Cultural Misunderstanding in A Passage to India One of the main themes of EM Forster's novel A Passage to India is cultural misunderstanding. Differing cultural ideas and expectations regarding hospitality, social proprieties, and the role of religion in daily life are responsible for misunderstandings between English and Indian Muslims, between English and Indian Hindus, and between Muslims and Hindus. Aziz tells Fielding at the end of the novel, "It is no use discussing Hindus with me. Living with them teaches me nothing else. When I think of annoying them, I don't. When I think of not annoying them, I do." (319). Forster demonstrates how these repeated misunderstandings turn into cultural stereotypes and are often used to justify the futility of attempts to bridge cultural chasms. When Aziz offers his collar button to Fielding in an 'effusive' act of friendship, Heaslop later misinterprets Aziz's missing button as an oversight and extends it as a general example: "...there's the Indian everywhere: inattention to detail; the fundamental slowness that racing reveals" (82). The cultural misunderstanding culminates in the Marabar Caves experience and one thing this episode seems to reveal is how the cultural misunderstanding, especially of the Indians by the English, is deliberate, even necessary. If the English really tried to understand the Indians, the cultural barriers might weaken and the English might start to see their equal humanity and this would obviously make the British role as a conquering ruler more difficult. This is why Mrs. Moore is so revered by Aziz and other Indians. She's too new a visitor to have hardened, not having been there the six months Aziz was and... halfway through the paper... it got even more unpleasant and scary. She cared much more now than then. He could forget the crowds and the smells, but the echoes began in some indescribable way to undermine his grip on life. Arriving at the moment when she was tired, he managed to murmur: "Pathos, pity, courage, they exist, but they are identical, and so is dirt." Everything exists, nothing has value.' If in that place someone had spoken of vulgarity or quoted elevated poetry, the comment would have been the same: "ou-boum". If one had spoken with the tongues of angels and had supplicated for all the misery and misunderstandings of the world, past, present and future, for all the misery that men must suffer whatever their opinion and position, and however much they avoid and bluffno- it would be the same, the snake would descend and return to the ceiling" (149-50).