Indian Summer

http://www.britishempire.co.uk/biography/kipling.htm
Kipling's view of imperialism was a more complex one than his single, famous line quoted often
out of context, 'Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.'

'The issue is not a mean one. It is whether ... you will be a great country - an Imperial country - a
country where your sons, when they rise, rise to paramount positions, and obtain not merely the
esteem of their countrymen, but command the respect of the world.'

With these words, uttered during his famous Crystal Palace speech of 1872, Benjamin Disraeli
gave the term imperialism respectable political currency in England.

Three years later he made Queen Victoria Empress of India. His enthusiasm for empire was
perhaps a little in advance of its time. By the 1890s, however, Rudyard Kipling was writing for an
audience made familiar with the 'new imperialism' by continuing British expansion. His works,
originally written only for a limited Anglo-Indian public, now found a responsive readership in
Britain.

But what were Kipling's views of empire and the imperial relationship? There has been much
debate on the question. An older generation of literary critics savaged him as an arch priest of
jingoism, racism and authoritarianism. Edmund Wilson saw him as a racist who made Kim turn
his back on the black man and identify with the white conquerors. George Orwell saw him as 'the
prophet of empire in its expansionist phase'. Lionel Trilling wrote of his 'lower middle class snarl'.
More recently, however, Kipling's biographers and critics have concentrated on his artistic vision
and the discovery of its roots. While recognising his outspoken defence of empire, they argue that
his imperialism is hard to fit into any neat stereotype. He may have been contemptuous of' certain
aspects of Oriental culture, such as Hinduisrn, but he found much to admire in others, such as
Buddhism. He may have assumed the legitimacy of the British Raj in India but he was a bitterly
ironic critic of the Anglo-Indian establishment and of Christian missionaries (especially
Protestants). He may have been condescending towards, even scornful of, the emergent
Westernised Indian intelligentsia but he was to make one of them into a minor hero in Kim, his
only full-length novel about India.

Alan Sandison, perhaps the best of Kipling's recent critics, goes further than mere apology. For
Kipling, he argues, empire in India is only a simulac-rum - a shadowy likeness - of the human
condition. The Kipling hero is a man dedicated to the toil of governing India. It is by this
dedication that he seeks to give meaning to his existence. In the end, however, he finds that he has
sacrificed his liberty to a work which can never be seen as complete, which perhaps can never be
completed. For Sandison, Kipling's artistic vision is the bleak insight that man stands alone against
the primitiveness of nature in the tropics. Kipling is thus the harbinger of Conrad, and the imperial
ideal is his attempt to find some consolation in action for this lonely existence. But why choose
empire as a field of action? Sandison writes of Kipling's imperialism as a formula, fatal to his
artistic vision because imposed upon it. The historian Eric Stokes, on the other hand, sees no such
disjunction between Kipling's artistic and imperial visions.
One way of considering this problem might be to ask whether Kipling arrived at his artistic vision,
as Sandison suggests, through immersion in the European cultural background, especially the
German view of history and evolution; or whether he picked it up through his experience of the
problems of empire in India. Louis Cornell, in his Kipling in India , sought to identify Kipling
with the outlook of the British residents there, the so-called Anglo-Indians, of whom he himself
was one. But there are good reasons for thinking that Kipling did not identify with the Anglo-
Indian community at large. Unlike most of them, he entertained a lively curiosity about 'native'
life. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was keeper of the Museum of Indian Arts and Crafts at
Lahore and took a deep interest in Indian culture. The young Kipling had a restless, inquisitive
temperament and on hot nights used to wander about the opium dens, brothels and back streets of
Lahore. This brought him into close contact with the traditional culture of lower-class life,
something which Anglo-Indians rarely took the trouble to explore. In turn, Kipling came to regard
them as narrow-minded, prejudiced, arrogant and ignorant, ill-equipped for the work of
government which they had to do. This provides perhaps a clue to the nature of Kipling's artistic
and imperial visions. He distanced himself from the Anglo-Indian community and took a synoptic
view of empire in India, seeing it as a lonely struggle against the land, the climate and the
prejudice both of Indians and Europeans. The imperial ruler must do justice impartially, must be
ruler and friend to all the people: in short, he must be the ideal 'sahib'.

