ABSTRACI’

"THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN" IN
ANGLO-INDIAN FICTION.

by Burjit Singh Dulai
Anglo-Indian literature, often defined as the entire

English writing about India, is, more precisely, the
literature produced by the English in India; Neither
typically English nor Indian, the English in India had
a peculiar existence of their own and were properly called
Anglo-Indians} So long as they remained mere merchants
they had some social contact with Indians. But as the
East India Company acquired military strength and began
to dominate the Indian scene by force, the Anglo-Indians
no longer needed to adjust to the Indian culture3 Instead,
there own culture began to influence Indiansi The mystique
of the British responsibility to westernize Indians
gave the Anglo-Indians a rationale for creating an environ-
ment congenial to their own.way of lifel But the spread
of western ideas, combined with economic pressures in
England and India, resulted in the rise of Indian nation—
alism and increased the Anglo-Indiansf'separation from
the Indian social scene; -

1 Host of the problems of the Indian situation resulted
from the imperial relation between Britain and India}
This relation figures largely as a theme in.Anglo-Indian
fictioni But it is also reflected in this literature in

another manneri The racial separation inherent in the

BurJit Singh Dulai

imperial situation made it very difficult for.Anglo-Indian
writers to view the Indian reality orlw‘m‘ittéish role iii
India objectively} This affected the character of their
work significantlyi The purpose of the present study is
to point out the necessity of keeping this fact in mind
for a proper interpretation of.Anglo-Indian fictioni

The first chapter describes the nature of the Anglo-
Indian contact with India and explores its bearing on
Anglo-Indian writing in general and Anglo-Indian fiction
in particulari

The second chapter deals with Kipling's work which

exhibits a surprising faithfulness to realityfl Generally,
his writing remains within the bounds of his experience
but when he goes beyond it, his universality enables him
to reduce his material to the level of myth; His 312
is a moving picture of the opposition between the demands
of love and obligations to imperialismi

The third chaper shows.A.E;N; Mason's failure in
The Broken. Roag, to see this opposition. His professed
sympathy for Indians turns out to be spurioumi This
creates a discord in the artistic impact of his work“.

chapter four brings out EAM. Forster's lack of res-
ponsibility in. Ahjpssage to Iggig where Evil proceeds
from supernatural sources and can be countered only by

the attainment of superhuman powers; His tendency to

Burjit Bingh.Dulai

escape from moral responsibility stems from a divorce from
reality which also makes his vision contrived and dishonest;
Edward Thompson, whose work is the subject of the
fifth chapter, emphasizes the need for understanding
between the English and Indians but he does not realize
that,.under the circumstances, it is impossible for the
two races to meet and understand each other: His writing
appears to be motivated more by his concern over the
Englishman's predicament than by any deep sympathy for
Indians; This leads to an ambivalence in his vision
and weakens the force of his messagei , ‘
George Orwell's writing about Burma“,a discussed
in the fifth chapter, records faithfully the experience
of a sensitive Englishman in Burma,as it also defines the
limits of that experiencei
The concluding chapter sums up the observations
made in the preceding chapters and emphasizes the import—
ance of relating the study of Anglo-Indian literature to
the implications of the imperial connection between
Britain.and IndiaC '

"THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN" IN
ANGLO-INDIAN FICTION

By

Surjit Singh Dulai

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Comparative Literature

1965

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For many kinds of assistance necessary in a work
of this sort I owe many thanks to: Professor Herbert
Heisinger whose guidance in research and patience in
correcting the manuscript made this study possible;
to Professors John.A. Yunck and George Joyaux for
reading the manuscript and for giving valuable sugges-
tions; to Professor Lyle Blair for giving me insights
into the colonial situation; to Mri Vise B; Joseph
for some enlightening discussions about the role of
Christian missionaries in India; to Mr". Shaikh If. Ioor
for helping me to understand the political situation
in Bengal during the first decade of the twentieth
century; and to Hrs} Barbra True for her assistance in
typing and proof reading.

8.8.D}

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Chapters

I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.

Introduction
Rudyard Kipling

A. E. W. Mason

E. M. Forster
Edward John Thompson
George Orwell

Conclusion

Bibliography

111

ii

20
69
96
131
162
207
2 16

Chapter I

Introduction

An impartial and comprehensive survey of Anglo-Indian
literature has yet to be made. Brief discussions of the
subject occur in some histories of English and Indian lit-
eratures, but so far the subject has failed to draw serious
attention from literary historians. These treatments reflect
a tendency to see Anglo-Indian literature as an integral part
of either English or Indian literature, a point of view
which imposes upon the subject a pre-conceived scheme of
criticism and hinders an objective interpretation. The only
two studies entirely devoted to Anglo-Indian literature,
besides being out-of—date, suffer from a bias of this nature
and remain only on the surface of things. These tend to
pass judgments rather than to understand. E. F. Oaten, in
his é_§ketch of AnglggIndian_Literature,1 sees the average
Anglo-Indian writer foundering in the rocks and forests of
inanity and purposelessness but fails to explore the factors
Aresponsible for his predicament. Similarly, Bhupal Singh,
the author of A Survey of Anglo-Indian Fiction,2 is inclined
to discuss most literature that passes under this name of
Anglo-Indian fiction as trash. Both of these writers apply
standards of criticism irrelevant to the subject of their
study. Another critic, K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, comments
briefly on the Anglo-Indian writers in his Indian Contribution
to English Literatugg.3 He comes very close to diagnosing
the root of these writers' problem by noticing a divorce be-
tween them and "the seething world of India" and in their
general lack of "faith and vision.” But in discussing the'
bearing of this separation on their writing, he begins to
argue in a circle, condemning their failure to embody in

1. (London, 1908).
2. (London, 1934).
3. (London, 1945).

