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Sridhar K. Chari reviews a new biography of Rudyard Kipling which examines his ambivalent attitude towards the land and the people that inspired his best writings Kipling Sahib
I was not quite on the banks of the River Ravi as was young Kipling riding out from Lahore, but even on the fields near Siswan, on a black Kathiawari mare, not much may have changed – the kite still calls in the air, like in the poem quoted above, and the peacocks, wild pheasants and rabbits dart out of bushes just as they might have done a century ago. I mention this only to flag the enduring appeal of Rudyard Kipling, for modern, English-speaking India. It is the appeal of an India the British created and left behind, the appeal of gymkhanas and clubs and Mall roads in hill stations, of English literature Saturday dances, of morning rides and steeple chases, and picnics in the lawn under a winter sun. It is also the appeal of mysterious temples and forts, of boys brought up in the jungle by wolves, and the roar of the tiger in a dark forest. It is a deeply ambivalent appeal, nonetheless, and Kipling exemplifies this very well, as does this biography by Charles Allen, a first class achievement and a great read. Kipling was the man, after all, who waxed eloquent about the "White Man’s Burden," who believed so strongly in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race and his oh-so-wonderful "Law and Order". With the broad brush strokes and carefully chosen detail of a man who knows his subject very well, Charles Allen lays bare "Upper India" at the turn of the century under the Raj, and the life led by many a "Mall-abiding" Britisher. And what did these breeches-clad innocents abroad talk and think about? Writing to his cousin back in England, Kipling "sums up":
"If you knew in what inconceivable filth of mind the people of India were brought up from their cradle; if you realised the views – or one tenth of the views – they hold about women and their absolute incapacity for speaking the truth as we understand it – the immeasurable gulf that lies between the two races in all things, you would see how it comes to pass that the Englishman is prone to despise the natives... Now this is a wholly wrong attitude of mind, but it’s one that a Briton who washes, and don’t take bribes, and who thinks of other things beside intrigue and seduction, most naturally falls into. When he does – goodbye to his chances of understanding the people of the land." To Kipling’s credit, he at least thought this a wrong attitude of mind, though he freely indulged in it, and he did make his forays into understanding the people the British lorded over. This ambivalence pervades much of his writing, lifting it above the ordinary. He was less apologetic, however, about imperial Britain and another received opinion, that the Indians were incapable of ruling themselves. Allen’s book also provides an insight into another commonly held attitude amongst the British, which was the precursor to Partition and Pakistan becoming a reality. Kipling was comfortable with Islam, but professed a hearty dislike of Hinduism. Indeed, he opposed the Indian National Congress as (in the words of Allen), a "Hindu dominated political party made of men disqualified by breeding, religion, history and education from ruling over the Indian masses – in marked contrast to the Muslims, in his view ‘the most masterful and powerful minority in the country," possessing strength of character, strong moral convictions based on their religion, and a long history as the traditional rulers of India." This was a commonly held view, and if India hadn’t got lucky with Mountbatten, who disliked M.A. Jinnah, we might have ended up even worse than we did. Incidentally, talking of viceroys, Allen’s book is peopled by many of them, the good, like Ripon (hated by Kipling), and the bad, like Lytton, (naturally feted and appreciated). His other pet dislikes were for the English educated Indian, even if he was not quite the "brown sahib" aspirant, and the many English people who ended up sympathetic to the ‘Natives" You can’t meet Indians in the book though – curiously enough, there are no Indian characters in Allen’s book, only references to a few odd fellows. It reflects perhaps, the truly different world in which the British in India moved in. Kipling Sahib opens in Bombay, taking the reader to the bungalow in the J.J. School of Art in Bombay, notionally Kipling’s birthplace. The place is now to be made into a museum, signalling, for the British press, "his rehabilitation by the people who inspired his most memorable works." It will always be an uneasy reconciliation. Kipling will never be the "Ruddy" that Allen portrays with a lot of sympathy, though without varnish. But to India, he can still be Rudyard Kipling, author of the jungle books, and inspirational poems like "If." And Charles Allen’s book is as much valuable for the superb insights it provides into understanding the British Raj, and is beautifully produced with plates of period paintings, and sketches of North Indian life by Kipling’s father John Lockwood Kipling.
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YOU
can’t think of a
better way to prepare for writing a review of a book on Rudyard
Kipling, than to do as the man did, more than a hundred years ago –
take a morning ride through the fields of the Punjab. "Oh! A ride
in an Indian dawn, there’s no such pleasure in life..."
