Rudyard Kipling Read online

  III

  THE SAHIB

  There is another group of Indian tales, a group which deals with thegovernance of India--with the men who are spent in the ImperialService. The peculiar charm and merit of these tales is bestconsidered as a special case of Mr Kipling's delight in the world'swork--a subject which claims a chapter to itself. But apart from this,Mr Kipling's Anglo-Indian tales--his presentation of the work of theIndian Empire, of the Anglo-Indian soldier and civilian--have anunfortunate interest of their own. They are mainly responsible for amisconception which has dogged Mr Kipling through all his career. Thismisconception consists in regarding Mr Kipling as primarily anImperialist pamphleteer with a brief for the Services and a contemptfor the Progressive Parties. It is an error which has actedmischievously upon all who share it--upon the reader who mechanicallyregrets that Mr Kipling's work should be disfigured with fierce heresy;upon the reader who chuckles with sectarian glee when the "muchtalkers" are mocked and confounded; upon Mr Kipling himself who hasbeen encouraged to mistake an accident of his career as the essence ofhis achievement and to regard himself as a sort of Imperial laureate.The origin of this misconception is not obscure. Mr Kipling haswritten intimate tales of the British Army: he is, therefore, a"militarist." He has lived in India many years, and realised that menwho live in India, and administer India, and come into personal contactwith Hindus and Mohammedans, know more about India than Members ofParliament who run through the Indian continent between sessions: heis, therefore, a reviler of the free democratic institutions of GreatBritain. He has realised that Government departments in Whitehall arenot always thought to be very expeditious, well informed and devoted bymen who are often confronted with matters that cannot afford to waitfor a telegram: he is, therefore, a lover of the high hand and ofcourses brutal and irregular. He has celebrated the toil and theadventure of pioneers and of outposts: he is, therefore, one whobrandishes unseasonably the Imperial sword.

  The grain of truth in these deductions is heavily outweighed by themassive absurdity of regarding them as in any sense essential. MrKipling brings political prejudice into his work less than almost anyliving contemporary. At a time when there was hardly an English novelor an English play of consequence which was not also a politicalpamphlet it was completely false to regard Mr Kipling as a pamphleteer.When most of our English authors were talking from the platform, MrKipling--with a few, too few, others--remained apart. He is suspect,not because his Anglo-Indian tales or his army tales are political, butbecause they record much that is true of the English Services, whichfails to square with much that once was popularly believed about them.The real reason of Mr Kipling's false fame as a politician is, not thathe is an Imperial pamphleteer, but that, writing of the Army and theEmpire, he fails to be a pamphleteer on the other side. Hisdetachment, not his partiality, is at fault.

  Mr Kipling's detachment from the politics of his day explains virtuallyeverything that has offended his modern critics. Almost the firstthing to realise in discussing Mr Kipling's attitude to modern life isthat Mr Kipling has kept absolutely clear of the political and socialdrift of the last thirty years. He has been conspicuously out ofeverything. He has had nothing to say to any of the ideas orinfluences which have formed his contemporaries. While others of hisliterary generation were growing up amid intellectual movements,democratic tendencies and advances of humanity, Mr Kipling was standingbetween two civilisations in India which were hardly susceptible ofbeing reconciled till they had been reduced to very simple terms. Theinstinct to simplify--to get down to something in nature that includedthe East with the West, the First with the Twentieth century, wasnaturally strong in one who was born between two nations; and it was aninstinct which drove Mr Kipling in the opposite direction from that inwhich his contemporaries were moving. While Mr Kipling's generationwas learning to analyse, refine and interrogate, to become super-subtleand incredulous, to exalt the particular and ignore the general, toprobe into the intricate and sensitive places of modern life, MrKipling was looking at mankind in the mass, looking back to thehalf-dozen realities which are the stuff of the poetry of every climateand period--to love of country which is as old as the waters ofBabylon, to the faith of Achates, and the affliction of Job. While MrKipling's contemporaries have been working towards minute studies ofindividuals and groups, Mr Kipling has been content to catch the metalof humanity at the flash point, to wait for the passionate moment whichreveals all mankind as of one kindred. "We be of one blood, ye andI"--the phrase of the Jungle holds.

  To find here evidence of a bias merely political, of an attitudereactionary and hostile to the progress o the world, is to deny senseand meaning to the greatest literature of the world. Mr Kipling'sinstinctive simplifying of life he shares with the immortals. It is,as we shall see, the immortal part of him. To write of Mr Kipling asthough he celebrates the ape and the tiger; extols the Philistine andthe brute; calls always for more chops--"bloody ones with gristle";delights in the savagery of war, and ferociously despises all thatseparates the Englishman of to-day from his painted ancestor--this isthe mistake of critics who cannot distinguish the cant of progress fromits reality.

  We shall be driven more particularly to consider Mr Kipling's atavismin discussing his tales of the British Army. For the present we aredealing only with India and the "Imperialism" which some of MrKipling's critics have taken for an offensive proof of his politicalprejudice. Mr Kipling's treatment of the Anglo-Indian, and of thedealing of the Anglo-Indian with the Indian Empire, has nothing to dowith the Yellows and the Blues. The real motive of Mr Kipling'sattitude towards the men on the frontier, in places where deadly thingsare encountered and there is work to be done, is no more a matter ofpolitics, "progressive" or "reactionary," than is his celebration ofthe Maltese Cat or of .007. "The White Man's Burden" is the burden ofevery creature in whom there lives the pride of unrewarded labour, ofendurance and courage. In India this pride has to be wholesomelytempered with humility; for India is old and vast and incomprehensible,to be handled with care, to be approached as a country which, though itshows an inscrutably smiling face to the modern world, has the powersuddenly to baffle its modern rulers by opening to them glimpses of anintricate and unassailable life which cannot be ruffled by Orders inCouncil or disturbed by the weak ploughing of teachers from the West.The task of the Anglo-Indian administrator is, indeed, the finestopportunity for that heroic life to the celebration of which Mr Kiplinghas devoted so many of his tales. This hero has a task which taxes allhis ability, which promises little riches and little fame, and is knownto be tolerably hopeless. It offers to him a supreme test of hisvirtue--a test in which the hero is accountable only to his personalwill; whose best work is its own reward and comfort.

  "Gentlemen come from England," writes Mr Kipling in one of his Indiantales, "spend a few weeks in India, walk round this great sphinx of thePlains, and write books upon its ways and its work, denouncing orpraising it as their ignorance prompts. Consequently all the worldknows how the Supreme Government conducts itself. But no one, not eventhe Supreme Government, knows everything about the administration ofthe Empire. Year by year England sends out fresh drafts for the firstfighting-line, which is officially called the Indian Civil Service.These die, or kill themselves by overwork, or are worried to death, orbroken in health and hope, in order that the land may be protected fromdeath and sickness, famine and war, and may eventually become capableof standing alone. It will never stand alone; but the idea is a prettyone, and men are willing to die for it, and yearly the work of pushingand coaxing and scolding and petting the country into good living goesforward. If an advance be made, all credit is given to the native,while the Englishmen stand back and wipe their foreheads. If a failureoccurs, the Englishmen step forward and accept the blame."

  This passage declares the heroic spirit of Mr Kipling's Anglo-Indiantales; and many readers will fail to understand how exactly this spirithas been found vainglorious.

  There is a passage in Shakes
peare where a king's envoy comes to claimof a high-mettled and sweating warrior the fruits of victory. Thewarrior grudges less surrendering the fruits of victory to the kingthan he grudges surrendering his anger at being easily and prettilyaddressed on the field of battle by a polite and dainty fellow who hasno idea how dearly the fruits of victory are purchased. Mr Kipling'sheroes are frail enough to feel some of this very natural indignationwhen unbreathed politicians lecture them in the heat of their Indianday. They come into touch with things simple and bitter. India hassearched out the value of many a Western shibboleth, destroyed manydoctrines, principles, ideas and theories. Phrases which look well ina peroration look foolish when there is immediate work to be done, andexpediency begins to rule. The first lesson which the Indian civilianlearns, a lesson which is rarely omitted from any of Mr Kipling'sIndian stories, is that practical men are better for being ready totake the world as they find it. The men who worship the Great GodDungara, the God of Things as They Are, most terrible, One-eyed,Bearing the Red Elephant Tusk--men who are set on saving their ownparticular business--have no time for saving faces and phrases. Theyhave small respect for a principle. They have seen too many principlesbreak down under the particular instance. Hence there is in all MrKipling's work a disrespect of things which are printed and made muchof in the contemporary British press; and this, again, has encouragedthe idea that he is "reactionary," contemptuous of the humanities, andenemy of all the best poets and philosophers.