2

their work an experience which he begins by saying is inac-
cessible to them. This is because he allows a cultural bias

to enter his criticism. Implicit in it is the arbitrary
assumption that no significant literature could be produced

by the English in India unless their culture were fused

with that of Indians to form one homogeneous whole. Which

is turning one's back on artistic processes because of cultural
prejudice.

The only fruitful way of studying the phenomenon of
Anglo-Indian literature is to approach it through the disci-
pline of Comparative Literature. Neither strictly English ncr
purely Indian in character, it has a distinct identity of its
own. In the course of its history, it has always remained so
heavily under the direct influence of other literatures and the
indirect pressure of forces impinging on its cultural setting
that it could never have a completely self-contained growth,
yet it always managed to retain some inner continuity and
development of its own. When a body of literature produced
in a particular cultural context is vitally connected with or
influenced by literary or other factors outside that context,
it is best approached from a comparatist point of view.
Anglo-Indian literature should be studied not as a part of
the cultural history of either England or India but as a
separate current of literature closely related to both. The
aim of the present study is to shed light, in this manner, on
Anglo-Indian fiction with special reference to certain writers.

The proper place to begin is with a few comments on the
term "Anglo-Indian." In current usage it refers, in general,
to any person of mixed European and Indian origin and, in
particular, to a whole community in India which has descended
from the offspring of early European merchant settlers and the
Indian concubines they used to keep in harem-like establish-
ments called Zenanas. Until recently they felt too superior
to assimilate themselves into the Indian population. On the
other hand, Europeans never accepted them as their racial
equals. Consequently, they deve10ped a close-knit cultural

3

unity of their own which extended all over the country and
this brought into being an ethos of their own. Persons of
this community used to be called Eurasians. The name Anglo-
Indian, which they gradually appropriated to themselves, was
originally applied to their English forbears. It continued
to be used in reference to the English residing in India until
the last days of the British rule but it had been originally
earned by the early English settlers. Because of the great
distance between England and India in those days of slow
means of transport, they could not retain close contact with
their homeland. On the other hand, the exigencies of their
business necessitated their mixing with Indians. Trade was
lucrative and in the style of the Indian aristocratic living
they saw a glamor and ease to which, in that tropical climate,
they succumbed easily. Loving "splendid sloth and languid
debauchery," to quote G. O. Trevelyan in his Qggggtitign fig;-
léh’( . 1864), they became veritable Indian nawabs in their
habits and manners, distinguished from their Indian counter-
parts chiefly by their ethnic origin, and so were called
Anglo-Indian. Their successors in India gradually ceased to
become Indianized but it became a convention to call the
British in India Anglo-Indians. It is in this sense that the
term is used here.

Having thus defined the Anglo-Indian community, it still
remains to decide the limits of Anglo-Indian literature.
Writings emanating from four different kinds of cultural back»
grounds have been often grouped under this classification.
Besides the literature of the Anglo-Indians proper, the tart
has been used for the writing of Anglo-Indians in the more
recent sense of the term and that of Indians who write directly
in English or translate into English their own works origi-
nally written in some Indian language. The list of such
writers of English from Derozio, writing in the second quarter
of the nineteenth century, to Kamala Markandaya and scores of
other Indians writing in English today, is a long one. It
has also been applied to some works of those writers most of

4

whose writing stands squarely in the English literary tradi-
tion. Having come into a first-hand contact with India, they
embodied their Indian experience in their writing. E. M. Forster
and A. E. w. Mason.are two such writers. Even when they tried
to view India from a perspective different from that of their
compatriots living in India, because of their ethnic origin
could not help being somewhat similar to them in their modes
of reaction to the Indian sense. Moreover, their writing
balsam: part of the literary heritage of the Anglo-Indian
community and can, therefore, be legitimately covered by

the same title as theirs.

If these two kinds of literature are to be called Anglo-
Indian, some other names must be found for the literatures of
Eurasians and Indians writing in English. Their experience
remained significantly different from that of the Anglo-Indians
because the social life of the Anglo-Indians, after they
became the rulers of India, remained almost closed to their
subjects. These literatures, although borrowing the forms
and genres of English literature, were much more Indian in
spirit than Anglo-Indian literature could ever be. The work
of writers like R. K. Narayan, Mulksaj Anand, Khushwant Snigh,
etc., is now gradually merging into, even leading, the main
stream of Indian literature whereas Anglo-Indian literature
has widened out to become the literary writing of the English
speaking world about India.

The beginnings of Anglo-Indian literature are in some
ways similar to those of the literatures of other British
colonies in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and the
other colonies. For long these literatures looked to England
in their search for literary forms and values. The center
of the literary world was London and that is where the colonial
writers sought recognition or repaired to if they could manage,
thus contributing further to the tendency of English literary
genres to be imposed upon and perpetuated in a milieu foreign
to that of their original growth. At the same time, however,
the new inhabitants of these colonies made of them their

S

homelands and developed, there, distinct, homogeneous cultures
of their own. Varying in many respects from the parent cul-
ture, these cultures still continued to have an affinity
with it. Therefore, in due course of time, the forms and
themes borrowed from English literature, somewhat naturally
and without serious conflict, became modified enough to be-
come suitable vehicles for the interpretation of new experi-
ences. Thus the United States, Canada, Australia, and New
Zealand developed distinct literary traditions of their own.
These are still not completely isolated from the main current
of English literature but that is in part at least due to

the fact that all modern literatures, particularly those of
Europe and the English speaking world, are moving towards

the interpretation of an experience which is becoming common
to all peoples in these areas. Otherwise each one of them
can stand in its own right and is a true expression of the
spirit of its country.

