Rudyard Kipling Read online

  IV

  NATIVE INDIA

  From Simla we have come down to the plains and the work of the Englishin Imperial India. Thence we pass to India herself. Concerning nativeIndia Mr Kipling's principle thesis--a thesis illustrated with pointand competency in many excellent tales--is that for the people of theWest there can be no such thing as the real India--only here and therean understanding that wavers and frequently expires. Mr Kipling doesnot insolently explain that India is thus and thus. He allows theimpression to grow upon us, as once it grew upon himself, that in Indiaall the settled ways of the West are insecure, that at any moment wemay be looking into the House of Suddhu.

  "A stone's throw out on either hand From that well-ordered road we tread, And all the world is wild and strange: Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite Shall bear us company to-night, For we have reached the Oldest Land Wherein the Powers of Darkness range."

  It is not for an Englishman to speak of the real India. Let him standwith Mr Kipling between East and West, and allow each thing he sees toadd to his dark and intricate impression. India will then assume herown uneasy and vast form, will press upon the nerves, and be declaredmysterious.

  There are a few pages in _Life's Handicap_ describing the City ofLahore by night. There is great heat in these pages; there is distancealso, and the breathless air of streets where the formic swarming ofIndia, her callous fecundity, the tyranny of her skies, and her oldfaith, prepare us for the House of Suddhu and the return of Imray:

  "The roof-tops are crammed with men, women, and children; and the airis full of undistinguishable noises. They are restless in the City ofDreadful Night; and small wonder. The marvel is that they can evenbreathe. If you gaze intently at the multitude you can see that theyare almost as uneasy as a daylight crowd; but the tumult is subdued.Everywhere, in the strong light, you can watch sleepers turning to andfro, shifting their beds and again resettling them. In the pit-likecourtyards of the houses there is the same movement.

  "The pitiless Moon shows it all. Shows, too, the plains outside thecity, and here and there a hand's-breadth of the Ravee without thewalls. Shows lastly, a splash of glittering silver on a house-topalmost directly below the mosque Minar. Some poor soul has risen tothrow a jar of water over his fevered body; the tinkle of the fallingwater strikes faintly on the ear. Two or three other men, in far-offcorners of the City of Dreadful Night, follow his example, and thewater flashes like heliographic signals. . . . Still the unrestfulnoise continues, the sigh of a great city overwhelmed with the heat,and of a people seeking in vain for rest. It is only the lower-classwomen who sleep on the house-tops. What must the torment be in thelatticed zenanas, where a few lamps are still twinkling? There arefootfalls in the court below. It is the _Muezzin_--faithful minister;but he ought to have been here an hour ago to tell the Faithful thatprayer is better than sleep--the sleep that will not come to the city.

  "The _Muezzin_ fumbles for a moment with the door of one of the Minars,disappears awhile, and a bull-like roar--a magnificent bassthunder--tells that he has reached the top of the Minar. They musthear the cry to the banks of the shrunken Ravee itself! Even acrossthe courtyard it is almost overpowering. The cloud drifts by and showshim outlined black against the sky, hands laid upon his ears, and broadchest heaving with the play of his lungs--'Allah ho Akbar'; then apause while another _Muezzin_ somewhere in the direction of the GoldenTemple takes up the call--'Allah ho Akbar.' Again and again; fourtimes in all; and from the bedsteads a dozen men have risen upalready.--'I bear witness that there is no God by God.'"

  * * * * * *

  "Several weeks of darkness pass after this. For the Moon has gone out.The very dogs are still, and I watch for the first light of the dawnbefore making my way homeward. Again the noise of shuffling feet. Themorning call is about to begin, and my nightwatch is over. 'Allah hoAkbar! Allah ho Akbar!' The east grows grey, and presently saffron;the dawn wind comes up as though the _Muezzin_ had summoned it; and, asone man, the City of Dreadful Night rises from its bed and turns itsface towards the dawning day. . . .

  "'Will the Sahib, out of his kindness, make room?' What is it?Something borne on men's shoulders comes by in the half-light, and Istand back. A woman's corpse going down to the burning-ghat, and abystander says, 'She died at midnight from the heat.'"

  This passage may stand as a fair example of Mr Kipling's method ofdealing with India. It is an able piece of descriptive writing. It ismarked by a conscious and deliberate resolve that the "effect" shall bemade. It shows us the Indian city from a high distance, as it appearedto an observer with a knack for vividly delivering his impressions. Itis in no sense an inspired wrestle with the reality of India; and inthat it is typical. Mr Kipling has never claimed to grasp or interprethis Indian theme. He has stood away almost ostentatiously from thematerial he was exploiting.

  It is indeed the chief merit of his Indian tales that he admits himselfto be no more, so far as India is concerned, than an adventurer makingthe literary most of his adventure. He has at any rate the sensibilityto be conscious that often he is in the position of a tripper beforethe Sphinx. His tales are thrilled with respect and a sense of India'spower. She it is who wipes the lips of Aurelian McGoggin, who floutsthe Greatest of All the Viceroys, humbles the Legal Member of theSupreme Legislative Council, and drives the lonely white intruder toillusion and death. She is indifferent to every conqueror. She feedsher multitudes like a mother; and then suddenly her bounty dries andthere is famine and pestilence. Always she is a confronting Presencedwarfing to one height masters and slaves. Mr Kipling has followedthis Presence as Browning's poet followed a more familiar quest:

  "Yet the day wears, And door succeeds door; I try the fresh fortune-- Range the wide house from the wing to the centre. Still the same chance! She goes out as I enter."

