Passage to Tobago

“... India is full of such wonders, but she can’t give them to me.”

– EM Forster speaking in relation to his novel, A Passage to India, 1924

EDWARD MORGAN Forster was born in London in 1879, the son of an architect. Educated at Cambridge University, he is described as a “British novelist, essayist, and social and literary critic.”

He was part of a group of novelists and other intellectuals writing in the post-Victorian era (1830s-1901) that sought to critically examine and challenge notions of class, morals and values that were predominant during the reign of Queen Victoria. They came to be known as the Bloomsbury group and included “novelist Virginia Woolf ... economist John Maynard Keynes, and philosopher GE Moore.”

Although Forster and the others sought to reject certain established behaviours such as social snobbery, it is not surprising that he found India to be “a mystery and a muddle.” It was the height of the British Empire, where, from 1815-1914, “10 million square miles of territory and 400 million people were added to the British Empire ... Britain was the ‘Mother Country’ of a worldwide empire which covered a fifth of the land in the world ...”

India was an important part of that empire, but the colonial relationship was characterised by underlying tensions of race and class.

It became fashionable for the British to travel to India, but unequal power relations and cultural differences contributed to these tensions. Forster’s confusion is seen in his reflections on a place in India called Ujjain, when he says that “there was no place for anything, and nothing was in its place. There was no time either ... I asked the driver what kind of trees those were, and he answered ‘Trees;’ what was the name of that bird, and he said ‘Bird.’”

The name Galleon’s Passage fuelled my musings on Forster and his seminal novel. Not just the name, but the fact that we in TT seem to still be struggling to define the relationship between our two islands. From the settlement of First Peoples through to enslavement, both were governed separately. Tobago was annexed as a ward of Trinidad in 1889, making TT a single colony under colonial rule.

However, though legally one, our history, culture and social norms remained markedly different. While the relationship is not quite an imperialist one, the sense of detachment is still acute.

Culturally, I was privileged to learn of historical legends like Ma Rose from the plantation in Charlotteville who preferred to jump off the cliffs rather than endure physical and other abuse under enslavement. And about Gang Gang Sara who climbed the silk cotton tree in an attempt to fly back home to Africa, but who fell to her death because she had eaten salt. And the Tobago dances that seamlessly merge African and European influences. And the fact there were even more rebellions across Tobago in resistance to enslavement than in Trinidad.

But, formal education did not provide these insights. Rather my upbringing exposed me to this other aspect of my country, and even so, there is still a great deal more understanding that must take place.

I wondered therefore, are we still in an “unexplainable muddle” about each other? Are the seemingly perpetual boat dramas a metaphor for the current state of the relationship between our two islands? Perhaps.

Prof Edward Said, now deceased, was renowned for the thought-provoking book Orientalism, and his intellectual probing of western perceptions of other cultures, particularly those from the East. He maintained that literature like Passage to India placed an emphasis on the exotic and missed important cultural nuances, because of the perspective of the person writing the piece. Indeed, he referred to such works as “an act of evasion rather than understanding.”

Could this be the crux of the tenuous relations between us? Do we avoid rather than try to understand? Or is it because we do not understand we avoid? Do we even want to explore our cultural ties for national development?

Forster’s confusion over the nuances of dialect in Ujjain may be excused because of his almost complete cultural separation from India. In TT we have no such reason to continue the distance. The boats may well symbolise lack of political will to bring us together, but the cultural connection between Trinis and “Ah We” people still has the potential to cement our relationship. For me, there is no muddle about the solution; rather it is very clear indeed.

Dara Healy is a performance artist and founder of the NGO, the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN