Kipling’s ‘Law’: A study of his philosophy of life PDF
Preview Kipling’s ‘Law’: A study of his philosophy of life
KIPLING'S 'LAW' KIPLING'S (LAW' A study of his philosophy of life SHAMSUL ISLAM Department of English, Panjab University, Lahore With a Foreword by J. M. S. TOMPKINS formerly Reader in English, University of London M © Shamsul Islam 1975 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1975 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1975 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New York Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras SBN 333 18079 8 ISBN 978-1-349-02553-4 ISBN 978-1-349-02551-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-02551-0 Typeset by COLD COMPOSITION LTD Southborough, Tunbridge Wells A member of the Staples Printing Group This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement To my Parents and Anne Contents Acknowledgements IX Foreword by Dr]. M. S. Tompkins XI 1 Sources and Approaches 1 A. Kipling Criticism: A brief survey B. Approach used in this study C. Summary 2 Aspects of Order and Law in Kipling's Formative Years 12 A. 'A Very Young Person': Bombay and Southsea (1865-78) B. 'The School Before Its Time': United Services College (1878-82) C. 'Seven Years' Hard': India (1882-9) D. Summary 3 The Moral Order 25 A. Groundwork in Religion B. The Judaeo-Christian Tradition in Kipling's Work C. The Islamic Tradition in Kipling's Work D. Hinduism and Hindu Society in Kipling's Work E. Buddhism and the Lama in Kipling's Work F. Freemasonry and Kipling G. Mithraism in Kipling's Work H. Summary Kipling's 'Law' Vlll 4 The Imperial Order 48 A. Historical Background B. A Case for Kipling C. India: Kipling's Vision of Chaos D. Kipling's Solution: Empire based on Service and Sacrifice 5 The Doctrine of Action 86 A. Suffering and Action B. Men of Action C. Kipling's Ideal Man - a balance of Action and Contemplation 6 Education in the Law in Four Children's Books 121 A. Background: Children's books as educational manuals B. The Law and Social Order in The jungle Books C. Psychological Allegory in The Jungle Books D. The Power of History in the Puck Books 7 Summary and Conclusion 143 Notes 149 Bibliography 155 Index 169 Acknowledgements I owe a great debt to Dr J. M.S. Tompkins, the distinguished Kipling scholar, who read the typescript in one form or the other, made many invaluable suggestions, gave me an insight into Kipling's mind and art, and encouraged me greatly. In fact without her support, advice and affection, the book would never have seen the light of day. I am also beholden to her for writing the foreword for my book. I wish to express my deep sense of gratitude to these mem bers of the faculty at McGill University, Montreal, Canada: to Professor Alan Heuser for his advice, valuable criticism and patience, and to Professors Joyce Hemlow, Alec Lucas and Louis Dudek for their suggestions and encouragement. I am grateful to Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada for the award of a Killam Visiting Fellowship which made it possible for me to use the Stewart Kipling Collection at Dalhousie University in 1967-8. I must also thank the British Council for the grant of a Research Bursary for summer 1974 which enabled me to meet a number of Kipling scholars and use the facilities at the British Museum. Thanks are also due to Mr R. L. Green, editor, The Kipling Journal, for permission to reprint those portions of my book which first appeared there. The publishers and I are grateful to Mrs Bambridge and Doubleday & Co. Inc., New York, for permission to quote the copyright material by Rudyard Kipling. Finally, to my wife my thanks for her tactful reman strances whenever I dropped the idea of completing this project. S.I. Foreword Hostile cntiCs of Kipling sometimes allude, as a dismissive gesture, to the 'Indian' view of his work. It is not a conclusive manreuvre for, apart from the fact that Indian subjects occu pied him for less than half his writing life, the Indian view of him varies widely. Nirad C. Chaudhuri read The Jungle Book with delight from childhood to maturity, but was for long unwilling to face the wounding slights he expected to find in the adult tales. When he did face them he certainly found matters of offence, but he also found Kz'm, which he pro claimed the finest story about India written in English. A student of mine was moved by what he considered the English undervaluing of Kipling's work to select it as the field of his Ph.D. thesis. He too, on more searching enquiry, found in it inaccuracies, misjudgements and evasions, but also con cluded that no one, Indian or English, had described aspects of Indian life better than Kipling, or in a way more likely to rouse homesickness in an Indian overseas. Then there are the comparisons with E. M. Forster, or occasionally with Flora Annie Steel, falling now one way, now another, according to the criteria applied. Many of these differing voices are Bengali, and most of them are Hindu; but the voice that has not hitherto been heard is that from the Panjab, Kipling's home province, then, though not now, wholly a part of India, where he was posted for the first five years of his writing life. In Somethz'ng of Myself he recounts how he was sent down to work on the Pz'oneer at Allahabad, 'hundreds of miles to the southward', and how 'the North-West Provinces, as they were then, being largely Hindu, were strange "air and water" to me'. He adds in quiet explanation: 'My life had lain among xii Kipling's 'Law' Muslims, and a man leans one way or other according to his first service.' This inclination is more warmly expressed in 'William the Conqueror', where the small party of civilians, returning from famine work in Madras, delight in the winter landscape of the Panjab, 'the layers of wood-smoke, the dusty gray blue of the tamarisks, the domes of ruined tombs, and all the smell of the white Northern plains', and hear with pleasure 'the large open names of the home towns ... Um balla, Ludianah, Phillour, Jullundur'. During his early years in this Province he developed his sympathy with Islam, respond ing readily to the pride and independence of the Muslim, and to the discipline of a fighting faith and an exacting education. It can be found, twenty years later, revivified and flooding his mind with urgent memories and familiar responses, in his description of his first return to the East in Egypt of the Magicians. However penetrating his curiosity and compassion in Hindu lands, however memorable the figures that his blended humour and tenderness evoked there, these lands were never 'home' to him, as the Panjab was. It is therefore a matter of interest that Dr Shamsul Islam, whose book breaks new ground in Kipling studies, is a Pan jabi and a Muslim, living and working in Lahore, where Kipling spent the five years of his 'first service'. Here, in spite of violent changes, it is possible to follow his subject's steps and to see and hear much of what he saw and heard. Dr Islam tells me that he can sometimes detect the characteristic Pan jabi word-play under the dialogue in the tales. But I should do him a disservice if I left it to be assumed that his main purpose is to mount a counter-offensive from the Panjabi angle. His book is a piece of strict scholarship, valid and illuminating in any context, an attempt to define, as far as is possible, Kipling's insistent and elusive concept of the Law. His sense of fellow-citizenship lies quietly behind his scholarly and logical approaches to this problem and provides the implied sympathy without which, though useful detached investigations can be made, there can be no just assessment of a writer since there is no sustained impulse to understand, in depth, what he said and why. Dr Islam is well aware that certain parts of Kipling's writings have given offence to Indian readers and, by reflection, to English ones, and he
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