  It will perhaps be well to look a little closely at one or two of MrKipling's Indian series. They will help us to realise how the chargeswe are discussing have arisen and exactly how unreasonable they are.The first of two excellent examples is the story of _Tods' Amendment_._Tods' Amendment_ is the story of a Bill brought in by the SupremeLegislative Council of India. Tods was an English baby of six, and hemixed on friendly terms with Indians in the bazaar and with members ofthe Supreme Legislative Council. The Council was at this time devisinga new scheme of land tenure which aimed at "safeguarding the interests"of a few hundred thousand cultivators of the Punjab. The Bill wasbeautiful on paper; and the Legal Member, who knew Tods, was settlingthe "minor details." The weak part of the business was that Europeanlegislators, dealing with natives, are often puzzled to know whichdetails are the major and which the minor. Also the Native Member wasfrom Calcutta, and knew nothing about the Punjab. Nevertheless, theBill was known to be a beautiful Bill till Tods happened one evening tobe sitting on the knee of the Legal Member, and to hear him mention_The Submontane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment_. Tods had heard thebazaar talking of a new plan for the Ryotwari, as bazaars talk whenthere is no white man to overhear. Tods began to prattle, and theLegal Member began to listen, till he soon realised that there was onlyone drawback to the beautiful Bill. The beautiful Bill, in short, wasaltogether wrong, more especially in the Council's pet clause which soclearly "safeguarded the interests of the tenant." It therefore cameabout that the rough draft of the Submontane Tracts Ryotwari RevisedEnactment was put away in the Legal Member's private paper-box--"and,opposite the twenty-second clause, pencilled in blue chalk, and signedby the Legal Member, are the words, 'Tods' Amendment.'"

  The moral of the tale is not obscure. A baby who runs in the bazaar isbetter able to legislate for India than a Supreme Legislative Council.India, in short, is a vast and uncertain land, whose ways are notalways learned in a lifetime by the men whose business it is. Theargument _a fortiori_--namely, that amiable and humane politicalphilosophers, well bred in the latest European theories of government,are even less likely to be infallible--need not be pursued.

  Our second story is the story of Aurelian McGoggin. Aurelian McGogginhad read too many books, and he had too many theories. He also had acreed: "It was not much of a creed. It only proved that men had nosouls, and there was no God and no hereafter, and that you must worryalong somehow for the good of humanity." McGoggin had found it anexcellent creed for a Government office, and he brought it to India andtried to teach it to all his friends. His friends had found that lifein India is not long enough to waste in proving that there is no oneparticular at the head of affairs, and they objected. They also warnedMcGoggin not to be too good for his work, and not to insist on doing itbetter than it needed to be done, because people in India wanted alltheir energy for bare life. But McGoggin would not be warned, and oneday, when he had steadily overworked and overtalked through the hotseason, he was suddenly interrupted at the club, in the middle of anoration. The doctor called it _aphasia_; but McGoggin only knew thathe was struck sensationally dumb: "Something had wiped his lips ofspeech as a mother wipes the milky lips of her child, and he wasafraid. For a moment he had lost his mind and memory--which waspreposterous and something for which his philosophy did not allow.Henceforth he did not appear to know so much as he used to about thingsDivine."

  McGoggin, in fact, was converted; for, as Mr Kipling explains, hisstory is really a tract--a tract whose purpose is to convey that Indiais able to cure the most resolute positivist of his positivism. MrKipling's India is a land where science is mocked, and syntheticphilosophies perish, and mere talk is wiped from the lips. You do nottalk of Humanity in India, because in India "you really seehumanity--raw, brown, naked humanity--with nothing between it and theblazing sky, and only the used-up, overhandled earth underfoot." MrKipling's Indian administrators are practical and simple men, who obeyorders and accept the incredible because their position requires themto administer India as though they were never at fault, whereas theirexperience tells them that, if they are never to be at fault in India,it is wise to be not too original and fatal to be too rigid.

