# Professor Godbole — A Passage to India character guide

> Professor Godbole in A Passage to India by E. M. Forster.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Godbole, old Godbole, poor old Godbole, Professor Narayan Godbole, Dear old Godbole, funny old Godbole

**First appearance:** 0004-ii

## Snapshot

A Brahman professor of philosophy whose serene detachment and strange, song-filled Hinduism unsettle every tidy English assumption about India.

## Who they are

Godbole teaches at Fielding's college, moving through Chandrapore with an otherworldly calm that both charms and baffles his British colleagues. He is a man of ceremony and abstraction, capable of forgetting a name mid-sentence yet wholly absorbed in the divine; his religious sensibility is not a set of beliefs but an atmosphere. His presence in the novel's middle chapters offers a third way of seeing, neither Anglo nor Muslim, that quietly reframes what the story's conflicts are even about.

## In the story

### [VII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/vii)

Observes the scene quietly and sings at the end, baffling the English listeners.

### [IX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/ix)

Reported ill with diarrhoea, discussed with communal bias.

### [Chapter X](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/x)

Implied as part of the group of seven gentlemen.

### [XIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xiii)

Misses the train because he miscalculates the length of a prayer; his religious practice causes the delay.

### [XIV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xiv)

Mentioned as having never mentioned the echo in the caves; Aziz is lost without him.

### [XIX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xix)

Engages Fielding in a trivial discussion about naming a school, seemingly indifferent to Aziz's crisis.

### [Chapter XXI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xxi)

Has already gone to bed and slips off to his new job.

### [Chapter XXX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xxx)

Mentioned as having informed Das about Aziz's poetry; described as a poet himself, now in Mau.

### [Part III: Temple](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/part-iii-temple)

Leads the Hindu religious ceremony of Gokul Ashtami, embodying the spiritual and mystical elements of the chapter.

### [Chapter XXXIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xxxiii)

Leads the choir and participates in the Krishna birth festival; experiences a spiritual vision of Mrs. Moore and a wasp.

### [Chapter XXXIV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xxxiv)

Now a devotee in Mau, participating in a festival. He informs Aziz of Fielding's arrival but is too absorbed in religious duties to take action.

### [Chapter XXXV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xxxv)

Mentioned as the minister Aziz wrote to about the torchlight procession, but he took no notice.

### [Chapter XXXVI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xxxvi)

Seen during the festival, waving his arms as the boat drifts near the procession.

### [XXXVII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/chapters/xxxvii)

Mentioned as having promised to show Fielding the school but making excuses; his spiritual influence is noted indirectly.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/characters/godbole
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_passage_to_india_se/characters