Kim was published in 1901. Though an early draft dates from 1892, the novel was heavily revised
during the year preceding publication. It was not, like Kipling's earlier short stories, intended for
an Anglo-Indian readership, and Kipling's revisions suggest that he found this liberating to his
personal feelings about India, Eastern culture and the ideals which ought to direct empire. Indeed,
the novel as it stands can be read as the moral education of a true sahib. According to the Shorter
Oxford Dictionary, the Arabic 'sahib' has the meaning 'friend' as well as 'master'. Kim's education
consists ultimately of learning to be a master, through participation in empire and 'the Great
Game', but also, and crucially, to be 'a friend of all the world' - his nickname when still a wild
bazaar-boy in Lahore.

The novel opens with the hero seated upon a great gun, symbolic of British conquest. The
symbolism is reinforced by the fact that virtually the only British we see are soldiers. The British
are thus shown to hold India by the gun, like so many conquerors before them, and the Mutiny of
1857 is a shadow on the memories of more than one character. But it is clear throughout that
government based solely on force is not enough for Kipling. By making Kim the orphan son of an
Irish soldier, brought up as an Indian on the streets of Lahore and speaking Urdu rather than
English as his first language, Kipling is presenting his readers with a hero who is more 'native'
than British and who has many reasons to regard the Anglo-Indian world with suspicious
resentment. If Kim is to be brought to identify with empire in India, it must first acquire some
legitimating ideology which he can accept.

Such an ideology, however, is not provided by the Anglo-Indian community itself. Kipling is
blatantly contemptuous of its culture, which he portrays as blinkered and morally worthless. Kim,
as an Irish boy, is given qualities of adventurousness and high-spirits which are seen to be lacking
in most of the resident British. With one or two notable exceptions - Creighton, Lurgan - the
Anglo-Indian establishment is portrayed as callous, prejudiced and, above all, ignorant of Indian
society. Anglo-Indian culture is capable of teaching Kim little of value beyond certain technical
skills. Technology has its significance for Kipling. He celebrates railways, electric telegraphs,
canals, western medicine. Such gifts are not to be despised and are built into his vision of empire.
But the promise of technological improvement does not, of itself, provide adequate legitimation
for the Raj. It does not overcome ignorance of and alienation from the people of India, Indeed, this
ignorance and alienation frequently are seen to threaten subversion of the imperial order. British
rulers, from soldiers to army chaplains, are mocked and ridiculed by a street boy because they
cannot understand his language.

The crucial political point in Kim is the need for the imperial sahibs to know their subjects, to
experience their way of life. The ideal sahib must be prepared to venture beyond the safe confines
of Anglo-Indian identity and learn by assuming the identity of .his native subjects. He must learn
their languages, understand their religions and customs and, if necessary, don their clothes and
pass amongst them.

But there is an important corollary to this. Although knowing, experiencing and moving within
native society, the sahib must never become absorbed into it. He must never forget that he is
trained to command, the subject to obey. Kipling saw Indian culture, especially Hinduism, as
threatening to the integrity of the imperial conquerors. Hinduism was particularly dangerous
because its traditions seemed inimical to what Western thought regarded as rational secular action.
At one extreme, there was the tolerated sensuality which undermined moral discipline; and the
superstitious nature worship of the simple-minded peasantry. At the other extreme was the other-
worldly asceticism of the holy man, which, when it was not a fake for imposing on the people, led
to a negative and selfish withdrawal from society. Action in society is inseparable from
government, and commitment to action is one of the hallmarks of the sahib.

Kim, as the ideal sahib, then, must realise his potential to be a man 'with two sides to his head'.
One side of him must be a ruler, soldier, conqueror, trained to command. The other side must be
friend of all the people, 'my people', the people of India. This crisis of identity finds its resolution
through the education imbibed from the lama. In the course of their wanderings together, Kim
assimilates the social ethic of the lama's Buddhism. He learns to respect all living things - even
snakes - and to despise no creed, race or caste. He also learns that the temptations of the world
offer but illusory promise of sensual happiness. The only worthy end of action is to gain merit by
serving others.

