KIPLING’S LEGACY: FOR GENERATIONS TO JUDGE
How should history remember Rudyard Kipling? Whose distinctive verses praising the colonial rule was often overshadowed by his prose
It is often said that in good literature, there is no black and white. There exists no tangible boundary to differentiate between people on either side of the supposed line — the good and the bad. But it is not just imagination that deviates from this thought, real life, too, keeps away from it. And that is what makes Rudyard Kipling’s legacy interesting. December 30 would mark the 154th birth anniversary of the author and ever since his death, he has been subject to numerous criticisms ranging far and wide from being a supporter of Reginald Dyer to attempts to discredit his work by British students as recently as 2018.
THE ISLAND CITY’S SON
“Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait,”
Kipling was born in Mumbai (then Bombay) to Alice and John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling’s father widely admired Indian architecture, which he felt were nearing extinction. He asked for a posting in Bombay to study Indian architecture and assist authorities in preserving it. The author traces his roots back to the McDonald sisters, on his mother’s side, who were popular in the Victorian Era. It goes without saying that Kipling’s literary prowess and his immortal stories drew inspiration heavily from India. The Jungle Book, which, till date remains his seminal work, found support in its formative days with his father helping him with the illustrations when they were initially published as stories in magazines. Kipling adored the island city and the complex relationship he shared with the city and England would reflect in his works.
POET UNDISCOVERED
And while numerous adaptations of The Jungle Book pop up year after year, Kipling was also an extremely admired poet. Perhaps, Kipling’s poetic standing has paled with time for its projection of incessant jingoism and toxicity. It was, in fact, due to his parents’ inability to afford a young Kipling’s further studies in England that he was forced to come back to India.
This decision of theirs can somehow be credited to Kipling discovering a world that would form the canvas to many of his stories and poems. It was at Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore (now Pakistan) that Kipling published Departmental Ditties, his first collection of poems.
INFATUATION WITH IMPERIALISM
Kipling did elude his future inclinations initially for his early acclaim was built on short stories that he produced at a breakneck pace while working as an editor and correspondent for an Englishlanguage newspaper in northern India. But here’s where everything becomes blurry about the legendary author. Kipling sympathised with the British. He was of the opinion that India would find it difficult to govern herself if the British left. Kipling believed that the British Empire he knew was a power for good in the world. And to get a gist of the man’s sympathetic mind, the verses from two great poems — Recessional and Cities and Thrones and Powers — give a vivid portrayal of his blindness towards the imperfections of the empire. These inclinations of his drew ire of many of his contemporaries, most notably — George Orwell. “If we want to understand how an intelligent man, not lacking basic human emotions, could support the British Empire and think of it as a force for good, then we should study Kipling,” Orwell, an Englishman himself, wrote about Kipling. “And if we don’t want to understand how such a man could support the British Empire, we will never understand our own history. I wouldn’t want uncritical adulation of Kipling to produce another generation of imperialists and I suppose Kipling could be seen as dangerous because his work is seductive — when you read a great writer, you start to see things through that writer’s eyes,” said Orwell.
For instance, in Recessional, Kipling rues that one day, the Empire would come to an end, and that it saddened him to see that day nearing. “Let’s be clear,” wrote Orwell, “We no longer ive in Kipling’s world, nor hould we try to get back to it. Having acknowledged that act, it has to be admitted that e wrote exceedingly good oems.”