Anglo-Indian Relationship in the Writings of

ANGLO-INDIAN RELATIONSHIP IN THE WRITINGS OF
RUDYARD KIPLING

Dr. (Mrs.) Jaya Lakshmi Rao, V.

The idea of British superiority is most effectively voiced in moving images and words by Rudyard Kipling in his works. It was the commitment to the prior rights of the white man in relation with the rest of the world that shaped Kipling’s vision which saw imperialism as an expression of Anglo-Indian destiny.

The theme of the Empire appears in Kipling’s writings from Barrack Roam Ballads to the Seven Seas. The latter depicts the preordained fate by the British as the chosen people, who explore, reform and keep watch over the seas and continents.

“The White man’s Burden” is the starkest artistic statement of Kipling’s imperialistic theme. The conquerors are under a moral obligation towards those whom they control. They despite accepting virtues like meekness and humility, albeit as adornments, should not let them, undermine their “store of energy” which is ever ready of action.

Critics are of the opinion, that Kipling’s ambivalent attitude towards India is largely due to his ground. His early years were spent in Bombay, India. His parents were a part of the colony of the British born and bred. They were the Sahibs to whom Imperialism was a religion not to be questioned. He, however, was in close proximity with the Indian multitudes of various faiths and tongues, customs and beliefs. The four influences at work on Kipling’s literary art were, the dark and mysterious natives, the imaginary law of the jungle, the glory of the Imperialism and the British superiority.

Whether it is a poem or a piece of prose, fiction or impressions as newspaper man, Kipling excelled in every literary form he adopted. As an Anglo-Indian novelist-Kipling concentrated on the difficult conditions of life in India which tested the physical stamina and emotional strength of the Europeans. He brought to light the adulterous behaviour and nepotism in his works. Yet a critic observes:

“Though Kipling had such oriental scholarship, intimate first-hand knowledge of Indian life and thought, his views about India are biased as he himself was an ardent imperialist.”

The British impulse of denying status as fellow human beings springs from a fear of threat of their identity and values. Though Kipling is far from a sense of alienness, he interpreted their displacement and need for flight into the closed circle of their community.

In Kipling’s story, The Head of the District, racial characteristics are so arranged that the probity of the British civilian is balanced against the cowardice of the Western educated Bengali. In Without benefit of Clergy. Kipling brings home the theme that even true love is not adequate to patch up the racial gulf between the British and the Indians. Such an association would bring forth a “degenerate race”. It would be destructive to one or both partners. The liaison between the Sahib and the Indian woman ends with the death of the woman and their child and the destruction of their house. Nicholson observes:

“The destruction of their house symbolizes the impossibility of fusing the two cultures through love.”

In Lispeth he takes on the theme of unbreak­able barriers between the two races. Lispeth falls in love with an Englishman. The Chaplain’s wife tells her that,

“The Englishman promised her his love to keep her quest--that it was wrong and improper ofLispeth to think ofmarriage with an Englishman who was of superior clay.”

Kipling’s strong belief that the two races just cannot live together is made plain in the beginning of Beyond the Pale. He says,

“A man should, whatever happens keep to his own caste, race and breed. Let the white go to the white and the black go to the black.”

The theme of the story is love between a young Hindu widow and an Englishman. Their love which progresses to their nightly escapades to her bed-chamber is discovered and avenged by the widow’s brother-in-law. The Sahib when he visits her next, sees her once beautiful hands transformed into “bare stumps”. They never meet again. The window through which he climbed has been walled up. The break between them is complete and final.

India is picturised as an entity of darkness in Kipling’s well known story “The Bridge Builders.” It is presented as a challenge to the forces of light and power. Mother Ganga who is unable to bear a bridge being built over her is appeased only when she is reminded of the age old thought that all is “Maya”. The heroic attitude ofaccepting a challenge is under-lined here.

Kipling’s stories on the East-West theme have won critical acclaim because the problems he treated in his fiction were justified in the colonial context. There are critics like T. S. Eliot who squarely counter the argument that Kipling was biased towards the British. To Eliot, Kipling believed that the British had a greater aptitude for ruling than others. The creator of Lama and Purun Bhagat cannot possibly be an imperialist says K. Viswanatham. In this insightful analysis of Kim Prof. K. Viswanatham says that Kipling was one of the few exceptions of the English in India who, “maintained a too self conscious isolation from the Indians”. It is only after the publication of Kim and The Jungle Books that there is a wind ofchange in Kipling’s criticism. Kim was hailed as the maturest work in India.

Kipling’s understanding of India blossomed in Kim. It begins with the search for the River of the Arrow and ends with Lama’s discovery of it. In between is thrown Kim’s search for the Red Bull and initiation into the greater game. In Kim, Kipling unfolds the mystery that is India. He shows the unique contradictions, that go into the making ofIndia. Kim opens the window ofIndia wherein we come across a bewildering mass of minute details about Pundits and bankers, Pulton and Police, Jadoo and Maya, hawkers and Jugglers, Kismet and Shradda, charms and transmigration, Guru and Chela, Jat and Pathan, pedigree horse and Brahminly bull, gora log and kala admi, Pahari and Pardesi, SI. Xavier and Benaras, Astrology, Purdah greedy Brahmins and picturesquc proverbs.

Both Lama and Kim are awe-struck by the spectacle of India.

Kim: “This is a great and beautiful land.”
“A fair land - a most beautiful land in Hind and the land of five rivers is fairer than all”
Lama: “A great and wonderfulland.”
“The kindly East.”

Kim proves Kipling’s capability of transcending his political and racial prejudices and appears genuinely humane by his worth and not by caste or creed.

The fact that Kipling’s writings are denser than his beliefs is beyond doubt. Their diversity and multiplicity ofview-points make the most vivid fictional transmutations of the sub-continent’s many faces, ofits moods and sensibilities.

Benita Parry consequently summarizes Kipling’s writings thus:

“This is the fruit not of Kipling the theorist but of an inspired artist who at a deeper conscious level accepted India as his native soul and who when he looked at India through ethno-centric lenses, did so in full knowledge, that the images he received were those of a Whiteman of the West.”