Kipling's treatment of the lama is sympathetic, but his sympathies have their limitations and
qualifications. They are confined to his social ethic, whose discriminating tolerance is seen as
much preferable to the moral prejudice of Christianity, especially in its Protestant version. But
Kim does not become a Buddhist. He exposes, with the gentle probing of a disciple, the
inconsistencies surrounding the Buddhist doctrine of rejection of the world, and he ends by
affirming the world as the only reality. For Kipling, the other world remains a mystery, and Hindu
astrology is as likely to be as right or wrong about it as Christianity or Buddhism.

Kim's development can thus be taken to stand for the making of an ideal sahib, an ideal ruler. And
it may be worth noting that, for Kipling, rule seems to have been almost entirely about rulership.
There is no hint in Kim that government could or should be participatory or, in any sense,
representative. The people are assumed to be incapable of making their own political decisions
and even of expressing their own political needs. The ruler must discover their sentiments, by
empathy and subterfuge, and design his policies in their light. But rule itself is taken naturally to
be despotic, albeit of the most benign sort. However, over what does this despotism hold sway and
for what purposes? Kipling appears to suggest that the ruler's, the imperial, mission requires some
kind of superman - a mixture of Irish adventurism, Western technological efficacy, empathy with
Indian culture and the taught cunning of the secret agent, all legitimated and disciplined by a
moral code wrought out of Buddhism and a commitment to public service. But what would a
government of such god-like morals be for? The great paradox is that it seems to be only for
preserving and ruling benignly over a status quo which is itself deemed virtually unchangeable: to
borrow from Lord Curzon, government in India appears 'a mighty and magnificent machine for
doing absolutely nothing'.

The explicit political problems dealt with in Kim are those of foreign invasion from Russia and
feudal disruption by hill rajahs. Implicitly, Kipling hints at age-old antagonisms between different
religious communities and, perhaps, traditionally inspired uprisings of the kind which most British
associated with the Mutiny of 1857. In relation to these, the function of government would seem
to be only to defend the peace, to maintain 'order'. Most notably, Kipling's view of politics fails to
perceive any problems which may be qualitatively new, the result of social change and
development. But this is hardly surprising, for Kipling's view of Indian society fails to perceive
any principles of dynamism. Indian society is portrayed as rigid and deeply traditional - a society
of colourful but simple peasants, bold but arrogant warriors, wily Brahmins, superstitious ranees,
and so on. Culturally, Kim's India is irremediably divided by caste and sect, with no underlying
principles of unity, present or emergent. Kipling scarcely hints at the possibility of change in this
situation. For him, the concepts of capitalism, nationalism and cultural re-definition have no
apparent meaning. Certainly, it is no part of imperialism's purpose to generate a dynamic in Indian
society. The limit of its legitimate intrusion is seen to be technological - to build canals and
provide medicine. But these are not understood by Kipling to exert any sociological imperatives.
The function of government is to rule humanely over this static society, protecting it from evil-
doers, adjudicating its disputes, promoting material benefits within it. But government has no
mandate to promote fundamental change.

One partial exception to Kipling's view of Indian society as immobile is his treatment of Hurree
Babu, the 'new' Indian and member of the Western educated intelligentsia. Hurree is seen to be
worthy of joining the imperial elite and participating in the imperial purpose. His example shows
that Kipling was no simple-minded racist, believing in the congenital impossibility of the Indian
character ever evolving and acquiring the qualities necessary to legitimate rulership. The
favourable treatment of Hurree in the final draft of the novel, which contrasts so markedly with his
treatment in the 1892 version, may even be taken to represent Kipling's emancipation from his
previous Anglo-Indian audience who would not have appreciated the Bengali Babu as hero. But
Hurree does not provide a model for change in Indian society as a whole. He is suggested as a rare
case, a man with unusual talents. His situation is shown to be exceptionally difficult, and he faces
many dilemmas as he is torn between the natural cowardice of his cultural background and the
bravery demanded of a sahib, between the natural superstition of his religion and the rationality
required of a ruler. The path of Hurree's development is winding and strewn with many boulders.
Only a man of his peculiar courage and integrity could ever complete it. For Indian society in
general, the process of evolution must be much longer and slower; indeed, so long and slow as to
be virtually imperceptible.

