What really happened in the Marabar Caves? This mystery in A Passage to India highlights an even larger question: can an Englishman and an Indian be friends? Arguably Forster's greatest novel, A Passage to India is a troubling portrait of colonialism at its worst. Here the personal becomes the political, and in the breach between Aziz and his English "friends," Forster foreshadows the eventual end of British rule in India.