"Rudyard Kipling's novel, Kim, justifies Empire and mythologizes the ordeals of colonial rule" To what extent is the above statement true in the novel.

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Q. “Rudyard Kipling’s novel, Kim, justifies Empire and mythologizes the ordeals of colonial rule”  To what extent is the above statement true in the novel.

Rudyard Kipling’s Kim has never lost its prestige as a piece of adventure fiction, but, in the rise of postcolonial studies has been the subject of more and more critical study.  In the course of this essay I intend to show that Kipling with Kim does indeed justify the British Empire’s exploitation of India; not merely by not challenging imperialism, but by subtly reinforcing its racist values.  I shall show that, although the author is certainly sympathetic towards Indian culture, he does eventually believe that their race is an inferior one and that race itself is something nonnegotiable.  I intend to show that Kipling believed wholeheartedly that it was the white man’s duty to subjugate the darker skinned races because these races were not able to look after themselves.  In order to support this theory, I will show that, time and time again in Kim, the author displays natives to be helpless and childlike; more a danger to themselves than their British overlords.  Fundamentally, we shall see that the author justifies imperialism through his anthropological assertions.  I will then examine how these attitudes are emphasized in the author’s assessment of education, Indian versus English, and how the latter’s superiority supposedly validates colonial expansion.  Finally, I shall consider the character of Hurree Babu and discuss the implications of Kipling’s apparent repugnance towards him.  I do not wish to paint Kipling in a demonic light, however and I believe that his genuine enthusiasm for the Indian culture may have been unusual for it time.  What we have then is a kind of ambiguity, the author at once asserts the expediency of empire while remaining sympathetic towards the conquered people.  Kipling certainly mythologizes the ordeals of colonial rule and he seems very reluctant to examine native grievances.  But we must also consider the fact that the book is, essentially, an adventure story written for adolescent boys and was probably never intended as a political novel in the first place.

Kipling was, without a doubt, pro-empire; he believed that the western world was obliged to annex its eastern relatives because these poorer ‘second-class’ civilizations could not hope to take care of themselves and needed direction from more ‘advanced’ cultures.  Its important to note that Kipling’s imperialist attitude was not driven by economic incentive, he considered the conquest of India as the white man’s duty. He thought that the English must enforce their education on others because it was a decidedly better form of education.  Perhaps Kipling’s exaltation of empire can best be seen in his controversial poem 'The White Man's Burden’ (1899) where the author says “Take up the White Man’s burden -  Send forth the best ye breed - Go send your sons to exile/ To serve your captives' need”.  George Orwell, whose Animal Farm (1945) could be read as a particularly scathing account of self-righteous pomp, considered Kipling’s imperialist outlook backward and idealistic but nevertheless considered him a great story teller.  Of course Kipling’s portrayal of India is to some extent fairly simplistic and we do well to remember that it was, at least in part, written as an adventure novel for teenage boys.  It is my opinion that the author’s justification of empire is most apparent in the power relations between characters.  Already in the opening paragraph, Kim, keeping his birth certificate (proof of his english heritage) in a special amulet close to his chest is shown thwarting the attempts of the native Hindu and Moslem boys to take his position at the top of the cannon.  Kipling seems to believe that Kim is subject to a Nietzschean will to power and that despite himself (at this early stage in the novel he is for all intensive purposes fully native) he is inherently a step above his truly native peers.

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In chapter nine, Kim goes to stay with Lurgan, and the older man repeatedly tests Kim with various games and charades.  Lurgan at one point tries to hypnotise Kim into believing that a broken water vessel lying on the ground is busy reconstructing itself but the sharp witted Kim, uses the multiplication tables he has learned at St. Xavier to dispel his imagination and come to the rational conclusion that this ‘magic’ is merely a masquerade.  Lurgan, who as far as we can tell, has only had native apprentices until now, remarks that Kim is the only one who ...

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