The British colonial situation in Asia and Africa was
different from that in America and Australia. Except in
South Africa, the English did not make any of the colonies
in this part of the world their homeland. In India, they
had not come as immigrants but as merchants. In about two
hundred years of their contact with India, they found them-
selves the rulers of the sub-continent. Still, throughout
the period of British domination in India, the interest of
Great Britain in her dominion remained fundamentally commercial.
The size of the indigenous population and the nature of the
social and political structures existing in the country
did not permit a monopolizing of the country by the politi-
cally dominant race as it did in America and Australia.

The English community in India was an island of a variant

of English culture set in the midst of an alien land and
people. The degree and nature of variance of their culture
from that of England changed from time to time depending mainly
upon their relation to the Indian situation. This relation
could never become one of participation in the everyday life

of the people. They had a separate existence of their own,

6

with their social life confined to the community, which
was closed to Indians, and their contacts with India were
those of an outsider and purely professional in nature.
Their literature could not embrace the vast life of the
entire country.

Yet even this limited experience had potentialities
for the creation of literature. The tools of literature
it borrowed at one time from England could have become adaeted
to express it but the continuity of their transformation was
hampered by the perpetual intrusion of later modes of expres-
sion from the home country. Therefore, Anglo-Indian litera-
ture, although it shows development so far as its ability to
convey Anglo-Indian experience is concerned, yet suffers from
a discord between this experience and the forms in which it
is embodied. Only writers of exceptional ability have come
close to surmounting this difficulty. So at every step of its
history, it is necessary to relate the study of Anglo-Indian
literature to the contemporary trends in English literature
and thought, on the one hand, and the position of the Anglo-
Indian community or an individual writer in the Indian scene
on the other.

A very significant feature of an Englishman's life in
India was his natural sense of alienation in a foreign land.
For a sensitive person, it was easy for this feeling to in-
tensify into intimations of an overwhelming, inscrutable, and
hostile force, part physical, part metaphysical in nature,
immanent in the alien environment where he spent his life.
Such feelings can be allayed if crystallized into some form
of art. But if for want of an adequate medium this anguish can-
not be objectified, it sinks deeper into one's being, trying
to find relief in morbid ways, one of the easiest being the
distortion of objective reality to suit the needs of the
psyche. This is one important reason why people from differ-
ent cultural backgrounds find it difficult to appreciate
each other. If the need to understand a foreign culture
and to adjust oneself to it is so pressing that one's

7

survival hangs by it, one cannot but try desperately to adjust
and to understand. If reality doesn't impinge upon one's
being that closely, one is quite likely to view it subjec-
tively. And if one can manage to change it to suit one's
nature, the result is the effort to control one's environment.
The Anglo-Indians reacted to their environment in one or
more of these ways at different times depending upon the
circumstances of the situation they were placed in. During
the first century of their contact with India, the nature of
their occupation made it necessary for them to win the friend-
ship of the Indian population and made them willing to defer
to the local customs and authorities. The stable political
condition of the country and its general prosperity also im-
pressed them so that, looking up to it, as they did, they
came under the influence of its culture. However, the
gradual disruption of the Moghul empire ushered in an era of
near anarchy which compelled them to secure their trade by
force of arms rather than good will. Consequently, as a
community, they began to become increasingly segregated from
‘ the Indian population. Their relation to India became one
of distant understanding for ulterior motives. Their natural
participation in the country's life decreased. The trend in
this direction continued after the East India Company emerged
out of this confusion as the dominant political power in the
sub-continent. Some sincere attempts were made to halt or
at least to impede the process and foster closer relations
between the English and Indians. The British sense of justice,
shocked by the excesses of Anglo-Indians like Clive, called
for a fair treatment of Indians. Some of the governors-
general, considering themselves the guardians of the populace
under their rule, tried sincerely to work for their welfare.
Warren Hastings though that this could be best achieved by
continuing the native customs and traditions. He patronised
the study of Oriental learning as an effort in this direction.
But such idealism was bound to fail because the natural
circumstances which increase love and understanding among

8

people no longer existed. As rulers the British were differ-
ent from all the previous rulers of India because they did
not make India their home. They could remain in power without
adjusting their mode of life or thought to that of the
Indians. On the other hand, the worth of Indian culture
diminished in their eyes because it was at a low ebb as a
result of a century of unrest and disorder. Consequently,
when there were any sincere people who thought of doing their
duty by India, they believed that it could be possible only
in Western terms. They began to work for India's uplift
through the encouragement of Western education and institutions.

Some prominent Indians, impressed by the progress of the
English and by the sense of justice they had brought to the
Indian administration, were induced to adopt Western ideas.
Their enthusiasm, combined with British effor s, culminated
in the adoption, under Macaulay, of the policy of imparting
Western education to Indians. There was some opposition to
this policy both in English and Indian quarters. On both
sides, it arose mainly from fear and mistrust. The resultant
resentment formed a significant factor in the 1857 uprising.

After the mutiny, the Indians were so much suppressed
that they could not raise their voices except in co-operation
with the British. But British consideration was not lacking.
The taking over the country's rule directly by the British
crown was an act of responsibility towards Indians. This
brought with it a complete formulation of the rationale of
the British stay in India. From now on, the aim was to
Westernize India. The trend has continued since then. Even
after independence, it has continued in the same direction.
The attempt at a resurgence of the Indian culture and the
struggle to find their own identity only resulted in giving
a further impetus to the tendency to shape the country's
future on Western lines.

