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The effects of the British empire in India
The effects of the British empire in India
Essay on joseph rudyard kipling
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Rudyard Kiplings Kim I must say that Rudyard Kipling's Kim can be interpreted as a project that articulates the "hegemonic" relations between the colonizer and the colonized during British imperial rule in India. Kipling's novel explores how Kim embodies the absolute divisions between white and non white that existed in India and elsewhere at a time when the dominantly white Christian countries of Europe controlled approximately 85 percent of the world's surface. For Kipling, who believed it was India's destiny to be ruled by England, it was necessary to stress the superiority of the white man whose mission was to rule the dark and inferior races. Kipling effectively conveys this message about the "white man's burden" and the mindset of colonial India through Kim’s positioning in the Hindu caste system. Kim, who grows up as an orphan in India and is in no way different from an Indian except for his racial heritage. For Kipling's imperialist ideology, it is a narrative strategy to represent Kim's authority over the native inhabitants of the colony. Kim’s malleable social status is important because it has powerful ramifications about the colonial power-dynamics within a particular historical milieu. The Hindu caste system and various stereotypes also play an important role in Kipling’s story. For example, every person Kim encounters is immediately identified as either a member of a certain caste, religion, or race. Kipling depicts these stereotypes as...
To think of "the two-sided man" is to think of the self-searching protagonist of Rudyard Kipling's Kim. "Burned black" and yet white, Irish and yet 'Little Friend of All the World', British and yet native, ruler and yet servant, Kipling's multi-faceted Kim must find his place in the social order of a society that he resides in but is not truly connected to (51). Moreover, what he must also do is recognize that his two identities do not have to come together to form one; it may be more advantageous to keep the two separate from one another. Thus, his quest to find the "Red Bull on a green field" accomplishes two-fold: it allows Kim to find his identity and Kipling to convey his feelings on imperialist presence in India (49). It may be argued that Kipling chooses England over India, elevating the righteousness and appropriateness of British rule over the lowly and needy Indian nation. To say this, however, would be incorrect, for Kim also celebrates the beauty and exoticness of India, its native languages and culture, showing that as much as British customs are praised so too is the Indian way of life. Thus, the identity that Kim forges for himself does not value British over Indian ideologies or blend the two into one hybrid mixture. What he does do, instead, is hold each as a separate, equally important entity. To use the term 'postcolonial' in Kim would therefore suggest the need to develop British and Indian identities in a way that the distinct characteristics of each group are retained and yet equally r...
The different characters were important to represent some of the different layers that made up India during British colonial rule. Kipling was able to explicitly differentiate these characters in not only their culture biases but also in their approach to imperialist rule. Though each character approached the Great Game with different cultural biases, societal structures had a greater influence on the way they played the game. Kipling incorporated not only cultural and ethnical attributes from each player, but he also emphasized the difference that each man had that was not easily identifiable by the color of their skin.
Roy asserts that people’s fears of upsetting the power balance based in the caste system often leads to a blind acceptance of the status quo and a continuous sense of self-deprecation by individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy. When Velutha’s father fears that his son’s affair with a Touchable will have potentially disastrous consequences for him, he serves his own self-interest and is willing to endanger is son. He exposes the affair to the grandmother of the woman his son is having an affair with, revealing the extreme degree to which caste and conforming to societal norms drive the behaviors of individuals in Indian society; “So Vellya Paapen had come to tell Mamamachi himself. As a Paravan and a man with mortgaged body parts he considered it his duty…they had made the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible really happen…Offering to kill his son. To tear him limb from limb” (242). His fear of disrupting the status quo (i.e. the Indian social hierarchy) is so great that he is willing to sacrifice his own son’s life to protect his own. Rather than considering the genuine...
Traditions control how one talks and interacts with others in one’s environment. In Bengali society, a strict code of conduct is upheld, with dishonor and isolation as a penalty for straying. Family honor is a central part to Bengali culture, and can determine both the financial and social standing of a family. Usha’s family poses no different, each member wearing the traditional dress of their home country, and Usha’s parents diligently imposing those values on their daughter. Those traditions, the very thing her [Usha] life revolved around, were holding her back from her new life as an American. Her mother in particular held those traditions above her. For example, when Aparna makes Usha wear the traditional attire called “shalwar kameez” to Pranab Kaku and Deborah’s Thanksgiving event. Usha feels isolated from Deborah’s family [Americans] due to this saying, “I was furious with my mother for making a scene before we left the house and forcing me to wear a shalwar kameez. I knew they [Deborah’s siblings] assumed, from my clothing, that I had more in common with the other Bengalis than with them” (Lahiri ...