  It is a lawful adventure, and for some it is an absolute duty, tofollow and challenge the Presence in word and deed. Englishmen wholive in her shadow have sometimes for their honour to grasp and defyher; to assume that they are bound to question her authority. Indiafor all her unknown terror has to be wrestled with for the blessingthat England requires upon the labour of the English. Though the Godsof India are sacred, the devils of India, filthy and lawless, must bedriven out. When India put the mark of the beast upon Fleete thepowers of darkness had of necessity to be brought to heel, and thisstory may be read as a parable. The mark of the beast, wherever it mayappear, is the Imperial concern of the English in India.

  But a warning enters here. Mr Kipling, celebrating Imperial India, hasshown us the English at close war with the India of black magic andsecret murder, of cruelty and fear. But he has balanced the account.There is another set of stories, showing us how the white man comes todisaster, who, not content with his exact and simple duty, insolentlyoverleaps the breach between East and West--the breach which Mr Kiplinghimself so scrupulously observes. There was Trajego:

  "He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in thesecond. He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will neverdo so again."

  His story is entitled _Beyond the Pale_, and is to be found among_Plain Tales from the Hills_. There is also _The Man Who Would BeKing_. He, too, neglected the barriers. India may be ruled by theresolute and challenged by the brave; but India may never be embraced.

  India, who strikes out of a brazen sky; who poisons with her infectedbreath and is served to the death without reward; who physically cowsher people with dust and fever and heat, and is possessed with devilswho must be pacified; where successive civilisations have left theirbones upon the soil and a hundred religions have decayed, leaving theold air heavy with exhalations--this India slowly takes shape in MrKipling's native stories. Her physical immensity and pressure is feltin stories like _The End of the Passage_ and _William the Conqueror_.Her sleepless tyranny, which has made men intricate and incalculable,driving them to subterranean ways of thou
ght and fancy, rules in everypage of a tale like _The Return of Imray_. Imray was an amiableEnglishman who incautiously patted the head of his servant's child.Bahadur Khan speaks of it thus to Strickland of the Police:

  "'Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child whowas four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of thefever, my child!'

  "'What said Imray Sahib?'

  "'He said he was a handsome child and patted him on the head; whereforemy child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when hehad come, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into theroof-beams and made all fast behind him--the Heaven-born knows allthings. I am the servant of the Heaven-born. . . . Be it rememberedthat the Sahib's shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is anextra piece of soap in his wash-basin. My child was bewitched and Islew the wizard.'"

  There is here just that blend of simplicity and incalculable darknessfound in all Mr Kipling's native tales. If the premises of life inIndia are tortuous, conduct and reasoning are as naively innocent as aproblem in geometry.

  It follows that, when the devils are out of the story, no storybreathes more delightfully of Eden than a story of the East. The whiteside of the black story of Imray Sahib is shown in _Kim_, and in allthe hints and small studies for _Kim_ that preceded Mr Kipling's bestof all Indian tales.

  But _Kim_ is something of a paradox. It is the best of all Indiantales by virtue of qualities which have little to do with India. It isan Indian book only upon its least important side. It is true that Kimhimself is upon one side the most cunning of Mr Kipling's studies ofthe meeting of East and West; but that, for us, is not his final merit.It is the final merit of Kim to be first cousin of Mowgli, the child ofthe Jungle. His first claim to our delight in him is that he is thequickest of young creatures, his senses sharp and clean, of aconscience untroubled, of a spirit that rejoices in nimble work, of awill in which loyalty and courage and the peace of self-confidence arefirmly rooted. In a word, he is Mowgli among men.

  Here, however, we approach _Kim_ merely as a tale of India--as a linkartfully used by Mr Kipling to connect and pass in review the wholepageant of Imperial India as it is revealed to Western eyes--priests,peasants, soldiers, civilians, people of the plains and hills, women ofthe latticed palanquin and the bazaar, Hindu and Mohammedan, Afghan andBengali. The picture of the Grand Trunk Road in Kim is an almostunsurpassed piece of descriptive writing. The diversity of the picturedazzles and bewilders us at first. Then out of all this diversitythere gradually comes a conviction that fundamentally India isunimaginably simple at heart in spite of her medley of religions andconquests and races; that it is precisely this simplicity which bafflesthe intruder. There is the simplicity of Bahadur Khan, whose child wasbewitched: _therefore_ he killed Imray Sahib and hid his body behindthe ceiling cloth. There is the simplicity of the hunter of DaoudShah, whose house was dishonoured: _therefore_ he killed his wife andwent upon the trail of her seducer. There is the simplicity of men whostarve and are burnt with the sun: _therefore_ they deprecate the wrathof devils and put food in the beggar's bowl. There is, above all, thesimplicity of clean hunger, thirst, adventure, piety, friendliness andlove that threads the whole story of the Lama and his _Chela_.

  _Kim_ is one of the few really beautiful stories in modern literature.The brain and fancy of thousands of readers to-day are richer andsweeter by that tale of the Master and his Friend of All the World. Wewould not leave him and his Wheel of Things, the River he sought insimple faith, the trust he had in the charity of men, the message thatbade him seek release in Nirvana from the importunity of life quaintlywarring with instinctive gestures of delight and sympathy with all thatmade life precious--we would not leave this exquisite story so soon,were it not that it brings forward the imperishable side of MrKipling's work to which we shall have shortly to return. _Kim_ bridgesthe gap between the Indian stories and The _Jungle Book_, which meansthat _Kim_ is all but the top of Mr Kipling's achievement.