Thus the Anglo-Indian reaction to their environment be-
came progressively ethnocentric. They justified their need
to stay in India as a mission to civilize and uplift a people,_

9

who by their own Western standards, were backward. But
actually this self-imposed "White Man's Burden" was the re-
flection of a deeper burden, the anguish of alienation.
Unable to become part of their environment, the only way

they could feel at home was by extending the limits of reali-
ty that was comprehensible to them in terms of their own
ethnic conditioning. In the overall mystique of imperialism,
Britain, or rather the upper classes in Britain, were ration-
alizing their vested interest, but the average official in
India after 1857 didn't go to India in the hope of becoming
rich. He went there to seek livelihood and, perhaps, some
adventure and glory. In the profession of his mission he

was not consciously insincere; on the contrary, he took his
duty very seriously. But in this situation his religion of
duty actually had its origin in his desperate need to retain
and extend his integrity. He was involved in a curious love-
hate relation with his environment. His need to communicate
was desperate but the failure to do so turned his feelings of
love into those of hatred so that he set about fashioning
his surroundings nearer to his heart's desire.

The problem of the Anglo-Indians' relation to India is
reflected in their literature. In one form or another it
constitutes an important theme particularly in most Anglo-
Indian fiction. Fiction is better suited than poetry to
dealing with problems of a sociocultural nature for it allows
scope for dialectic and exposition. Moreover, being closer
to the plain of reason, it is easier to express new experi-
ence through it, whereas poetry, being more dependent on
imagery formed by one's past experience, is not a prOper
vehicle for fresh encounters which the crossing of cultures
involves. The beginning of Anglo-Indian fiction coincides
approximately with the clear formulation of the mystique of
"White Man's Burden." It is from this time on that a steady
flow of Anglo-Indian literature begins. The most important
part in the study of Anglo-Indian literature, is, therefore,
its fiction with special emphasis on the problem of Britis.-

10

Indian relations as reflected in it. The present study is
focussed on five Anglo-Indian novelists who seem to be more
seriously concerned with the problem than others, and whose
work, chronologically, reflects the history of this relation
during the most crucial period of the British rule in India.
But before treating each one of them singly it would be help-
ful to build the general perspective of Anglo-Indian litera-
;ture in relation to the history of British attitudes towards
India during the three and a half centuries of their stay in
India.

For about a hundred years after the formation of the
East India Company, the English merchants, to ensure their
trade, had to win the goodwill of the Indian populace they
came into contact with, in general, and that of the local
authorities, in particular. This called for a considerable
amount of refinement and sensitivity on their part. The
same qualities are reflected in the Anglo-Indian writing of
the period which consists solely of books of travel. The
most famous of them are Sir Thomas Roe's journal of his life
at the Moghul emperor Jehangir's court, Edward Terry's
gglgtion of a Voyage in the Eastern India ( . 1655), William
Methold's gglations of_ghe Kingdom of Golconda ( . 1626), and
John Fryer's Account of East India and Persia ( . 1698), all of
them are written in an elegant, distinguished seventeenth
century narrative style.

By the opening of the eighteenth century, the Moghul
hold on the country had already begun to loosen and for want
of any responsible power to protect their rights, the agents
of the East India Company resolved "that they will establish
' such a. Politieof civil and military power, and create and
secure such a large Revenue to maintain both at that place,
as may be the foundation of a large, well-grounded, sure
Engéish Qominion i5 India fggrgll.£;mg,gg.gggg."4 At this
stage, the idea of an "English Dominion" could imply little
more than the establishment of a few bases to operate from
to maintain supremacy at sea for the exploitation of the

4. Letter from the Governor to Fort St. George, 12 December, 1637.
Quoted in R. P. Masani, Brigain in India (Calcutta, 1960), f. 1]

11

eastern markets. But the decision marked a crucial point in
the Company's history. It meant that it had decided to be-
come a political power in the country. Compared to the neigh-
boring territories, the English settlements offered a safer
and more stable condition of living. As a result they in-
creased in size and strength because of the influx of the
Indian population itself. Encouraged by this "natural and
necessary" growth and the unsettled condition of the country,
and exhorted by their directors, the agents of the Company
entered upon a conscious campaign of adventurism which con-
tinuously brought more territory under the rule of the Com-
pany and tremendous personal gain and glory to themselves,

but taxed the Company's finances so heavily that the directors
began to panic and set limits to territorial expansion. "If
we pass these bounds," they wrote to the President in 1767,
"we shall be led from one acquisition to another until we
shall find no security but the subjection of the whole, which
by dividing your force would lose us the whole and end in one
extirpation from Hindustan." With the Regulating Act of 1773
the Company's policy began to be controlled by the British
government through the appointment of a Governor-General and
by the Act of 1784, the Governor-General was forbidden to
wage war or enter commitments likely to lead to war because
the schemes of territorial aggrandisement were "measures
repugnant to the wish, the honour and policy of the nation."
But having once entered the political wrangles of the country,
it was not safe to get out of them abruptly. A definite
superiority in strength had to be established before expansion
could be stopped.

So the first three quarters of the eighteenth century
were not congenial for pursuits of a highly contemplative
nature. The writing of this period is mostly history tending
to celebrate the British exploits. Worth mentioning are
Rogert Orme's History of the Military Transactions of the
British Nation in_;ndostan ( . 1763), a veritable epic in prose
about the contemporary events, and his Historical Fragments

12

of the Mogul Empire of the Moratoes and of the English con-
cerns in Indostan from the year 1659 ( . 1782), where he
delves into the past events to find a justification for the

 

English need to attain supremacy. John Zephaniah Holwell,
who claimed to have been a survivor of the "Black Hole"
incident, wrote lgdia Tracts ( . 1774) after his retirement

 

to England. It includes his bitter Narrative of the deplora-
ble deaths of the English gentlemen who were suffocated in
Ehe Black Hole ( . 1758).

