Narrative violence in selected works by Rudyard Kipling

Abstract

George Orwell famously accused Rudyard Kipling of promoting sadism, jingoism and racism in his stories (Orwell 1966 70). An apparent difficulty raised by those passages in Kipling’s work which Orwell has in mind arises due to those other aspects of his work which seem to promote empathy with native peoples, affirms their rights as humans, and cast a questioning light on the assumed centrality and privilege of European interests in her colonies. In Kipling’s ‘Quiquern’, for example, there is an undeniable empathy achieved with the experiences and ideology of the Inuit people, one that transcends mere condescension or caricature and resists inclusion in Edward Said’s category of Orientalism. There is a desire to know these native people for what they are, at least a concerted effort to appreciate their minds without infantilising them, and a generous bestowal upon them of the more admirable human qualities like mercy, bravery and imagination. In Kim, the priest serving the English army base comes across as closed-minded in comparison to the lama, whose sincerity and purity evokes not only affection but even respect and reverence. In ‘The Man who would be King’, the English protagonists’ rapaciousness and moral insensitivity in meeting the Kafiristani tribesmen is openly derided. In ‘The Miracle of Purun Bhagat’, it is proposed that more usefulness might lie in a Hindu life of separation and meditation than in a political life spent in developing India along Western lines. How do we reconcile these aspects of Kipling’s work with those that seem to betray a racist outlook or that promote Empire and, in so doing, turn a blind eye to the black marks Empire has incurred through its various acts of human exploitation?