Lawrence in his poem ‘Snake.’ But Lama forbids him telling Kim that like all other creatures on earth, the snake is also bound upon the wheel of life. He wants to pick up a stick and kill it like D.H. When they come across a snake, Kim reacted like an average Westerner. He says that all these people are bound to the wheel of life. Kim enjoys all these spectacles but the Lama never raises his eyes. Kipling succeeds amply in describing people of various walks of life very graphically. He finds new people and new sights everywhere. Apparently Kim is pretty excited to see the broad smiling river of life. The Lama is always high in meditative mood caring a fig about the life around him. Kipling for the first time admits that pride and racial superiority must be shunned if one wants to know the soul of India. Kim got the nickname as the ‘Little Friend of all the world.’ Kim regards the Lama as his Guru. Kim searches for a great Red Bull on a Green field, while the Lama is looking for a river that washes away all sins.
Kim bears a story of a 14 year old Irish orphan reared by a Eurasian woman and Teshoo Lama, the holy man from Tibet. Here we find more balanced, matured and unprejudiced image of India.
Nirad Chaudhari argued over Kim as ‘the finest novel in the English language with an Indian theme, but also one of the greatest novels in spite of the theme.’ The novel was written after 1889, the very year he had left India. Kim can be considered Kipling’s classic on India. He seems to hold like Churchill that India without the Britishers would not have been able to escape bandits, massacre, flood, famine and plague. He believed that the British rule has a utility as it helped in maintaining law and order. His portrayal of the British is also the same as the views of imperialist. He treated India as “Seven Years’ Hard.” Kipling’s portrayal of Indian people and politics of India are essentially prejudiced.
In his book `Beast and Man in India’ he makes many observations that smack of white man’s prejudices against India.Īs a young journalist, Kipling unveiled Indian realities. Even Rudyard’s father Lockwood Kipling was not free from prejudices that we usually find in white man’s attitude. Rudyard’s father Lockwood Kipling was the Principal of the School of Art in Bombay and young Rudyard learnt a lot about India from his father. Kipling possessed insatiable curiosity, minute power of observation and photographic memory. He had witnessed India nakedly with all her beauty, power, truth, and vices. Therefore the main character in his works is India. India has a special place in his heart as he had spent his impressionable years of childhood and formative years of his young age in India. India occupies a central position in Kipling’s writings. Treatment of India in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim
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