However, attempts to view India's past and present from
another side were not entirely lacking. Alexander Dow trans-
lated histories from Persian and Charles Hamilton wrote about
the Rohillas whose ill treatment was, later, to be a leading
factor in Warren Hastings' trial. As a matter of fact, al-
though the struggle for power created a gulf between the
English and Indians, the former did not become utterly devoid
of sympathy for the letter. In their expansionist policy,
some British leaders were motivated by the sincere desire to
rid the country from the oppression of many irresponsible
and corrupt native rulers. Compared to the reign of unscrupu-
lousness, selfishness, and intrigue that prevailed in terri-
tories outside the Company's domain, its own government was
fairly efficient and stable. Wellesley expressed the feelings
of at least some true sympathizers of India when he said,

"I can declare my conscientious conviction that no greater
blessing can be conferred on the native inhabitants of India
than the extension of British authority, influence and power."
This was a far cry from Clive's rude retort to the Parlia-
mentary Committee who asked him why he had appropriated so
much wealth from Indians. His and, later, Warren Hastings'
trial demonstrated how early the desire to do justice to
India became part of the British policy. This remains true
in spite of the fact that their concern for a fair government
in India basically stemmed from the material motive of
securing their trade with India.

Warren Hastings was a man much misunderstood in his own
time and in history. He honestly strove to settle the area

13

under the Company's rule in the interest of both Indians

and the English. By force of circumstances, he was compelled
to engage in violence but he was no less enamoured of the
arts of peace. Tb foster mutual understanding between the
two races and to help India progress on native lines he
patronised the study of Oriental culture and literature.

He succeeded in creating among Anglo-Indians a considerable
interest in literary and other intellectual pursuits. The
monumental contribution of Sir William Jones, the Supreme
Court judge in Hastings' reign, in opening to the Western
world through English translations the doors to the wisdom
of the ancient East is known to every Orientalist. But the
period of Hastings' governorship also marks the beginning of
Anglo-Indian literature prOper. Besides being a Sanskrit
scholar and the founder of Asiatic Society of Bengal, Sir
William Jones was the first Anglo-Indian poet whose writing
is on record. He had written poetry while still in England.
In India he wrote a series of hymns addressed to the gods

of Indian mythology. Though not of the highest order as
poetry, they overflow with enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge.
In 1780, James Augustus Hicky started Hicky'§_§engal Gazette,

in the first newspaper of India. James Forbes' Oriental Memoirs

(p. 1813) came out of this period. Another Orientalist,
John Leyden,ewho lived in India from 1803-1811, expressed

in fine poetry the common feelings of all Anglo-Indians---
their pride in military achievement, their loathing for what
they considered the darker side of Indian superstition and,
more than anything else, the intense nostalgia for home of
men alienated and stranded in the "land of regrets." The
last note is most poignantly expressed in his Qgg,£g,gg
Indian Gold Coin. Unfortunately John Leyden was a "lamp

too early quenched." The closing years of the century also
saw the beginnings of literary criticism. Hugh Boyd brought
the flavour of the English culture in his journals from 1781
to 1794 with essays on subjects concerning literature and
morality. Even the historical literature round the turn of

14

the century, in its inspiration, verges on literature and
shows an enthusiasm for understanding India. The Franco-
Turk Raymond, alias Haji Mustapha, prepared the unique
translation of Ghulam Hussein Khan's Siyar-ul-Muta'akhrin
in 1789. James Tod produced his romantic yet real ég§§l§_
and Antiqgities of Rejasthan ( . 1829-32). Mark Wilks and
Sir John Malcolm, both of whom made history, also wrote about
it. The former's Historical:Sketches of the South India

( . 1810-17) and the latter's Political History of India

( . 1811), Histogy of Persia (p. 1815), and Central India

( - 1823) were vital contributions to the Englishman's
knowledge of Oriental history.

In spite of the efforts of the Orientalists and these
historians, Anglo-Indian literature tended to focus itself
mainly on the inside of Anglo-Indian society rather than to
forage into the Indian scene outside. Eliza Fay gave the
account of her travels from England to Calcutta in her
Original Letters ( . 1821). A similar series of letters
describing Anglo-Indian life in Calcutta around the turn of
the eighteenth century was published anonymously in the form
of a novel called Haroly House. As a reflection of the in-
creasing self-sufficiency and fullness of Anglo-Indian social
life, mention should be made of Mary Martha Sherwood's book
for children, Little Henry and his Bearer ( . 1832).

It was only natural that the gulf between the English
and Indians should widen. Most of the English until the
middle of the nineteenth century had frankly commercial mo-
tives. However, a deep sense of responsibility in certain
quarters was not lacking. The British statesmen of the
early part of the century were concerned equally with their
obligations to the Indian people and the British interests.
The Bill of 1813 established the sovereignty of the British
Crown over India because it could not "now be renounced with-
out still greater evils both to that country and to this,
than even the acquisition of power has yet produced.
....That sovereignty, which we hesitate to assert, necessity

15

compels us to exercise." The Bill was the outcome of the

same spirit which led to the Reform Bill, the Catholic eman-
cipation, and abolition of slavery in England. It owed itself
to the enlightened statemanship of people like Burke, Pitt,
and Wilberforce in England, and Wellesley, Lord Hastings,
Munro, Malcolm, Metcalfe, and Bentinck in India. They changed
the Company from a trading organization into a responsible
guardian of people's interests. Wellesley though: "Duty,
'honour and policy require that India shouldn't be administered
as a temporary and precious acquisition, as an empire con-
quered by prosperous adventure and extended by fortunate
accident. It must be considered as a sacred trust." Even

the independence of India at some future date began to be
considered. But before this could be done Indians had to be
properly educated to be able to govern themselves. This
circumspection conveniently postponed the time of the transfer
of power to Indians into the remote future.

