Today when we are reading universalist Jewish voices like Avnery and Levy to lift ourselves from despair at the grim scenes in the Middle East, a friend sent along this passage from A Passage to India, the 1924 classic of politicized race relations, by E.M. Forster. Set in India during the British colonialist era, the book involves a false accusation against an Indian man, Dr. Aziz, for an assault on a young English woman. The charge splits the communities of Brits and Indians. This passage is about an encounter between a reasonable Englishman who has taken Aziz's side, and a racist official, the British collector.
"The Collector looked at him sternly, because he was keeping his head. He had not gone mad at the phrase 'an English girl fresh from England,' he had not rallied to the banner of race. He was still after facts, though the herd had decided on emotion. Nothing enrages Anglo-India more than the lantern of reason if it is exhibited for one moment after its extinction is decreed. All over Chandrapore that day the Europeans were putting aside their normal personalities and sinking themselves in their community. Pity, wrath, heroism, filled them, but the power of putting two and two together was annihilated."
