Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive
and aesthetically disgusting. It is better to
start by admitting that, and then to try to find
out why it is that he survives while the refined people
who have sniggered at him seem to wear so badly
-George
Orwell
As we've discussed before (see Orrin's review of Kim), no author is more naturally embattled in trying to maintain his place in the Western Canon than Rudyard Kipling. A white male, an unapologetic imperialist, a proselytizing ethnocentrist, everything about him runs counter to the tide of political correctness that has swept the academy. And indeed, even those of us who still read and admire him must be brought up short at times when we stumble across some particularly brutal and unsavory racialist remark. But I use the term racialist, rather than racist, for a reason. There is no doubt that Kipling--like most of his contemporaries, nearly all of his predecessors, and many of us today--believed that the different races, religions and ethnic groups had certain general characteristics that pertained broadly throughout their groupings. This concept is anathema today, when we instead turn a blind eye to these readily discernible differences and pretend that everyone is either identical or would be were it not for certain environmental factors and racist barriers. Now in Kipling's time, as in our own, there were, and are, plenty of racists--those folks who look at these differences and draw conclusions about the physical and intellectual capacities of the races and about the relative worth of the respective races, and make stereotyped judgments about individuals, based solely on race. This is morally repellent and it is fitting and proper to resist such people. But it is improper to tar everyone who recognizes racial differences with the racist brush. It is possible to believe that various characteristics differentiate the races without also believing that one race is per se "superior" to another or that individuals of a given race must be assumed to fit the broad profile of their race--this is what I mean by racialism. Racialism makes assumptions about large groups based on the evidence before us, but makes no assumptions about individuals; each man is judged, not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
This perhaps best illustrated in Kipling's great poem Gunga Din:
You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out here,
And you're sent to penny-fights and Aldershot it,
But when it comes to slaughter,
You will do your work on water,
And you'll lick the bloomin' boots o' them that's
got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time,
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew,
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
You limpin' lump of brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! Slippery hitherao,
Water, get it! Panee lao,
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din!"
The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
And rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
And a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
When the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows
crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!"
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped him 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
You put some juldee in it
Or I'll marrow you this minute
If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"
'E would dot and carry one
Till the longest day was done,
And 'e didn't seem to know the use of fear;
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.
'E would skip to our attack,
With 'is mussick on 'is back,
And watch us till the bugles made "Retire",
And for all 'is dirty hide,
'E was white, clear white, inside
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullet kickin' dust spots on the green;
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front lines shout,
"Hi! Ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"
I shan't forget the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should have been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
And the man that spied me first
Was our good ol' grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my head,
And 'e plugged me where I bled,
And 'e gave me 'arf a pint o' water green;
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through his spleen--
'E's chawin up the ground,
And 'e's kickin' all around,
For Gawd's sake get the water, Gunga Din!"
'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
And a bullet came and drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
And just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din.
So I'll see 'im later on,
In the place where 'e is gone,
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals,
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
And I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
And it's "Din! Din! Din!"
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' God that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
Epithets like "blackfaced", "brick dust", "squidgy-nosed", etc., sound poorly in our modern ears, but, despite our visceral tendency to recoil, they should be read in context. That context makes it abundantly clear that despite the casual brutality doled out by the British soldiers, Gunga Din was their equal, or even their superior, as a man.
Nor is this a unique instance in Kipling's writings. His short story Without Benefit of Clergy is a poignant depiction of the love between a British officer and an Islamic native. Their affair is necessarily clandestine, but there is nothing exploitative about it.
Or consider my favorite of Kipling's tales, The Man Who Would Be King. It would be easy to dismiss this as simply another case of his jingoist prejudices at work, with two British ne'er-do-wells hoodwinking the simpleton natives and carving out their own kingdom. But it can equally well be read as an allegory for the entire Imperial experience. Ragtag whites come in and, at first, overawe the natives with advanced technology and administrative techniques, but their enterprise is doomed by native hostility once the initial wonder wears off. That's hardly a dewy-eyed idealization of Colonialism, is it?
Take his great exhortatory poem, If:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Here is a definition of what makes a Man that makes no reference to race, religion, creed or class. Implicit in the poem is the assumption that it is behavior which defines the person, not immutable physical characteristics. And if you would be a Man, it is required that "all men count with you," but "none too much." Kipling troubles us because he is not color blind--that insipid phrase that even conservatives resort too in today's politically charged debates on racial preferences--but even as he takes note of color, it seems to me that he refuses to use it as the basis for judging men. How then dismiss him as a racist?
Finally, at some point we must trust our own senses, and the writings of Rudyard Kipling exude a love of India and her people, not contempt or racial animus. In fact, his portrayals of India are in many ways more tender and sympathetic than those of the great modern Indian writers like Salman Rushdie (see Orrin's review of Midnight's Children), Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy (see Orrin's review of The God of Small Things). Of course, that odd fact is directly related to the disillusionment that has accompanied Indian independence--the racial hatreds that have erupted, the endemic corruption and the alternatingly unstable, incompetent and/or repressive governments, which is not to suggest that things would be any better had Kipling's Imperialists stayed and continued to shoulder "The White Man's Burden", rather, just noting one of those ironies that adds zest to life.
It is perfectly understandable that parents should be concerned about
some of the language and attitudes their children will encounter when reading
Kipling--just as they are rightly concerned about Huckleberry Finn
(see Orrin's review).
These are issues which need to be discussed with children and there is
no better way to introduce the topics than via great literature.
Make no mistake, Kipling's stories and poems are great literature.
(Reviewed:21-Apr-00)
Grade: (A+)
