Book Reviews

On reading Kipling – 21st Century Perspective

On reading Kipling – 21st Century Perspective

I read two of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tales recently. I read “Kim,” and “Captain Courageous”. Reading Kipling for a liberal 21st-century reader poses some challenges, first and foremost for this reader is the racism, sexism, and colonial white super-mastic British colonialist attitudes that prevail in both of these works, particularly “Kim”. Bill Maher calls this dilemma, the sin of presentism reading classic works through contemporary biased eyes. The solution is simple, just ignore the abeliasism, classism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and other ableism and just enjoy the story, the characters, the history, and the settings. If you do that you can enjoy them as they were meant to be enjoyed. Nothing is to be gained by focusing on the attributes of these stories and of course, other stories written in less enlightened times.

Kim is in the extraordinary life of a young half-British street urchin who in the late 19th century is taken in by local mercenaries and rises through the ranks of the British secret service learning how to be a player in the great game afoot.
He goes to a British school in colonial India and learns the basis of spy craft and then travels around the Indian countryside reporting on conditions there and playing a small role in helping to combat potential rebellion against the Colonial British control over India.
Kim grows up fast and learns the hard way the limits of Colonial British control. He is treated by most as Indian because he had grown up on the streets in Lahore as a street urchin taken in my local criminal gangs.

He also befriends a local holly man and travels with him as his disciple looking for his roots and his father. He is eventually taken in by local UK colonial military officers who recognize that he is the son of a British NCO’ and send him to a local boarding school before he ends up joining the British secret service as an “agent”.

He also becomes a player, helping other agents in various deceptions. He is a master of disguise and intrigue using his wits and language skills to great skill the story ends with him becoming a young adult who has to decide what to do with his life, and looking at possibly studying in England and joining the civil service as a full-time MI agent.

All in all a fascinating and fun tale of colonial intrigue in late 19th century India.