Cultura

Faith, Empire, and Fragmented Selves: Religious Symbolism and Cultural Conflict in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India

VOLUME 23, 2026

The Role of Targeted Infra-popliteal Endovascular Angioplasty to Treat Diabetic Foot Ulcers Using the Angiosome Model: A Systematic Review

VOLUME 6, 2023

Dr. Khaleel Bakheet Khaleel Ismail

Abstract

  1. M. Forster's A Passage to India (1924) is both a critique of Colonialism and a spiritual analysis that shows how British imperialism creates epistemic, cultural, and psychological rifts and reveals India's irreducible sacredness. The novel, set against the historical context of the Amritsar Massacre (1919) and the Non-Cooperation Movement of Gandhi (1920-22), dramatizes the ineffectiveness of liberal humanism in mediating cross-cultural understanding during the Empire. To analyze the intersection of faith, Empire, and fragmented subjectivity, this research paper takes a two-fold theoretical perspective, combining postcolonial theory (Said, Bhabha, Fanon, Spivak) with symbolic-phenomenological approaches to religion (Eliade, Ricoeur, Geertz). The close readings of the mosque, the Marabar Caves, and the temple reveal how sacred spaces act as hierophanies, limit-symbols, and locations of cultural performance that are resistant to colonial rationalization and epistemic absorption. Dr. Aziz, who moves between friendship and resentment, Mrs. Moore, who experiences a spiritual burst, and Adela Quested, who is psychologically thrown into confusion by the domination of the imperial power, are all examples of the zones of nonbeing, where Fanon focuses his attention, and can be seen as an illustration of the psychic impact of imperial domination. Rituals like the Gokul Ashtami festival are interpreted as Geertzian deep play that performs polysemic resistance against the simplification of the Orient. The paper sheds light on how Forster anticipates both the existential vulnerability and toughness of people during Colonialism by foregrounding epistemic violence, gendered power, and performative spirituality as the novel's primary themes. After all, A Passage to India stands as an essential reflection on the boundaries of Empire, the inexplicability of faith, and the ever-present possibilities of intercultural comprehension, and it presents a crucial understanding of the ongoing interventions of religion, politics, and the self in the postcolonial world.
Keywords : Postcolonialism, Orientalism, Sacred Space, Fragmented Subjectivity, Ritual Resistance, Imperial Epistemology.
Erin Saricilar
Lecture in accounting. University of Basrah, College of Administration and Economics, Department of Accounting.

Abstract

Atherosclerotic disease significantly impacts patients with type 2 diabetes, who often present with recalcitrant peripheral ulcers. The angiosome model of the foot presents an opportunity to perform direct angiosome-targeted endovascular interventions to maximise both wound healing and limb salvage. A systematic review was performed, with 17 studies included in the final review. Below-the-knee endovascular interventions present significant technical challenges, with technical success depending on the length of lesion being treated and the number of angiosomes that require treatment. Wound healing was significantly improved with direct angiosome-targeted angioplasty, as was limb salvage, with a significant increase in survival without major amputation. Indirect angioplasty, where the intervention is applied to collateral vessels to the angiosomes, yielded similar results to direct angiosome-targeted angioplasty. Applying the angiosome model of the foot in direct angiosome-targeted angioplasty improves outcomes for patients with recalcitrant diabetic foot ulcers in terms of primary wound healing, mean time for complete wound healing and major amputation-free survival.
Keywords : Diabetic foot ulcer, angiosome, angioplasty