Harry Potter school expels poet Kipling’s Gunga Din
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and wrote If, which remains among the nation’s favourite poems.
But Rudyard Kipling’s accomplishments appear to count for little in 21st-century Britain.
Less than a month after I disclosed that the BBC had expunged another of his most celebrated poems, Mandalay, from its commemoration of the 75th anniversary of VJ Day, I can reveal that Kipling has fallen out of favour at the Dragon, the famous £31,686-a-year Oxford prep school.
The Dragon, whose alumni include Harry Potter star emma watson and Hugh Laurie, has decided that the senior boys’ boarding house — named Gunga Din for more than 80 years — will henceforth be known as Dragon House, because, it says: ‘ “Gunga” has now become derogatory, and even used as a racial slur.’
explaining the decision, the governors acknowledge that the original name ‘comes from the eponymous poem by Rudyard Kipling’ telling the story of Gunga Din, an Indian ‘bhishti’ or water-carrier.
Despite being insulted, maligned and mistreated, the governors say, Gunga Din remains faithful to those he serves and dies while attempting to save the english soldier who narrates the poem and who says in its final line: ‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!’
emphasising that the name Gunga
Din was originally chosen ‘to highlight the higher ideals of equality, fairness and human dignity’, the governors add that ‘these align with today’s core Dragon values of kindness, courage and respect’.
But, claiming that ‘Gunga’ has now become derogatory, the governors add that ‘such potentially offensive language is against the Dragon’s ethos of inclusivity and diversity’, and, therefore, ‘ is no longer appropriate’.
SaIRaUppal, the Dragon’s director of development and external relations, tells me: ‘ The change is not in response to any comment or complaint,’ but explains: ‘ we are responsive to sensitivities which exist today.’
One furious former pupil wrote to the school to express their ‘ utter outrage at the craven and absurd decision’ to rename the boarding house. ‘You have chosen to give way to ignorance and the misguided forces of political correctness . . .
‘ This decision has let down generations of Dragons.
‘It has made me ashamed to call myself an OD and I never thought I would say that.’
Kipling biographer andrew Lycett, who knows of ‘no evidence that Gunga is used as a racial slur’, tells me that, despite the name change, he hopes pupils continue to study the author and the poem.