The idealism of these statesmen was sincere but it was
not accompanied by an appreciation of the reality of the
Indian life. It was a self-righteous attempt to impose their
own value system on a foreign culture. This became clearly
manifest in the adoption, on Macaulay's recommendation, of
the policy of devoting most of the funds, allocated for edu-
cation, to the spread of the knowledge of Western sciences
and literature among Indians. Macaulay's aim was to create a
new race, Indian in colour but English in mind. Some promi-
nent Indians, like Raja Ram Moham Roy, who co-operated with
the British in their efforts in this direction, had themselves
lost contact with the roots of their own culture.

Anglo-Indian society, becoming increasingly self-contained
and well-settled, created an atmosphere congenial to the pro-
duction of fiction. The three decades before the mutiny mark
the beginning of Anglo-Indian fiction. This fiction is gen-
erally characterized by a lack of understanding of Indian
life. William Browne's Panduganngari, or Mgmoirshofma
Hindu ( . 1826) portrays the life of a Maratha, focusing

16

largely on the shady side of his character. His Tales of
the Zenana, or a Nawah's Leisure Hours, confines itself to
the debaucheries of the Anglo-Indian merchants. Philip
Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug ( . 1839) is based
on government reports rather than on personal experience.
His Tippoo Sultan ( . 1840) and the trilogy containing Iggg,
a Maratha WOman, Ralph Darnell, and §gg£g, and published in
1863, are similarly derived from second-hand information.
William Dellafield Arnold is the only one novelist in this
period who shows sympathy with the subject race but his
protest against the failings of Anglo-Indians in his Oakfield:
or Fellowship in the East.( ..1854), is rather mild.

After the Mutiny, the separation between Indians and
Anglo-Indians continued to widen. Britain's economy had to
come to depend on her trade with her colonies to a greater
extent than ever before. Facing competition from the indus-
trial progress of other European nations, the English had not
only to control their previous possessions more firmly but
acquired new territories in Asia and Africa. Their vested
interest in the colonies was more rationalized, in increas-
ingly clearer terms, into the concept of the "White Man's
Burden"---their self-imposed mission to "civilize" the
backward peoples.

In India the introduction of Western education had by
this time created a class of Indians who began to ask for
representation for Indians in the country's government.

They received some encouragement from the legislators in
England but, in spite of their Westernization, were not ac-
cepted as social equals by the English administrators in
India. The Indian National Congress formed by these Indians
in 1884 could not make much headway in winning political
rights for Indians. In point of fact, they were themselves
cut off from the Indian masses because of their Westerniza-
tion. By the turn of the century there emerged a new class,
only slightly touched by English education, but seriously
affected by the financial strains which the nature of the in-
perial economy putfion them. Unlike the Westernized Indians

17

who came from the upper class, the strength of the new element
lay among the lower middle class. Instead of co-operating
with imperialism, they sought their own identity and advocated
revolt. For a while this brought a split in the ranks of the
Indians fighting for India's rights but soon the moderates
succeeded in absorbing these new forces into the Indian
National Congress thus making the organization powerful.
During the first World War, Indians, under Gandhi's leader-
ship, gave full co-operation to the British in their war effort,
in the vague hOpe that they would get self-government after the
war. As these hOpes could not be fulfilled immediately after
the war because of division among Indians on the basis of
religion, misunderstandings created by the truculence of the
administration in India, and general indecision on the part of
the British government, the struggle for self-government
flared up into an open fight for freedom. Passions rose high
on either side and all chance of the races to meet was lost.
This growing separation between the races is reflected
in Anglo-Indian fiction of the second half of the nineteenth
and the first quarter of the twentieth century. John Lang, in
Wanderings in India ( . 1859), bitterly satirized Anglo-
Indians for their lack of responsibility and other short-
comings. Alexander Allardyce, in order to know India better,
tried to delve into Indian psychology in his idyll of indige-
nous Indian life, City of Sunshine ( . 1877). George Chesney
wrote The Dilemma ( . 1876), a poweriul romance dealing with
the mutiny. Jessie Ellen Cadel? depicted the precarious life
on the frontier in Ida Craven ( . 1876). After 1900 Anglo-
Indian fiction begins to come out in great profusion. In the
opening years of the present century it reflects Anglo-Indian
arrogance mingled with a little fear of the Indian unrest.
F. E. Penny in her The Inevitable Law ( . 1907) calls the
Indian National Congress "a mere bladder inflated by cheap
gas, without even the power of causing an explosion." Her
The Unlucky Mark ( a 1909) and other novels suffer from a
similar lack of understanding. Edmund Candler's Sri Ram

18

.(1912) gives the best picture of the times. E. W. Savi
notices the change in the attitude of Indians in A Prince
of Lovers .(1925) and The Rgproof of Chance .(1910).
Everard Cotes' The Burnt Offering, L. J. Vance's The Bronze
BELL, (1909), Kenneth Combe's Cecilia Kirkham's Son, all
published in 1909, deal with the Indian unrest. Obsessed by
the fear of an uprising and charged with contempt are
A. F. Wallis's Slipped Moorings .(1910) and Leslie Beresford's
§econd Rising . (.1910). Hobart Hampden's The Prince of
Empire .(1911) shows sympathy for Indians. Irene Burn in
The Border Line .(1916) criticizes Indians for upholding
their indigenous values. Many writers, e.g. Henry Bruce in
The Eurasian ( 1913) and John in The DancinggFahir attri-
bute the cause of unrest to college education.