To what sources should we look in order to understand Kipling's political ideas? Earlier, we
suggested that Kipling did not identify with the Anglo-Indian community at large. But that
community was by no means monolithic and there was one stratum within it to which Kipling was
strongly attracted. This was the (covenanted) Indian Civil Service, a small elite corps of a few
hundred men who held exclusively the highest posts in government, from district Collectors to
departmental Secretaries and, at least in their own estimation, were the real rulers of India's
millions. In the phrase of the day, they provided 'the steel frame' of empire. The ideals of character
and education extolled in Kim in many ways matched those sought in the perfect I.C.S. officer. He
was, of course, not likely to have been a Lahore street boy but rather the product of the British
public school and, perhaps, Oxbridge. However, although academic ability was expected, in order
to pass the examinations on which recruitment was based, it was not the only criterion of
selection. Rather, emphasis was placed on personality, fitness, adventurousness and athleticism.
One subsequently famous Indian applicant, for example, was turned down because of his poor
horsemanship even though his performance in the written exams had been outstanding. The in-
service education of the I.C.S. officer of this era stressed the importance of language skills, of
getting out among the people by spending months of every year under canvas, of experiencing and
understanding Indian life. In the scientific climate of the late nineteenth century, this last produced
a growing interest in ethnography. It is striking that Creighton, Kim's mentor and the one true
British sahib in the novel, should have been involved in the ethnographic survey of India. At the
time that Kipling was writing, this survey was in the hands of some of the most senior and
experienced I.C.S. officers in India, and was producing voluminous and authoritative studies of
'the castes and tribes' of most Indian regions.

Kipling's political ideas show strong affinities with those contained in what might be termed 'the
official mind' of the I.C.S. during this period. First, government in India was assumed naturally to
be despotic and the I.C.S. put up strong resistance to the growth of representative institutions,
which were deemed to be incompatible with the ends of 'good government'. The functions of rule
were conceived in terms of a guardianship or trust. Conventionally, the ideal district Collector
should be 'ma-bap' (mother-father) to his people who were children to be treated sympathetically,
even lovingly, but disciplined firmly. Second, this trust had to be discharged with both disinterest
and impartiality. I.C.S. officers were statutorily debarred from having private business interests, or
even extensive private properties, in India. Third, and a corollary to this, they were expected to
maintain a social distance from the rest of the Anglo-Indian community, which consisted of
businessmen, soldiers and minor officials and was meant to be treated as just another of the many
peoples of India. The I.C.S. was inclined to keep to its own social circles, to have its own esprit de
corps, in some places to possess even its own exclusive 'clubs'. Its members attempted to form
their own caste within the ruling caste. This separation, together with the notional commitment to
the guardianship of Indian society, could sometimes generate conflict with the rest of the Anglo-
Indian community who might be deemed to be exploiting their racially dominant position for
unworthy personal ends. There was, for example, much I.C.S. support for Lord Curzon's attempts
to bring the British soldiery to heel for their licentiousness and brutality towards the Indian
population, of which Kim had direct experience. There was even some support for the notorious
Ilbert Bill which, by placing Anglo-Indians under the authority of Indian magistrates, would also
have brought them more firmly under the rule of law. Indeed, in many ways the existence of an
anomalously powerful Anglo-Indian community was a source of embarrassment to the I.C.S.,
which insisted on the maintenance of vagrancy laws to permit the deportation of fellow-whites
whose misconduct brought 'the mystique' of the imperial race into disrepute. The I.C.S. ideal was
one of perfect bureaucratic rule, strong, rational, informed and totally impartial.

