A Passage to India is frequently cited as Forster's best work. It is praised for its intelligent and sensitive portraits of race relations and prejudice in British colonial India, as well as for its larger spiritual themes and for its beauty, economy, and polish as a work of art.
Despite its political overtones, A Passage to India was already somewhat politically dated at the time of its publication. The situation in India had begun to change, in part because World War I had affected the British Empire and in part because of the early independence movements in India. What had not changed were the colonialist attitudes portrayed in the book. Conflicts between people of different races and religions remained relevant, as they do today. At the heart of all Forster's novels lie the relationships between human beings, the fragility—and in the case of A Passage to India, the impossibility—of friendship between the rulers and the ruled. For Forster, the most damning aspects of colonialism were the facts that it divided human beings, kept potential friends apart, and prevented understanding between people of different races or cultures.
With a certain amount of irony, Forster named his book after a poem by American poet Walt Whitman.
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