| dc.description.abstract | ASUMMARY OF THE CONTENT OF THE THESIS
It must be reoorded at the outset that this thesis
does not propose to deal with all aspect.s of Kipling's work.
It deals with those daninant and persistent themes whioh
occur in various forms or guises throughout Kipling's work;
more partioularly in his Indian stories, and the people involved
in them. I begin by giving an introduotion to Kipling's
India, whioh being Kipling's oreation from the reality he
observed, is the India to whioh he gave his ownideas and
attitudes whioh were derived from his imperialistio views.
These views were further tainted by his and his oountrymen's
raoial bias and prejudices. It is thus a unique world, which,
besides being a depiotion of the aotual world of Hindus, Sikhs,
Moslems, Christians and Buddhists, was also a world, whioh
Kipling oreated by the exhuberanoe of secreative imagination.
This world - "Kiplingland" - was quite different fran that
of England. Here, none of the oonditions resembled those of
England. The sun was too hot and instead of its being a
souroe of warmth and joy, it was the cause of unbearable heat
and quite often caused drought and i_ne. Rains, too, caused
floods and brought about destruotion and death. Death being
very close, the Anglo-Indiansl• in small, outlying posts met
regularly to prove to each other that they were still alive.
In such a olimate, love was almost impossible. Those who
married ''were pained at heart ''to see the bloan of their wives
fade in the heat of the plains whioh spawned humanity. Or
they sent 'them to a hill-station ''to the scandal, and adultery II
,
1. ThroughOutI use the term Anglo-Indian to mean a person
of British birth, resident in India.
which was brought about by the monotonow
Im this world, there was nothing there '
no boaks; there was only grey, formless]
I then go on to discuss Kipling's ]
particularly, his two long Indian books -
There is also in the same chapter I:
Kipling's short stories, for, after admii
for writing a f'ullfJ..edged novel, Kipline
devoted himself to the writing of the she
art, he achieved a remarkable success.
to handle complextales embodyingmanyLs
and gained increasing control over the the
passage of time, leading on to the writing
pleasing, enigmatic tales as if they', '
DogHarveyf,The Bull 'that Thought•The
mention but a few.
Alongside this development in his a
the people found in these Indian stories
reoeive at the hands of Kipling. In this
Kiplingts different treatment of the Anglo-
native Indians. Whereas the one - this
rayed with full sympathy and understandin
poor natives are oharacterized by all
men's racial and 'social prejudices. The
Anglo-Indians, being membersof the chose:
be all men of supra-excellent qualities,
exhibited as ignorant, superstitious people whoare inefficient
and incapable of looking after themselves. Again, as
they had a different modeof life and thought, Kipling failed
hopelesly to appreciate their point of view and as all the
strange customs and traditions of his "Aryanbrothers" were
incomprehensible to him, he looked upon them as mysterious
or abnormal and gave expression to his views emphasising the
differences between Eastern and Western cultures.
With this essential background from his Indian stories,
I will proceed to discuss other themes besides his imperialism
and lifs oonception of East and West. These include the
notion of white supremacy; the ineffeciency of the natives
and the concept of The Law. Here, I wish to showthe fixity
of his oonception of the "natives" on the me hand and the
"Sahib Bahadurs" on the other. Nothing could shake his views
of the eternal supremacy of the vibite man and the ever-lasting
inferiority of the natives. This conception is based on
the writers strong belief that his Indian world is inhabited
by people of two extremes. On one side of the scale, there
are the Sahibs, who, belonging to the superior race, and being
imbuedby the acoident of birth and training with the knowledge
of the Law', are all there to instruct, regulate, rule
and govern. There are, on the other side of the scale, those
who, being illiterate, inefficient and not able to run their
ownaffairs, to be instructed, regulated, ruled and governed
nowand for ever. The relationship of the membersof tithe
:Lesser breeds to the Sahibs, which is fixed and permanent,is
that of the ruled and the ruler, the serant and the master. ,
2. 'Recessional', RudyardKipling's Verse, Def. Edn.: p.329.
