We should tread carefully when he condemn to Hell ‘nasty imperialists’ like Rudyard Kipling who might well not be the villain we choose to make of him

This post began as a short review of Kim, but somehow grew and grew. It is not no longer a review of Kim – which I have still to write – but a wondering at why Rudyard Kipling is still, it seems almost uniformly, written of because he was an’ imperialist’.

I am at present reading Kim, or rather re-reading the novel, and came across this blog by googling ‘views and comments’ about Kim. As it turns out there are surprisingly few such comments, if you ignore The Kipling Society website, and frankly I was hoping for non-partisan views. I suspect Kipling Society members might not be as neutral as I might like.

I am re-reading the novel because I was not overly impressed at my first reading (and still have to finish the second) and wondered whether I had missed something. From experience I know that an almost immediate second reading often does pay off.

Perhaps the failing is mine, but it is proving to be useful. I am not sure, though, that I shall much be changing my opinions of Kim and suspect I shall be making the same points that first occurred to me.

Incidentally, some novels – I’m thinking of the English translation of Gogol’s Dead Souls - do not tempt enough to encourage a second such reading. In that case it didn’t help that I was wholly unfamiliar with the culture and milieu it was satirising and I discovered some time ago that translation all-too-often do not convey intended subtleties.

One pertinent point, although ironically not one particularly relevant to the novel as ‘literature’, is Kipling’s supposed imperialism and, ninety years after his death, how he is still more or less, in passing, written off as ‘an

imperialist’ as in ‘an unacceptable imperialist’ (and, as is the joke, ‘not in a good way’).

The observation is almost a tacit invitation to write him off wholesale as a novelist, short story writer and poet. And the ‘fact’ of Kipling’s ‘imperialism’ has to be added to the ‘Everybody knows’ file, as in almost all folk ‘know it’.

Yet, I suspect that many, perhaps most, who cleave to that view have not read a great deal of his work, if any perhaps, and would be hard-pressed to tell you why ‘Kipling's imperialism’ was ‘a bad thing’, except that ‘imperialism is a bad thing’ as are ‘slavery’, ‘homosexuality’ and ‘women’s rights’.

I add the last two to underline how much ‘morality’ is more malleable than it or we might care to admit and that we can never quite rule out backsliding: at present Britain is desperately wooing China for ‘vital’ economic and commercial reasons and in its desperation is very keen indeed to ignore that China is engaged in a kind of updated imperialism and is none to observant of what we in the West regard as ‘universal human rights’.

So, it seems, ‘imperialism’ is not always such a bad thing when it suits, the crucial yardstick being whether condemning it or not is in our ‘national interests’.

I should make clear that I am not attempting and shall not attempt to ‘defend’ imperialism. It was an aspect of its age, and pretty much all European nations had an ‘empire’ at one time of another as of course did several African, American and Asian nations.

How badly or very badly these imperial nations, their rulers, their place-men and their elites behaved is neither here nor there and even today there are not a few apologists for British imperialism. ‘Yes,’ the argument runs ‘we might have subjugated many nations, plundered their resources and killed quite a few of their folk. But so did the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese and if you look at it overall, we were certainly not as bad as they were. Oh no!’

Often such apologists go on to insist that British imperialism was not – could not have been – ‘all bad’, as for example, what subborned nation got in return for our – I suppose the word they would like to use is ‘benign’ – imperialism. Look, they declare, we gave them a working model ivil service and a fantastic railway network.

So they will carry on, often in the manner of a bar / pub bore [delete as applicable] or a barrack room lawyer, and demand to know why, if British imperialism was so terrible, why did so many of its former colonies adopt Britain’s parliamentary and legal systems? ‘Answer me that, eh!’ they will insist, and follow up with triumphalist ‘. . . and doesn’t that prove something?’

To that the only response is that ‘no, it doesn’t prove anything all’. All it does is to certainly demonstrate that those systems were, in the opinion of the newly free colonies, rather good and thus worth emulating. And note, it was because pragmatically they were thought they worthwhile they were copied, not because they were British.

. . .

Putting aside for a moment the matter of considering how ‘imperialist’ Kipling was, the immediate question remains if we are considering him as an artist: why on earth should the man’s ‘imperialist’ views have any bearing at all on the quality of his art?

Do we castigate Shakespeare for misogyny in The Taming Of The Shrew? Was Will of Stratford possibly anti-semitic given his portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice. Might Will, given today’s current preoccupation with ‘trans issues’, be accused of some kind of arcane transphobia in Twelfth Night? Was he defending paedophilia in Romeo And Juliet?

Why is Edward Elgar (right), he of Land Of Hope And Glory, a very popular piece when played all over the British Empire, not similarly castigated. It makes no sense at all.

Consider the ‘celebrated’ British sculptor Eric Gill, celebrated the world over (at least by those who celebrate sculpture and sculptors) who, it was revealed in 1989, almost 50 years after his death in 1940 was a paedophile who had sex with at least on of his daughters and, apparently, also the family dog.

His sexual behaviour was common knowledge among his family and some friends and he recorded details of it in his diaries. Yet in the first biography of the man, published in 1966, there was silence on the matter, and it wasn’t until a second biography was published in 23 years later, in 1989.