Novels written in the early 'twenties are full of
exasperation with the independence movement and advocate its
ruthless suppression. Savi's Rulers of Men ( 1922),

W. P. Drury's The Incendiaries ( 1922), R. J. Minnery's

The Road to Delhi I 1923), and G. H. Bell's In the Long Run
( 1925) are only a few among scores of such outbursts. But

sadness and regret over the British-Indian relations mark

the literature of the late 'twenties and early thirties. The

most significant among the novelists of this period is

Edward Thompson.

After 1935, the struggle for independence became more
settled and the theme of India's problem almost completely
dropped out of Anglo-Indian fiction. The English living in
India or visiting there continued to write novels and stories
set in India. But the chief interest of this writing lies
in the narrative and the exotic setting. H. E. Bates and
JohnfiMasters are primarily authors of adventure stories.
Rumer Godden, a more serious writer, also remains out of
touch with the real problems of India.

The chief problem in Anglo-Indian writing throughout its
history has been its failure to establish real contact with
India. Mention has not been made here of four writers---

l9

Rudyard Kipling, A. E. W. Mason, E. M. Forster, and George
Orwell---who, along with Edward Thompson, attempted very
seriously to come to grips with this problem. They are
treated at length in the following chapters. It would
suffice here to say that, in spite of the sincerity with
which they insist upon the Anglo-Indians to do their duty
by India, they themselves are, more or less unconsciously,
baffled by that alienation from the Indian scene which was
the true Burden of the White Man in India.

Chapter II

Rudyard kipling

In most readers' minds, Rudyard Kipling is likely to be
the only writer associated with the British mystique of the
"White Men's Burden." Huch association, almost invariably
carries with it the same, implicit condemnation of his works,
which, in today's world, characterizes the common man's re~
action to colonialism. The reasons for this response to
kipling lie less in what is inherent in his work than in the
assumptions made about it. It is true that he coined the
expression which provided a rationale for the retention of
Anglo-Saxon domination in the world. But very few people
know that he invented the phrase and still fewer care to
find what he exactly meant by it. The general tendency is
to assume that he blindly followed and tried to popularize
a credo already formulated by those who held the reins of
the Empire. His idea of the British responsibility in the
Empire was different from what British Imperialism actually
stood for. In British officers and soldiers in India he
found qualities of character which equipped them properly
for the creation of an ideal political world order based on
hierarchy. But because of bungling in high places in the
Imperial administration, as he saw it, this possibility was
never realized. Instead of being a slavish supporter of
Imperialism, he tried to lead it towards an ideal. But be-
cause of his admiration for the people who were doing the
hardest work in the far flung outposts of the Empire and
because he saw in Imperialism an instrument which, he be-
lieved, could be shaped into an ideal political system, he be-
gan tolxzconsidered an ardent upholder of Imperialisn as it
actually existed. The appeal and popularity of his work are
due to the humanity with which it overflows. But becoming
associated with Imperialism, his very popularity led to his
notoriety. This is an irony of literary criticism that his

strength should have been the cause of his condemnation.

V

20

71

Whereas a host of his Anglo-Indian contemporaries who de-
fended the British domination in India with a crude comp1a~
cency, have been completely forgotten, because of an utter
lack of any lasting artistic or moral value in their work.
Kipling, continuing to stay alive in the public consciousness
because of his goodness, has suffered for the sins of an in-
stitution he tried to reform.

The trend in this direction started very early in the
history of Kipling criticism. The fin de siecle decadents,

 

divorced from the reality of everyday life, were repelled by
Kipling's emphasis on the need for action and the necessity
of relating art to actuality however ugly it might be. Even
saner critics like Richard Le Gallienne were violently re-
volted by Kipling's concern for pressing political matters.
He was the first critic to study Kipling at length and among
the first who created the confusion about his message. As

he found something in his writing which seemed to suit his
taste, his condemnation of what did not accord with it became
all the more damaging. Having praised Kipling‘s earlier work

)

he says:

With the 'Recessional‘ and ‘The White
Man's Burden' we enter upon a third
period of Mr. Kipling's development as

a poet---a period...with which...poetry
has little to do. It may be said that
the 'Recessional' and 'The White Man's
Burden' are more than poetry. I would
venture to say that they are certainly
less. In fact, they are not poetry at
all, and it is uncritical, seriously,

to consider them as such. They are
political catch words imbedded in rather
spirited hymns, and they are in no sense
the work of Rudyard Kipling, unofficial
M.P. for British Possessions. By writing
them Mr. Kipling has become a greater
political force than fifty members of
Parliament, but not all the Great Powers,
including Japan, can make them poetry.
Their prestige is exactly that of 'The
Open Door,’ 'Spheres of Influence,’ and
such phrases; and the natural place for
them was 'n a speech by Mr. Chamberlain,

