What does the cave symbolize?

Foster identifies caves as a prime example of symbols in E.M. Foster's A Passage to India. Here caves can take on multiple meanings according to various characters' interactions with them. Possible meanings include: a means of accessing innermost subconscious; colonialism and hypocrisy; fear and darkness.

"The only thing we are sure of about the cave as symbol is that it keeps its secrets...What the cave symbolizes will be determined to a large extent by how the individual reader engages the text" (p 102-103, Chapter 12 - Is That a Symbol?).