Written by: Farheen Abdullah
Posted on: August 19, 2020 | 
(L to R) Lockwood Kipling and Rudyard Kipling and Kipling House on Mall Road, c. 1890s
“He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher – the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot.” – Kim by Rudyard Kipling
One of the most celebrated classics in the English language, The Jungle Book, has continued to capture imaginations of all generations, be it the book that was first published in 1894, or its various film adaptations over the years. The stories of the lovable feral child Mowgli and his friends from the jungle, have become an essential part of most kids’ childhoods. And its writer, Rudyard Kipling, has left an impact on the way the world came to perceive the Subcontinent.
An Early Cover of The Jungle Book
Born in Bombay in 1865, Kipling was named after the Rudyard Lake in England by his parents, who had recently arrived in India in the service of the British Empire. At the time, Kipling’s father, John Lockwood, an artist and architect by profession, was the head of the Department of Architectural Sculpture at the Jeejeebhoy School of Art in Bombay. A decade down the line, Lockwood went on to become the first mayor of the Mayo School of Industrial Arts (now National College of Arts, Lahore) in 1875, and was also appointed as the first curator of the Lahore Museum, which opened the same year.
Rudyard Kipling as a Child
Whether it was due to his privilege or genuine love, Kipling loved staying in India and based many of his stories on his experiences in the country. Kipling and his sister, Alice, spent much of their initial years exploring the local markets of Lahore and Bombay, learning the vernacular, and merging with the multitude of cultures that the country offered. His curiosity and imagination later led him to describe the country in his literature. “My first impression,” he recalls the place in his autobiography, Something of Myself for My Friends Known and Unknown, “is of daybreak, light and colour, and golden and purple fruits at the level of my shoulder.”
His childhood dreams came to an end when Kipling was sent to Southsea, England, at the age of six to receive a formal British education. Here, Kipling stayed with a foster family till the age of 11, and experienced a life drastically different from the one he knew in his homeland. His foster mother was a cruel woman and Kipling also struggled to settle into his new school, but he never spoke of his struggles with his parents. Instead, Kipling found refuge in books and quickly grew fond of writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wilkie Collins, and Daniel Defoe.
Kipling returned to India in 1882, to reunite with his family and start a career there. The aspiring journalist held the post of assistant editor of the Civil and Military Gazette for five years in Lahore, using the city as home base for his stories of the Subcontinent. Simultaneously, he also published Plain Tales from the Hills, which was a collection of 40 short stories, based on British lives in the town of Simla, and Departmental Ditties, his first major collection of poems.
His career started to take off in 1888 when Kipling joined the Pioneer, a much larger publication in Allahabad. At the same time, his works had begun to be published and he earned a strong following with collections such as The Phantom ‘Rickshaw and Other Tales, Under the Deodars, and “Wee Willie Winkie” and Other Child Stories. The following year, Kipling left India to return to England, determined to pursue his future as a writer there. His last and most successful novel, Kim, came out in 1901.
A photograph of Amritsar, taken by Rudyard Kipling in 1888
While he continued to write over the next few years, Kipling seemed to have lost the will and the imagination to produce gripping content, either due to the death of his daughter, Josephine, or his own deteriorating health that led to this decline. Kipling suffered from a painful ulcer that eventually took his life on January 18, 1936, and his ashes were buried in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey, next to the graves of Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens.
Rudyard Kipling and his daughter, Josephine
Kipling’s writing style is distinct in that he glorifies nature, sometimes using elaborate settings and exaggeration to make his characters seem magical and multidimensional (such as in ‘The Jungle Book’). His poetry, although sometimes lesser known than his books, is also quite moving and introspective in many parts, the most popular of them being ‘If’ and ‘My Boy Jack’. He uses classical techniques such as hyperbole, repetition and imagery, to create a message of harmony and coexistence.
Kipling’s work bares evidence to how much he loved India. Kim, considered to be one of his best stories, was written in 1889, the year he left India. Kim tells the story of a young orphan who travels India with a Buddhist monk, on a journey of discovery and adventure. The beginning of the book takes the reader from the orderly Lahore Museum (outside which, Kim’s Gun still stands), into the dark, complex world of the Walled City, and the fortress-like train station. Unlike his other stories, in which India is exalted as a paradise, Kim had a more complex and mature relationship with India.
Kim
However, not all of his works glorified India. Some of them, such as ‘The City of the Dreadful Night’ reveal the ugly, macabre side of the country, mentioning the hot, tormenting weather and sleeping men littered on the streets. He wrote, “Here the people crawled to the side of the train, holding their little ones in their arms; and a loaded truck would be left behind, men and women clustering round and above it like ants by spilled honey.”
Kipling was the first English author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, for his significant contributions towards children’s stories and poems. Through his writings, Kipling helped shape and maintain a certain image of British India as a place of exoticism and adventure, a world altogether different from that of his readers at the time. Though much of the access he had to the country and its people was because of his participation in the colonial project, but his stories were captivating for a readership which was not familiar with India.
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