.  

that makes him self-conscious and unfriendly suddenly; he trusts and mistrusts at the same time in a way the Westerner cannot comprehend.

Westerners, like Easterners, understand paranoia well enough. I suppose an alterity can become the object of intense suspicion even in the absence of any mental illness. What is more typical of paranoia, as Freud observed, is to believe one you love is trying to kill you. Perhaps, this is because that person has been replaced by a machine. I suppose the Moorean religion was a defence against our own ipseity being  replaced by a machine such that we do an injury to our friends. 

Apart from Mrs. Moore, there is one other 'Oriental' in the novel. It is her younger son- who seems a bit of a moon-calf. Aziz has been unkind to him. Abruptly, he says-

“Don’t you think me unkind any more?”
“No.”
“How can you tell, you strange fellow?”
“Not difficult, the one thing I always know.”
“Can you always tell whether a stranger is your friend?”

“Yes.”
“Then you are an Oriental.”

Some cats know whom they can trust to look after them. But not all such cats are Persian or Siamese.

He unclasped as he spoke, with a little shudder. Those words—he had said them to Mrs. Moore in the mosque in the beginning of the cycle, from which, after so much suffering, he had got free. Never be friends with the English! Mosque, caves, mosque, caves. And here he was starting again. He handed the magic ointment to him.

He had promised to return it to its owner but ends up giving it away. 

“Take this, think of me when you use it. I shall never want it back. I must give you one little present, and it is all I have got;

it wasn't his 

you are Mrs. Moore’s son.”

“I am that,” he murmured to himself; and a part of Aziz’ mind that had been hidden seemed to move and force its way to the top.

“But you are Heaslop’s brother also, and alas, the two nations cannot be friends.”

Heaslop may have ended up a Judge. Some such were asked to stay on after Independence. Why? They were trusted not to be partial to those of their own caste or creed. But this was only because no such people were left in India. 

“I know. Not yet.”

“Did your mother speak to you about me?”

“Yes.” And with a swerve of voice and body that Aziz did not follow he added, “In her letters, in her letters. She loved you.”

“Yes, your mother was my best friend in all the world.” He was silent, puzzled by his own great gratitude. What did this eternal goodness of Mrs. Moore amount to? To nothing, if brought to the test of thought. She had not borne witness in his favour, nor visited him in the prison, yet she had stolen to the depths of his heart, and he always adored her. “This is our monsoon, the best weather,” he said, while the lights of the procession waved as though embroidered on an agitated curtain. “How I wish she could have seen them, our rains. Now is the time when all things are happy, young and old. They are happy out there with their savage noise, though we cannot follow them; the tanks are all full so they dance, and this is India. 

It is a season. All countries are India in that respect. What makes it unique is Hinduism.

Fielding says to Aziz-

“I can’t explain, because it isn’t in words at all, but why do my wife and her brother like Hinduism, though they take no interest in its forms? They won’t talk to me about this. They know I think a certain side of their lives is a mistake, and are shy. That’s why I wish you would talk to them, for at all events you’re Oriental.”

Forster took passage to India thrice but Hindu India eluded him on the first two occasions. The third time was in 1945. He attended a PEN conference in Jaipur and rubbed shoulders with Nehru and Sarojini Naidu and Radhakrishnan- all of whom were Brahmin. Churchill had warned against Brahmin hegemony in 1931. The thing had never been elusive. It was just something better left unpursued unless, obviously, you happened to be George Harrison and Ravi Shankar was happy to teach you to play the sitar. 

After the trial, Fielding says he hopes Aziz will write poetry of a new type

“I was a child when you knew me first. Everyone was my friend then. The Friend: a Persian expression for God. But I do not want to be a religious poet either.”

Mithra is the Sanskrit word for Friend. Mithra is also the Indo-Iranian God of contracts. There was a temple to Mithra in London in Roman times. 

“I hoped you would be.”

“Why, when you yourself are an atheist?”

“There is something in religion that may not be true, but has not yet been sung.”

“Explain in detail.”

“Something that the Hindus have perhaps found.”

“Let them sing it.”

“Hindus are unable to sing.”

Yet, Godbole sang as G.E. Moore had sung. Still, 'Deccani Brahmins' like Keskar and Paluskar, ensured that Indian music would become more strictly 'Shastric'- that is orthodox and Hindu. 