Was his ‘art’ less ‘good’ once all that was known? Can art lose in artistic value under such circumstances? If two people viewed a work of Gill’s art where one knew about his paedophilia and the other did not, would the piece ‘not be art’ for the one viewer, but a magnificent piece for the other? And what are we to make of the continuing reluctance of churches, galleries and the BBC to remove Gill’s works now we know he like to shag young children and animals?

Obviously, these are all rhetorical question and, as obviously – I hope – the answer to all, were one still to be demanded, is ‘no, of course, not. Now stop wasting my time’. Yes, there is a dilemma, but it is not the dilemma we hypocritically choose to believe it is. But I don’t wish – here - to sideline myself into a complex and pointless discussion of ‘the nation of art’, although, as always I have lot to say on the matter.

That of course, leaves us with the condemnable alleged ‘imperialism’ of Kipling and the suggestion that because of it, he should be ruled out of court. But would it really be equitable to banish Kipling for not opposing imperialism but to give Gill a pass (for some reason or other)? Discuss.

. . .

The introduction to my Wordsworth edition of Kim, by a Professor Cedric Watts, usefully quotes the novelist Julian Barnes when he observes ‘What a curious vanity it is of the present
to expect the past to suck up to it’.

Quite, and Barnes gets right to the essence of ‘what to do with Rudyard Kipling and his imperialist views?’ I suggest the answer is not just ‘nothing at all’, but that we might add ‘and try to read Kipling more carefully before you make your silly snap judgments’.

More clearly: Kipling did broadly support the imperial status quo – he was born in the middle of the 19th century in 1865 and already over 50 when with the end of World War I the ‘British Empire’ was well on its way to collapse (though wasn’t for another few decades and, for example, the nations fo the Indian subcontinent did not regain their freedom to rule themselves for another 31 years).

But a more attentive reading of Kipling’s work demonstrates he had a far more nuanced take on Britain, India, the British and the Indians and he was and is far more even-keeled than those who condemn him for his ‘imperialism’ might care to admit.

In Kim, Kipling certainly did, as a matter of course, assume without question that ‘British rule of India’ was worthwhile and all-round for the best. And, yes, he does present us with ‘ethnic’ Indian characters who appear to agree with him about British rule being for the best. And, yes, he does for example and uncomfortably for some talk, of the Asiatic mind, the ‘native’ mind and, for example, how the native prefers to sleep.

None of which is too promising for anyone attempting to get Kipling off the hook. And, of course, all us, whether you live in Old Blighty, China, Singapore, Vietnam, Europe, the US, Argentina, India and, I don’t doubt the bloody Moon, suffer – badly from what I have very recently come to know was ‘chronocentrism’: that the age in which we live is most certainly the best and with any doubt at all the world has been leading up to this perfection.

It follows from that, or better for those suffering from ‘chronocentrism, that everything about our age is ‘right’ and so our current abhorrence for imperialism is pretty much the final say on the matter?

Really? No, not really. In fact, complete nonsense. The sad fact is that ‘morality’, ‘moral systems’ and the like are as much subject to vagaries as hemlines and beards in fashion. You want to ‘prove’ that ‘some values are universal’, go ahead. And get in touch as and when, though I doubt I’ll hear from you.

So yet again one might wonder, with Barnes, at the ‘curious vanity’ of the present ‘to expect the past to suck up to it.’ Frankly, it gets worse: implicit in that vanity is the unassailable conviction that ‘we are right and those who disagree are simply wrong’ – essentially and not least ironically the exact same attitude of British imperialists adopt and which we now choose to abhor. Funny old world, eh?

. . .

Kipling had an unusual childhood: as youngster he was shipped off from India by his parents when he was five to be fostered in England, why is, I don’t know, there were many excellent ‘English schools’ in Bombay, where he first grew up and elsewhere in India.

Raised, as were many British children, by ‘native servants’, he first spoke ‘native languages’ and English was then a second language. From his childhood and later his work in India, in fact, was very taken with ‘the natives’ and ‘the Asiatic mind’, and portrays both as often far more intellectually agile than that of the British overlord.

With the exception of Colonel Creighton (who speaks perfect Urdu, which in itself indicates an implicit respect for an aspect of Indian culture), ‘the white man’ is shown to be something of a clodhopper, prone to drunkenness and slow wits.

A variety of ‘Indians’ pose with their British ‘overlords’ just before the ‘Indian’ mutiny in 1857 and 1858

Though he is clear of the distinction between the European and the Oriental, at no point does he state, or even hint, that the former is superior to the latter.

Kipling is always keen to stress the sheer diversity of the many different ethnic groups in India, and at no point does he crassly deal with ‘Indians’. There are Pathans, Afghans, hill people, those who live in the plains and others and many, many more, and each has a distinct identity, and although for us lazy white honkeys it is easiest to refer to ‘Indians’, it seems to be a certain kind of nonsense, even today.

He describes the different groups, their virtues and vices, from the untrustworthy Brahmin priests (a common tripe among ‘Indians’ themselves) to the kind and generous village folk always ready to feed a passing stranger, suspicious farmers, duplicitous and murderous employees, proud women, kind prostitutes, a jealous young boy prepared to kill Kim who he regards as a rival.

None is reduced to a caricature: the delight Kipling feels in their company and the people they are is palpable and, I suggest, wholly at odds with what one might expect of an overbearing imperialist.

That still leaves the question of why Kipling was tarred and feathered with that brush and is still written off today as ‘an imperialist’ and all that conveys or many, whereas others of his time were and are not. And to that question I have no answer at all.