Benedict/Passage to India Connection

I cannot help but see the ways in which "Patterns of Culture" provides timely ethnographic background to understand the disconnection between British and Indian culture in the sections of "Passage to India" that we watched the other evening. One scene of the film, however, fascinates me more than the others for I have long felt that our unctuous export of a Christian belief system is the most damaging and detrimental cultural aspect we've foisted on any other people. There were many references to religion in the movie bits we saw, but the scene that keeps coming to mind was the one where Adela is in the train being shuttled to the 'trial'--the point at which the rather demonic devil-like creature in painted black-face presses his face against the window next to hers (only to be bludgeoned down). I was intrigued enough to buy the novel (which I do want to read) so I could find out if that scene was included in the text. It was not (at least not at that moment in the narrative). So I wonder about Lean's insertion of it into the film. One could view it as tacit acknowledgment of some of the shamanistic/mystic/devil-worshiping aspects of Indian religion, therefore an open-minded nod to another culture's belief system. Yet the scene was fraught with negative connotations. The face was sudden, monstrous in size, black, unrelenting, unsettling. It was definitely 'other' to a Western viewer and presented in the manner that it was, it was diabolical and scary. So when I read Ruth Benedict's statement regarding religion, "No ideas or institutions that held in the one were valid in the other. . . on the one side it was a question of Divine Truth and the true believer, of revelation and of God; on the other it was a matter of mortal error, of fables, of the damned and of devils," the inclusion of the scene appears to be a graphic act of ethnocentrism. By tapping into a Westerner's stereotype of a dark and primitive religion, Lean created a metaphor for the dark side of Adela's psyche in that moment--her brooding, anst-ridden state of mind. The group of people sequestered within the safety of the bus were veiled in light, the teaming horde of humanity on the outside were cast as a fecund sort of dark evil that could invade the safety of the "true believers." Maybe I exaggerate, but the sheer intensity of the scene makes me wonder. Was anyone else strongly affected by these frames? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Ruth