  _Tods' Amendment_ and _The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin_ are printedamong _Plain Tales from the Hills_. They look forward to a wholeseries of Anglo-Indian tales which present Mr Kipling's idea of theEnglish in India. Out of his later books we can illustrate a hundredtimes his conviction that in India the simplest wisdom is the best.

  But there are two kinds of simplicity. The one kind is illustrated ina tale from _The Day's Work_; it is the right kind of simplicity. Inno story of Mr Kipling is the devoted service and practicalresourcefulness of the good Civilian so movingly celebrated as in thestory of _William the Conqueror_. It is the story of a famine, and ofhow it was met by the servants of the Indian Government. Theadministration of famine relief would seem to be a simple thing whenthe grain has come by rail and only waits to be distributed. But thedistrict served by the little group of English in _William theConqueror_ was a district which did not understand the food of theNorth, and, if it could not get the rice which it knew, was ready tostarve within reach of bagsful of unfamiliar wheat or rye. The hero ofthe tale is finally reduced to distributing the Government rations tothe goats, and keeping the starving babies alive with milk. It was asimple idea, and the man to whom it occurred worked himself to death'sdoor, which was no more than another simple idea of what was due fromhim to the district and to his superior officer.

  The wrong kind of simplicity is illustrated in a story from _Life'sHandicap_. It is called _The Head of the District_, and it has to dowith a simple idea which occurred to the Viceroy. A DeputyCommissioner who understood the lawless Khusru Kheyel and had put intothem the fear of English law had died and a successor had to beappointed. The man for the post was a certain Tallentire who hadworked with the late head of the district and knew the tribe with whomhe had to deal. But the Viceroy had a Principle. He wished to educatethe natives in self-government; and here was an opportunity--a vacantpost of responsibility and a native candidate to fill it.

  "There was a gentleman and a member of the Bengal Civil Service who hadwon his place and a university degree to boot in fair and opencompetition with the sons of the English. He was cultured, of theworld, and, if report spoke truly, had wisely and, above all,sympathetically ruled a crowded district in South-Eastern Bengal. Hehad been to England and charmed many drawing-rooms there. His name, ifthe Viceroy recollected aright, was Mr
Grish Chunder De, M.A. Inshort, did anybody see any objection to the appointment, always onprinciple, of a man of the people to rule the people? The district inSouth-Eastern Bengal might with advantage, he apprehended, pass over toa younger civilian of Mr G. C. De's nationality (who had written aremarkably clever pamphlet on the political value of sympathy inadministration); and Mr G. C. De could be transferred northward. Asregarded the mere question of race, Mr Grish Chunder De was moreEnglish than the English, and yet possessed of that peculiar sympathyand insight which the best among the best Service in the world couldonly win to at the end of their service."

  The principle was sound; but the consequences were such as usuallyfollow when ideas which are simple in one continent are applied inanother. Any man on the frontier could have told what would come ofasking the Khusru Kheyel to respect and obey Mr Grish Chunder De. Itwas not a matter of religion or ability, but of history. The KhusruKheyel had had relations with the countrymen of their new Head forgenerations and they were not relations of respect and obedience. Howthere was riot and some rapid blood-letting on the border, and how thenew Head resigned his office before he had taken it over, is told as awarning that there is a wrong kind of simplicity in dealing with India.It is fatal to have invented simple and embracing phrases about acountry which holds more races than all Europe; has had a long andprivate history of its own; has been more often conquered than GreatBritain; and has had every sort of experience except that of beinggoverned according to constitutional law.

  This chapter being mainly devoted to rescuing Mr Kipling from hispolitical admirers and censors, it may be well to conclude upon hisvision of the devoted civilian Scott, the hero of a tale alreadyquoted, the man who fed the Indian babies from a herd of goats fattenedon the food which the starving people of the Deccan distrusted andrefused. Scott appears in that story at sunset, delectable and humane,sneezing in the dust of a hundred little feet, "a god in a halo of golddust, walking slowly at the head of his flocks, while at his knee ransmall naked cupids."

  Clearly there is something wrong with the popular habit of regarding MrKipling as essentially concerned with the carving of men to the "nastynoise of beef-cutting on the block." His "god in a halo of gold dust"seriously discourages any attempt to brand him with the mark of thereverting carnivor.