But fourth, and as might be expected of a corps whose ideal was both bureaucratic and at odds
with the presence of a large resident British community in India, I.C.S. officialdom tended to
deprecate social change, especially that emanating from the forces of Westernisation,
modernisation and capitalism. The Mutiny perhaps had finally killed government aspirations to
reform Indian society by converting it to Christianity, the rationality of the market economy and
the values of competitive individualism. By the late nineteenth century, attempts at such reform
were judged to produce only dangerous disruptions, in the violent reaction of expropriated
peasantries and displaced aristocracies and in the challenge posed to 'good government' by an
emergent and critically-aware liberal intelligentsia. Like Kipling, I.C.S. officialdom viewed with
horror the rise of modern civilization. And fifth, and a corollary to this, both looked to a
romanticised conception of traditional rural society as the source of true virtue, a society which it
was the duty of imperialism to protect. Many of the descriptions inKim of Punjab rural society,
with its 'sturdy' Jat farmers and fighting men, resemble those to be found in the writings of what
was known as 'the Punjab school' of I.C.S. administrators. This school saw the Jat peasantry as the
bulwark both of the traditional social order and of what the proper imperial order should be,
giving stability and cohesion to the countryside and, not coincidentally, a steady supply of loyal
recruits to the British Indian army. They conceived their task as the protection of it from assaults
on various sides: from the depradations of poverty and overpopulation, which they countered by
promoting canal irrigation; from creeping competitive individualism, which they sought to deter
by settling land rights with collective village brotherhoods and communities; from the pressures of
the market economy, which they eased by preventing non-peasant groups, especially urban
merchants and moneylenders, from acquiring land. Kipling's treatment of rural Punjabi society
faithfully echoes the sentiments of this school. His perception of social priorities in other parts of
India also can be related to strands of thought in the I.C.S. 'mind'. To the East of Punjab, in the
more overtly hierarchical society of Oudh, for example, it was the landed aristocracy who caught
the imagination of I.C.S. officialdom, and became the bulwark here of the imperial social order.
The so-called 'Oudh policy' venerated the traditional aristocratic functions of patronage and
paternalism, as plainly did Kipling in his treatment of social relations on the Kulu woman's estate.
Kipling shared his understanding of colonial Indian society with the Raj's central ruling lite.

But how did this understanding come to be formed? In part, no doubt, the specific experience of.
India was important. The British had inherited a mantle of despotic authority from the Mughal
Empire and, by re-stitching it to fir an essentially bureaucratic and irresponsible system of colonial
government, more or less guaranteed that their ruling ethos would be conservative and elitist. But
the intellectual context of late nineteenth century Europe was important too. Kipling's 'social
politics', as Noel Annan calls them, must be placed within a tradition of questioning and ultimately
abandoning mid-nineteenth-century beliefs in individualism and liberalism. Annan points to
affinities between Kipling's view of society and that of Durkheim Society is assumed naturally to
be structured and hierarchical. It imposes rules and roles on the individual, which are to a
considerable degree immutable. Society is conceived as being prior to the individual, who is
merely inserted into it, and largely independent of any conditioning which he may attempt to give
it. The process of change is understood to be long, slow and somewhat metaphysical in its origins.
Significantly, change is not seen to be due to individual initiative, to acts of volition by individuals
in history and society.

But such a set of sociological assumptions necessarily poses problems for the definition of politics
and government If society is inherently structured and ordered, what purpose does government
have, what can the functions of political action be? Essentially, the answer must be that
government and politics are protective and conservative rather than active and interventionist,
Their legitimate function is to preserve society while it slowly evolves, by means imperceptible,
towards change government has no right to lead or initiate change. Equally, authority cannot
legitimately be exercised by one part of society in its own interest over others. As society is a
whole, so authority can only be exercised for the whole. But to exercise power on behalf of all
requires knowledge of all, omniscience, which can only be the property of an elite. And to
exercise it disinterestedly, requires discipline and an ethic of public service. Kipling's ideas on
politics and government flow directly from his wider conception of society and history and lead,
inevitably, towards a code of conservatism, elitism and separation between the ruler and the ruled,
It was, of course a code which found wide representation in the education provided at the time
(and subsequently) in the British public schools, an education or training for leadership, and was
coming to have deep effects on Oxbridge, as the ancient universities turned their attention to the
problems of government and set themselves to produce Jowett's ideal 'Balliol' man.