Ray Monk, the biographer of Wittgenstein, met Frances Partridge- who was invariably described as “the last surviving member of the Bloomsbury Group”-  in the 1980s.  He tells us that' One day, the conversation got onto the Bloomsbury Group’s veneration of GE Moore and I confessed that I had never understood why Moore was regarded as a great philosopher. In response, she leaned across the table, placed her hand gently on mine and said, “Well, you see, my dear, he sang so beautifully!”

Forster describes Godbole's song thus- 

His thin voice rose, and gave out one sound after another. At times there seemed rhythm, at times there was the illusion of a Western melody.

Western music is harmonic though it permits the illusion of melody. Indian music is melodic though it can be harmonized easily enough. What Western ears may find baffling is 'pitch'.  

But the ear, baffled repeatedly, soon lost any clue, and wandered in a maze of noises, none harsh or unpleasant, none intelligible. It was the song of an unknown bird.

Not really. Outside the Western musical canon, pitch ratios aren't restricted to a major and a minor scale. The bird is familiar enough. It has merely been excluded from the regimented choir.  

Only the servants

the natives 

understood it. They began to whisper to one another. The man who was gathering water chestnut came naked out of the tank, his lips parted with delight, disclosing his scarlet tongue. The sounds continued and ceased after a few moments as casually as they had begun—apparently half through a bar, and upon the subdominant.

In other words, the raag ends on madhyama svara. But which one is it? Kalyan? 

Godbole explains his song- 

 “I will explain in detail. It was a religious song. I placed myself in the position of a milkmaiden. I say to Shri Krishna, ‘Come! come to me only.’ The god refuses to come. I grow humble and 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.’ He refuses to come. This is repeated several times. The song is composed in a raga appropriate to the present hour, which is the evening.”

“But He comes in some other song, I hope?” said Mrs. Moore gently.

“Oh no, he refuses to come,” repeated Godbole, perhaps not understanding her question. “I say to Him, Come, come, come, come, come, come. He neglects to come.”

Both Godbole and Aziz fall ill after this soiree. When his friends come to visit him, Aziz provides them with the Islamic equivalent of the Hindu chant.

He held up his hand, palm outward, his eyes began to glow, his heart to fill with tenderness. Issuing still farther from his quilt, he recited a poem by Ghalib.

Who said Hind is an Eden with no Adam in it. 

It had no connection with anything that had gone before, but it came from his heart and spoke to theirs. They were overwhelmed by its pathos; pathos, they agreed, is the highest quality in art; a poem should touch the hearer with a sense of his own weakness, and should institute some comparison between mankind and flowers.

There are none such in Ghalib.  

The squalid bedroom grew quiet; the silly intrigues, the gossip, the shallow discontent were stilled, while words accepted as immortal filled the indifferent air. Not as a call to battle, but as a calm assurance came the feeling that India was one; Moslem; always had been; an assurance that lasted until they looked out of the door. Whatever Ghalib had felt, he had anyhow lived in India, and this consolidated it for them: he had gone with his own tulips and roses,

Ghalib says only a few manifested as tulips and roses. What other faces there may have been remain the close secret of the dust. 

but tulips and roses do not go.

Yes, they do. They are seasonal and, in any case, weeds and deserts encroach 

And the sister kingdoms of the north—

the West 

Arabia, Persia, Ferghana, Turkestan—stretched out their hands as he sang, sadly, because all beauty is sad, and greeted ridiculous Chandrapore, where every street and house was divided against itself, and told her that she was a continent and a unity.

Ghalib was a pensioner of the British. The Mutiny had been disastrous for him.  

The poem had done no “good” to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved. 

Mohammad Ali Jauhar, the younger of the Ali brothers of Khilafat fame, would quote Browning- still very fashionable at Oxford in the 1890s- at even greater length. I suppose, had he buttonholed Forster, he'd given him an earful of Browning's 'Fears & Scruples' about the unseen friend whose letters are so beautiful but who might be- what? - not 'busied with our betters' but, more humiliatingly, just God. The Orient is merely where dawn strikes the horizon. When beheld, it is a reminder, that elsewhere there is darkness. Forster's book came out four or five years after Spengler's  Der Untergang des Abendlandes;  "The Going-Under of the Evening Lands". Meanwhile Ind's night was 'aabastan'- pregnant- with what Faiz would call the 'Night gnawed' Dawn- of a parturition that was Partition or as the Mahatma said, more of a vivisection than a Caesarean birth. With that, England could be done with Orientalism though no doubt, it needed wogs- more particularly those with Medical degrees- for its National Health Service. Nothing wrong with that at all.