A Passage to India - Judgement on Indian Behaviour

'Aziz was innocent and all actions must be based on that, and the people who said he was guilty were wrong and it was hopeless to try to propitiate them. At the moment when he was throwing in his lot with Indians, he realized the profundity of the gulf that divided him from them. They always do something disappointing. Aziz had tried to run away from the police, Mohammed Latid had not checked the pilfering. And now Hamidullah! - instead of raging and denouncing, he temprized. Are Indians cowards? No, but they are bad starters and occasionally jib. Fear is everywhere; the British Raj rests on it; the respect and courtesy Fielding himself enjoyed were unconscious acts of propitiation.' - p.182