Imperialsm in literature: Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling is one of these authors that everyone knows about without ever reading them. Most of us are able to recite a few lines of If when needed and saw Disney’s Jungle Book a few times as children — and it is not a bad thing, really, that we don’t read his books systematically anymore.
I read the Jungle Book and the Second Jungle Book in my teens and I remember being somewhat sceptical when the narrator makes a pause after Shere Kan’s death to explain the reader how important death penalty is for a civilised society not to decline. I have less memories of Kim, because I didn’t finish the book, but I do remember how paternalist the way the eponym character became “friend of all” felt (though at the time I certainly did not know the word paternalist).
I was therefore not surprised when I discovered George Orwell’s essay on Kipling — and his dislike of the author: “Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and
aesthetically disgusting.“
The essay is one of the most interesting I have read until know on imperialism. Orwell wants to counter some critics who make Kipling a mere fascist. Instead, he presents the man as a product of his time, influenced by the discourse of his society as much as leaving his mark on this discourse. He thus makes clear how literature both supports and absorbs propaganda:
“It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realize, any more than the average soldier or colonial administrator, that an empire is primarily a money-making concern. Imperialism as he sees it is a sort of forcible evangelizing. You turn a Gatling gun on a mob of unarmed ‘natives’, and then you establish ‘the Law’, which includes roads, railways and a court-house.„
Kipling patronised the Indians in an ignominious way, but his intentions were genuine. You can feel reading his books that his feelsaffection for the uncivilised people he describes. He believed they could become better men in absorbing some — one might say many — aspects of the British civilisation.
In this way, he defended the violent acculturation Britain imposed on India.
Does this mean we should stop reading his works? I do not believe so. Many books our children still read are very violent if we read them as adults. Heidi, for example, defends quite strange values to the eye of the modern reader and Robinson Crusoe is extremely racist. As adults, we are able to contextualise these books and put them in perspective. It simply is our role to build the context children need when they come across stories they cannot understand yet. This is why I wish I had heard of Orwell’s essay when I first came across Kipling’s work. I might have understood why I felt uncomfortable even though both Mowgli and Kim were such neat little fellows. I do believe that presenting children modified version of such works is much more problematic, since they do not learn that opinions evolve and that there are defaults behind the best of qualities. You learn more about the weight of past reading the Jungle Book than watching the Disney animation film.
Orwell’s essay: https://web.archive.org/web/20060918142559/http://www.george-orwell.org:80/Rudyard_Kipling/0.html