It is clear, then, that Kipling's imperialism represented no simple racism. Nor was it an apologia
for British exploitation of India (although it can be argued that his, and the I.C.S. ideal functioned
covertly to permit just that). Nor can his views be written off as a lower middle class snarl against
privilege above and pretensions beneath. Rather, his ideas, like those in the I.C.S, 'mind', ought to
be seen as lying in the mainstream of late nineteenth-century post liberal thought about the nature
of society and politics. Their imperatives were to conserve and constrain rather than liberate and
change. And Kipling was prepared to apply them as much to the domestic British as to the
imperial Indian context. His battles with the Liberal Party make it clear that he was as opposed to
democracy and liberalism, and as disposed to elitism and hierarchy, in English society as in the
tropics. His ideas were conceived as having a universal currency, and they shared much in
common with those of political thinker of his time on both sides of the ostensible Conservative
and Liberal-Socialist divide. He has affinities, for example, with both Fabians and Milnerites, just
as they had affinities with each other. His views represent a comment on contemporary political
debate.

To examine the sources of Kipling's imperialism, however, is not to deny his artistic intention. His
view of the world was bleak and his heroes, in choosing dedication to the work of empire, are seen
as denying themselves many of the joys which are the consolations, if not the ends, of living. This
inner loneliness is, for Sandison, the focus of Kipling's artistic vision, for which he deserves to be
placed with 'the moderns'. That the work itself should be imperia) government is, to Sandison, an
artificial contrivance, imposed upon the truth about the human condition which Kipling seeks, and
ultimately preventing him from finding it.

But the artistic vision and the imperial ideal may not be so easily separated. There is no artistic
truth in Kipling which can be divorced from his theory of 'social politics'. The sense of loneliness
and unfulfilment in Kipling's heroes stems, on the one side, from his vision of man's work in the
task of imposing order on his fellow human-beings, who are seen as tough, resistant clay; and, on
the other, from the contradiction in his concept of 'action', which is legitimate only to preserve
society but not to change it. The inner agonies which Kipling's heroes suffer derive directly from
the impossible, and perhaps inhuman, conception of society and history which he possesses.

James Joyce, coming as it were from the other end of the imperial experience, could imagine the
human condition differently without yielding, in any way, to an easy liberal optimism. For Joyce,
the struggle was against those who wished to dedicate themselves to imposing their ideal of order,
either from above or below. Joyce's politics cannot be discussed here, but mention of them serves
as a valuable reminder that 'modernism' need not be accompanied either by a debilitating sense of
loneliness and futility or by a childish cult of action and the glorification of the superman - be he
the most benign of despots.

By Fred Reid and David Washbrook

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poets/rudyard_kipling.shtml

Kipling is known as the poet of the British Empire. He was a superb phrase-maker, whose poems gave
us expressions such as 'white man's burden' and 'the law of the jungle'. The phrase, 'Lest we forget',
so closely associated with war memorials and Remembrance Day ceremonies, was coined by Kipling in
his poem Recessional, composed for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1865 to Anglo-Indian parents and was educated in
England. He returned to India when he was 16 to take a position at the Lahore Civil and Military
Gazette, where he wrote his first stories. Kipling moved back to live in London in 1889 and in 1907, at
the height of his fame, he was the first English language writer to receive the Nobel Prize. However, as
people's attitudes towards the Empire started to change, Kipling was increasingly accused of jingoistic
vulgarity. Kipling challenged many of these attitudes himself, and when his son was killed in the First
World War, wrote: 'If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied.'

His poem If, with its celebration of stoic manly values, still inspires strong feelings, and a quote from it
is written by the entrance to Wimbledon's Centre Court, to stir up the players. Kipling was a gifted
storyteller and if interest in his poetry ever wanes, his reputation will live on for the creation of
children's classics such as The Jungle Book.
 Kipling's Imperialism (Victorian Web)
David Cody, Associate Professor of English, Hartwick College

Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento

Hae tibi erunt artes pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos . . .

("Roman! let this be your care, this your art;

to rule over the nations and impose the ways
of peace, to spare the underdog, and pull down
the proud.") — Aneid VI. 851; quoted in Kipling's "Regulus."

In Kipling's work, as in his life, the British Empire assumed a complex mythical or legendary function, which
he passed on to his readers. It was a positive force in the sense that it ordered and unified his creativity, and a
negative one to the extent that it limited his perspective. In life he seems to have thought of it very much as one
might have thought of the earlier Roman Empire: its purpose was to maintain stability, order, and peace
amongst the heathen, to relieve famine, provide medical assistance, to abolish slavery, to construct the physical
and the psychological groundwork for "civilization," and to protect the mother country. It was an island of
security in a chaotic world. (And in fact, when the Empire did eventually dissolve, many of the worst
nightmares of the Imperialists came to pass--in the slaughter which marked the partition of India, for example).

The White Man's Burden was, so far as (culturally patronising) Imperialists of Kipling's stripe were
concerned, a genuine burden — Kipling viewed his Imperialism, predicated on deeply-held political, racial,
moral, and religious beliefs which sustained a feeling of innate British superiority, as being primarily a moral
responsibility: it might also be profitable (an aspect of things emphasized in Evangelical circles), but it had
itself to be maintained, defended, and protected — from rival world powers and from the rebellious governed,
although ideally these last would recognize their inferiority and freely obey their superiors &mdsh; by a
specially trained and devoted elite. "We are called upon to rule," as Trollope had written in Disraeli's Britain in
1872, "not for our glory, but for their happiness." The Army and the Navy were sustained by an officer class of
Gentlemen, but that class, their mission, and their sacrifices &mdsh; real and imaginary &mdsh; on behalf of
the masses at home were largely ignored. Their code, the code of the English public schools, was one of duty
and endurance and fortitude in the face of overwhelming difficulties.

Jingoism was rampant in Britain in the 1880s and '90s, as it was, indeed, up until 1915; but Kipling,
though he was frequently parodied as such, was by no means the most rabid of the jingos. In spite — or
perhaps because of — the fact that he was himself, all his life, something of an outsider, however, he made
himself the interpreter, propagandist, and chief apologist of the Imperialist elite, and was therefore profoundly
suspicious both of Democracy and of the members of the British Liberal intellegentsia who opposed
Imperialism as a philosophy and who might coerce the masses into employing the vote to betray their heritage
and their resonsibilities. He saw World War I as a threat not only to Britain itself but to her civilizing mission,
and one of the many ironies which permeate "Mary Postgate," and indicate the real complexity of Kipling's art,
is the notion that Mary must dispense with the moral code of the Victorian elite in order to preserve the society
which sustained it.
 RUDYARD KIPLING
1865-1936
Young Rudyard's earliest years in Bombay were blissfully happy, in an India full of exotic sights and
sounds. But at the tender age of five he was sent back to England to stay with a foster family in
Southsea, where he was desperately unhappy. The experience would colour some of his later writing.

When he was twelve he went to the United In 1882, aged sixteen, he returned to Lahore, where his
Services College at Westward Ho! near parents now lived, to work on the Civil and Military
Bideford, where the Headmaster, Cormell Gazette , and later on its sister paper the Pioneer in
Price, a friend of his father and uncles, Allahabad.
fostered his literary ability. Stalky & Co.,
based on those schooldays, has been much In his limited spare time he wrote many remarkable
relished by generations of schoolboys. poems and stories which were published alongside his
Despite poor eyesight which handicapped reporting. When these were collected and published as
him on the games field, he began to books, they formed the basis of his early fame.
blossom.

Returning to England in 1889, Kipling won instant success with After a world trip, he returned
Barrack-Room Ballads which were followed by some more brilliant with Carrie to her family
short stories. After the death of an American friend and literary home in Brattleboro,
collaborator, Wolcott Balestier, he married Wolcott's sister Carrie in Vermont, USA, with the aim
1892. of settling down there. It was
in Brattleboro, deep in New
England, that he wrote
Captains Courageous and
The Jungle Books , and where
their first two children,
Josephine and Elsie, were
born.

