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In this novel Forster has captured for us a glimpse of the life in India as he had seen it between 1922 and 1924. He has observed very minutely the Englishman's contempt for the Indians and the Indian's mistrust of the Englishman. He has shown in his novel, how the British Empire was built and how the mere keeping of the place by the use of force was no lasting solution to Indian question.
The arrest of Aziz on a charge of attempted rape brings to the surface the pent-up feelings of the Indians. Forster exploits this situation to give us a vivid description of the reactions of the different communities. Both, the British and the Indian communities seemed to have been possessed by the devil and behaved in a man that bar was unbecoming.
The ruler and the ruled are depicted as two distinct classes in this novel. The British officials have their own club to which Indian are not allowed. The British officials live in a cleaner locality whereas the Indian officers live in homes which are not very clean. Even when the Indians are competent in their work, they have to suffer humiliation at the hands of their English boss. Thus Dr. Aziz was asked to meet his boss at his residence and when he went to meet him he had left for the club. The Doctor was further humiliated when the Major's wife and her friend took his tonga without his permission. Thus the scene leading to the trial of Aziz and its aftermath are the result of this gulf between the two communities.