Every person within a society is the product of his own social status and the actions his status lead him to undertake. “Hedda Gebler” by Henrick Ibsen, and “Punishment” by Rabindranath Tagore are two texts which display the profound idea that our social status is the foremost important factor which influences our decision making and also may corrupt our morals. If we analyze the two texts together we see that both Hedda in “Hedda Gabler” and the characters in “punishment” look forward to happiness but they are unable to receive it because of their particular society. On the one hand, Hedda’s arrogance, her decision to manipulate and devalue others, her unmerited action to burn Loveborg’ s manuscript, her unhappy marriage to Tesman, her suicide etc. are all fostered from her views of class superiority. She certainly thinks the way she grew up or the way she lives is superior to all others, thus she has the quality to control others. On the other hand, within ‘Punishment’, Dukhiram’s sudden action to kill his wife, Chidam’s decision to convince his wife, Chandara to take the blame for Radha’s murder, and Chandara’s acceptance of the false accusation that is befallen upon her are all resulted because of their lower social status. They are inclined to take unjust decisions/actions either because they are angry of the way they are being treated in society or because their hopes can never go along with the social standards. Overall, these texts provide the notion that our social position may hold us back from taking the right actions by which not only can we wrong others, but also dispose ourselves to face injustice.
Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” articulates the imperialism of the English empire into India, Cambodia, China, and Africa. The English thought it their duty to go out and take over these barbaric nations to civilize them. They justified their act of westernizing and destroying others’ cultures as the “burden’ they were born to bear. “And when your goal is nearest the end for others sought, watch sloth and heathen folly bring all your hopes to nought.” They blamed the ineffectiveness of their efforts on the native’s laziness. They are the ones whose whole world is being flipped upside down; being submerged in a new culture with new laws and strange people. Yet, somehow they are the lazy ones and despite the trails for the white man at the end of the day it is beneficial to the savages.
As Indians living in white culture, many problems and conflicts arise. Most Indians tend to suffer microaggressions, racism and most of all, danger to their culture. Their culture gets torn from them, and slowly, as if it was dream, many Indians become absorbed into white society, all the while trying to retain their Indian lifestyle. In Indian Father’s Plea by Robert Lake and Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, the idea that a dominant culture can pose many threats to a minority culture is shown by Wind-Wolf and Alexie.
...us today, but Kipling seemed to marvel at the very thought that these people would not jump up in thanks to their "civilizing" conquerors. Rather than bring together to different people this work just created a larger divide between the two. It doesn’t seem though that Kipling intended the poem to be viewed as support of the imperialist endeavor; in fact, reading carefully the way he phrases the lines would reveal that Kipling was offering warnings to anyone who decided that such ideas needed to be carried out. He warns against laziness and debauched behavior as it can quickly derail noble goals and intentions. He also cautions the need of patience, and tries to make it clear that this kind of work (raising a people to a more civil culture) is difficult and can be quite burdensome – as he writes it is the “toil of serf and sweeper,” not the “tawdry rule of kings.”
Imperialism may seem like an obvious subject, but it can be hidden in the least expected places. Rudyard Kipling illustrates imperialism in India in The Jungle Book. The characters in these stories can represent British people fighting for British control, British people fighting for Indian rule, Indian people fighting for British control, and Indian people fighting for Indian rule. Characters in Mowgli’s Brothers such as the wolves, Mowgli, Shere Khan, Bagheera, and Baloo symbolize these roles in society. The Jungle Book uses allegory to show imperialism in India in various ways.
Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and Kipling’s “The White Mans Burden” bears a complex and contradictory relationship to the dominant ideologies of both their time and our own. Each author voicing the difficulties and harsh ramifications that arise through globalism, and the great responsibility a world power undertakes when imperializing other nations. Exhibiting their own personal motives, Kipling’s work viewed as a response to the American take over of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War; Conrad, writing on his own experience in the Congo of Africa. Imperialism and racism often entrenched in the dialogue of these two literary pieces; however, the point of view of Conrad and Kipling
...ived from England, he was uneasy about many of the central pillars of the British will to power in India, such as the police, government, and missionary church. Kipling is guilty of a middle-class tendency to romanticise private soldiers and racial stereotypes, such as Mulvaney, or the "woild" and "dissolute" Pathan. Yet he should not be dismissed as unworthy of further study, and the common critical tendency that consigns him, along with Edmund Burke, to the dustbin of right-wing writers is intellectually weak, unquestioning and manifestly uncritical
The third method again demonstrates the duality of the post-mutiny era but with more emphasis on reconciliation. Later novels such as Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901) or E. M. Forster's Passage to India (1924) attempt to remove either the Indian character from the confines of previous stereotype or the Anglo-Indian character from the confines of automatic moral superiority.
Undeniably, Kipling is a pro-imperial, and racist worldview. So even though Kim is very poor and lives in destitute, he has the chance to make a great position for himself partly because he is white. Indian characters are powerless and get inflexible because of their race. Kipling has a lot of discriminations going into his portrayal of India, as well as, he strongly criticizes white racism and he portrays all of his characters, irrespective to their background, with deep compassion. Kim involves a lot of mysterious contradictions and paradoxes in its representations of
Nicholas B. Dirks. (2011). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press