However, although the Sahibs reoeive h:igh salaries and
enj oy the luxury of hordes of servants, they are not entirely'
happy, for in an alien country, they suffer the pangs of
loneliness, separation from their.women-folk 'and
undergo various other hardships cansed by heat, epidemics and
illness. This is the theme of the Anglo-Indian and the State
of Exile, which I discuss next. Before I end this chapter,
I discuss Kipling's view of ArmyLife in India and attempt
to showthe same racial and bias revealed in his
treatment of the Indian soldiers as against that of the Anglo-
Indian Tanmies.
I next deal with the people of Kipling's Indian stories
- Anglo-Indians and Native Indians: Men,Womenand Children -
and reiterate mycontention that, whereas Kipling treats his
Anglo-Indians with full understanding and sympathy, he treats
the Indians with all his an d his ccm\trymen1s raoial and
imperial bias and prejudices. I further attempt to showthat
owing to Kipling's love of outlandish nooks and comers and of
the odd and unusual, he always depicts the abnormal aspects
in the character of the natives, who, to him are all mysterious
people and so quite beyond the comprehension of Englishmen.
He likes only those natives whoare ccntent to do menial jobs,
but has no sympathy and tolerance for those Aryan brothers
who, like Grish Chudder,presumeto do Sahibsl jobs. If, very
rarely, Kipling says a few words of praise for an Indian, it
is only when the Indian is loyal to his British master, serves
him with tile devotion of a dog and above all helps to maintain
the illustrious British Empire.
I finally wish to showthat, as a poet of the Empire
and an excellent story writer, Kipling did a marvellous
job to bring to the notice of the domiciled British people
the glories and marvels of the East. Again, he madehis
countr.y.menconscious of their oversea possessions and of the
hard work done by their canpatriots - the Ordes, Tallantires,
Scott.s and their like - in building and maintaining the Empire.
But he did all this at the cost of the innocent natives and
silent, maligned India, for, while extolling his ownpeople,
he always depicts the abnormal aspects of the country and its
inhabitants. As he thus always paints pictures of native life
and character with all the bias of his countrymen, they clearly
exhibit his lack of any real sympathyand understanding for
the stepmother country and its inhabitants. Kipling may
have mixed with inter-racial assemblies, but it did not in
any way shake his firm belief in the eternal hierarchy of the
Sahibs and the interminable inferiority of the indigenous
people. Hemayhave been struck with the picturesqueness of
India, which, as a master craftsman in the art of description
and story telling, he reproduced excitingly and artistically,
yet, more than anything else, he is conscious of its inherent
rottenness. He knowsthat India has the merit of being twothirds
sham; looking pretty on paper only. He is unhappily
conscious of the tlraw, brown, naked humanity" that surrounds
him and of the "want of atmosphere in the painter's sense."
Aboveall, he knowsthat in India "nothing changes in spite
of the shiny top-scum stuff that people call civilisation''
,
Through Kipling had many opportunities of knowing and
3. IChristmas in India', R.K.f·s Verse, Def. Edn.: p.55.
4. The Biasara of Pooree!, Plain Tales Fromthe Hills: pg 62
under-abandfngIndia and its inhabitants, for, like his Kim
and Tods, he spoke not only Urdu, but also "manyqueer side
speechesll§ 5 he had held grave converse 'With ser'V'ants,
shopkeepers and hill coolies; knewSuddhoo, the old child;
Bahadur Khan, the servant of Imray Sahib, whokilled his
master thinking that he had bewitched his son by praising
and petting the child on the head; McIntosh Jellaludin;
J anoo, Azizun and Lal.un, the ladies of the city; numerous
faquirs and sadhus and had visited a number of opiumdens
and serais. But, in spite of all this, Kipling's India
is the superficial India as seen by a person whose vision
was obscured by his racial and imperialistic bias and
prejudices. | en |