A quarrel with Rudyard's brother-in-law drove the Kiplings back to By now Kipling had come to
England in 1896, and the following year they moved to Rottingdean be regarded as the People's
in Sussex, the county which he adopted as his own. Their son John Laureate and the poet of
was born in North End House, the holiday home of Rudyard's aunt, Empire, and he produced
Georgiana Burne-Jones, and soon they moved into The Elms. some of his most memorable
poems and stories in
Life was content and fulfilling until, tragically, Josephine died Rottingdean, including Kim,
while the family were on a visit to the United States in early Stalky & Co., and Just So
1899. Stories.

At the Museum of the

 Rottingdean Preservation
Society, at The Grange in
Rottingdean, there is a now
a Kipling Room, with a
reconstruction of his study
in The Elms, and exhibits
devoted to his work. The
Grange is open daily, and
there is no admission
charge.

Puck of Pook's Hill and

Rewards and Fairies , which
included the poem "If-", and
other well-known volumes of
Life was never the same again after Josephine's death, and living so stories, were written there,
close to Brighton Kipling had become a tourist attraction. So in 1902 and express Kipling's deep
he sought the seclusion of a lovely seventeenth century house called sense of the ancient
Bateman's near Burwash, nearby in Sussex, where he spent his continuity of place and
remaining years. people in the English
countryside. There is a wealth
of information about Burwash
and its idyllic surroundings
on the village web-site.

Kipling's poem, "The Absent-Minded Beggar" had raised vast sums Kipling was a friend of Cecil
of money for the benefit of British soldiers in the Boer war. Rhodes, of Lord Milner, and
of Dr Jameson, on whose
Alfred Harmsworth, at whose request he had written for the qualities the poem "If-" is
fund, introduced him to the joys and frustrations of the pioneer said to have been based.
motorist. Kipling had written for the
Army's newspaper in South
Africa, rediscovering the
familiar routines of
journalism, and spent many
winters thereafter in a house
near Capetown.

Kipling foresaw the First World War, and tried to alert the nation to He was also much involved in
the need for preparedness. The Kiplings were to suffer a second the work of the Imperial War
bereavement with the death of their son John, at the age of 18, in the Graves Commission, and
Battle of Loos in 1915. King George V became a
personal friend. The Kiplings
But Kipling continued to write, and some of the post-war travelled a great deal, and at
stories (for instance in Debits and Credits) are counted among the outset of one of their
his finest. visits, in January 1936,
Rudyard died, just three days
before his King. He had
declined most of the many
honours which had been
offered him, including a
knighthood, the Poet
Laureateship, and the Order
of Merit, but in 1907 he had
accepted the Nobel Prize for
Literature.

Rudyard Kipling's reputation grew from phenomenal early critical

success to international celebrity, then faded for a time as his
conservative views were held by some to be old-fashioned. The
balance is now being restored. More and more people are coming to
appreciate his mastery of poetry and prose, and the sheer range of his
work. His autobiography Something of Myself was written in 1935,
the last year of his life and was published posthumously.
 Norman and Saxon

"My son," said the Norman Baron, "I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for share
When he conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:–

"The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow – with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, 'This isn't fair dealing,' my son, leave the Saxon alone.

"You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your Picardy spears;
But don't try that game on the Saxon; you'll have the whole brood round your ears.
From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained serf in the field,
They'll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.

"But first you must master their language, their dialect, proverbs and songs.
Don't trust any clerk to interpret when they come with the tale of their wrongs.
Let them know that you know what they're saying; let them feel that you know what to
say.
Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear 'em out if it takes you all day.

They'll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour of the dark.
It's the sport not the rabbits they're after (we've plenty of game in the park).
Don't hang them or cut off their fingers. That's wasteful as well as unkind,
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man- at-arms you can find.

"Appear with your wife and the children at their weddings and funerals and feasts.
Be polite but not friendly to Bishops; be good to all poor parish priests.
Say 'we,' 'us' and 'ours' when you're talking, instead of 'you fellows' and 'I.'
Don't ride over seeds; keep your temper; and never you tell 'em a lie!"