A letter from E.M. Forster
I met him at Cambridge in 1952. His impact on me was among the great blessings of my life.
History is being made in the United States of America following the gruesome murder of a black man, George Floyd by a brutal police officer in Minneapolis. Black and white protesters have been peacefully marching in cities across the US. The murder was caught on TV. For nine minutes the oversized rabidly racist police officer dug his knee into the neck of George Floyd, who kept wailing, “I can’t breathe”. The other three police officers stood and watched.
President Trump has called the peaceful protesters, leftist terrorists. Even the retired senior Army generals have condemned the President’s racist mindset. Such insensitivity to, such indifference on so vital and disturbing a murder is unprecedented in recent times. 66% Americans do not approve of Mr Trump’s mishandling of the grave situation America is confronted with. Even big business houses like General Motors have spoken against what happened in Minneapolis.
Only one Republican senator has criticised President
Trump, who has vowed to ensure her defeat in the elections in November. Racism at all levels is rampant in Mr Trump’s America.
Mercifully the media, particularly CNN has been unsparing in its condemnation of the President. This is not only a race issue, it is also a humanitarian one.
The main culprit is in jail accused of murder. He will probably and rightly spend the rest of his life there. The other three accomplices too have been arrested. What is needed urgently is the drastic reform of the US police establishment. This, unfortunately, is unlikely in the near future.
A***
Fifty five years ago, on this day, E.M. Forster died at the age of 91. Appraised by any standard of reference, I would without the least hesitation include him in the list of the greatest novelists of the 20th century. His Passage to India, published in 1924, still has huge sales.
I met him at Cambridge in 1952. His impact on my character and intellect was among the great blessings of my life. It was from my friendship with him that I learnt the value of personal relations. Let me quote from his essay, “What I believe”: “One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life, and it is therefore essential that they should not let one down. They often do. The moral of which is that I must be as reliable as possible, and this I try to be…”
It was from him that I first heard the names of Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao and Ahmed Ali. All became my lifelong friends. In the summer of 1963, Raja Rao met me in New York at the home of Santha Rama Rao, at the time the best known Indian author in the United States. Raja Rao suggested a book of tributes by Indian writers be published on Forster’s 85th birthday, which fell on 1.1.1964. Who to include beside the three of us? We agreed on Mulk Raj Anand, Ahmed Ali and Narayan Menon. I was asked to edit the book. Who would publish the book? I approached Forster’s American publishers, Harcourt Brace and Ivaonovich. I informed Forster. He wrote back on May 1, 1963,
“My dear Natwar,
“What an agreeable idea, and may I be here in 1964 the more fully to appreciate it. It would be excellent to include, with a covering word, my words about Gandhiji for I don’t think they are widely known.”
This I did.
I give a couple of portions from his speech. “But although, neither grief nor pity are in place this evening, we may well entertain a feeling of awe and a sense our own smallness. When news came to me last week, I realized intensely how small I was, how small those around me were, how impotent and circumscribed are the lives of most of us spiritually, and how in comparison with that mature goodness the so-called great men of our age are no more than blustering schoolboys…then think anew of the career and character of Mahatma Gandhi, and a feeling of awe will return with a salutary shock…though he impinged on events and influenced politics, he stood outside time, and drew strength thence…”
The tribute book appeared on 1 January 1964. It was reviewed in nearly 75 papers and magazines all over the US. Most carried my photo with Forster (produced in this column).
The Wall Street Journal wrote, “Few men of the West, none of them statesman, or in what C.P. Snow calls the corridors of power can have had as much praises and of such a kind from the East…”
***
Ved Marwah was three years junior to me in St. Stephen’s College. We had been friends ever since. He was an outstanding IPS officer, a respected Governor. He passed away in Goa on Friday the 5th, at the age of 87. My condolences to Kamala, his wife, and the family.