22

or...Lord Rosebery."1
The critical bias is obvious. But it started a fashion in
Kipling criticism which did not remain confined to writing
alone. It culminated in Sir Marc Beerhohm's caricature of
"Rudyard Kipling in the shape of a small, rather tarnished
oriental brass image, standing, apparently forgotten, in
the dust at the back of an old junk shop...(and his) earlier
caricature showing Kipling with 'his girl Britannia,‘ on a
Bank Holiday on Hampstead Heath, which is full of the same
spirit."2 Edward Shanks, in explaining why Kipling did not
aspire to become the official Poet Laureate of England, pro~
vides an apt answer to these charges: "It is surely of high
significance that though, on several occasions, he might
have had any honour that it was in the power of a government
to bestow, he always refused to accept any honour whatsoever
on the ground that he must remain free to criticize any
government."3 But liberalism has continued to attack him for
serving rather than criticizing Toryism. T. S. Eliot's at-
tempt to defend him4 was submerged in a flood of angry retorts
from eminent critics like Raymond Mortimer,S Peter Quennell,
Graham Greene,7 G. W. Stornier,8 Hugh Kingomill,9 Boris Ford,
and Lionel Trilling.11 George Orwell perceived Kipling's
sense of responsibility but he too repeated the hackneyed
charge that "Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he lg morally

10

1. Richard Le Gallienne, Rudyard Kipling; A Criticism
(London: John Lane, 1900), pp. 63-64.

2. Edward Shanks, Rudyard Kipling; A Study in Literature
pnd Political Ideas (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd.
1940), pp. 1-2.

Ibid., ppexlo- 11
A Choice of Kipling's Verse Made by_T. S. Eliot (London, 1961).

Sunday Times, 14 Sept., 1952.

The Singular Preference (London, 1952), pp. 159-66.
The Last Childhood (London, 1951), pp. 74-75.

New Statesman and Nation, XXIII (1942), p. 10.
Progress of a Biogrgpher (London, 1949), pp. 27-37.

0. Scrutiny, XI (1942), pp. 23-33

11. 'Kipling,‘ in The Libeggl Imagination (London, 1951),
pp. 118-28.

v"
I
Y)
1"

O .

23
12 . .
Even his aroent

insensitive and aesthetically disgusting."
14

defenders like Edward Shanks13
charge of jingoism and are somewhat apologetic about it.

On the other hand, there are critics who study Kipling‘s
work without connecting it with his involvement in imperi-
alism as it actually existed. Miss Tomkins, in The Art of
Rudyard Kipling,15 analyses Kipling's work only from a purely
structural point of view. Alan Sanderson's explanation of
the formation of the white man's concept of duty in India is
very perceptive but it loses its validity when he emphatically
denies the existence of any real moral purpose in it. To him

and Bonamy Dobree admit the

Kipling's "Imperialism is offensive not because it is Imperi~
alism but because it isn't."16 Kipling ig an Imperialist
and the greatness and shortcomings of his work are vitally
connected with his idea of Imperialism and his passionate
concern for its success. His strength lies in the genuinc~
ness of his altruistic motives which not only make most of

his work emotionally satisfying but also give it that artistic
consonance which comes only of deep sincerity. His weak-
nesses come from the situation in which he was placed because
his natural affinity with his compatriots, and the lack of
real participation in the Indian scene tended to dgflect him
from objectivity and to create emotional and aesthetic con-
flicts in his writing. His view of Imperialism as a panacea
for the political, and hence other, ills of the world was

the result of this bias. But his greatness consists in the
fact that, in spite of the forces which tended to distort

his natural feelings and led him to advocate causes which he
didn't realize were ultimately inimical to certain peoples,

12. 'Rudyard Kipling,‘ in Criticalpfissays (London, 1954),
p. 112.

13. Op. cit.
14. Rudyard Kipling (London, 1951), p. 7.
15. (London, 1959).

16. 'Kipling: The Artist and the Empire,‘ in Kioline‘s
Mind and Art, Andrew Rutherford, ed. (Stanford, 1964),
p. 166.

 

 

24

'he could rise above these forces and these causes to embrace
the entire humanity in love. The tension between this love
and the forces opposing it in the Imperial structure in India
forms the theme of the present chapter.

Kipling wrote one novel and well over a hundred stories
with their setting laid completely in India. Another novel
is only partially set in India. But a full appreciation of
this fiction is not possible without reference to his other
work because his attitude to India was only part of his over»
all development as an artist and is best studied in the light
of this development. It is in this manner that Kipling's
Indian experience and work will be treated here.

In discussing Kipling, it is necessary to be comprehensive
in another sense. His prose and poetry cannot be studied
separately for two main reasons. First, the same themes run
through both types of his writings at any particular stage
in his career. Secondly, Kipling always used excerpts from
his own poetry in his fiction to reinforce the import of
his writing.

The basis of Kipling's values, as Bonamy Dobree suggests,
was formed very early in his life. The first six years of his
life were spent very happily with his parents. He received
the affection of his parents, their numerous friends, and
their servants. The atmosphere in which his parents, par-
ticularly his father, lived was very lively and the child
assimilated its colorfulness with interest. His father's

studio was often full of his father's friends, "men who were
18

17

the strangest clothes and answered to the oddest names."
His absorption in the scene was so intense that he, "at
age of five years old, never forgot a face or a name."19 The
range of his happy experience was extended and enriched by

his excursions into the life of native India. This was done

17. Op. Cite, pp. 7-90

18. Charles Carrington, Rudyard KiplingJ His Liig and Work
(London, 1955), p. 12.

19. Ibid.

25

primarily through Meeta, the house servant with whom Kipling
"talked so constantly in the vernacular that it was necessary
to remind him to speak English, when he joined his parents
in the drawingroom." The ayah, a Portuguese Roman Catholic,
also took him out for "early morning walks" when "sometimes
she took him into the chapel of her faith; as Meeta, when he
was in charge, did not scruple to take the little boy to
Shiva's temple..."20 To him both were equally interesting
parts of life. He did not much distinguish between these
alternate devotions. Carington describes this period of
Kipling's life in the following words:

Rudyard, his sister, and their parents
lived a happy uneventful life in Bombay,
broken only by visits to the hill-station
at Nemick. A land filled with wonders,
and a westward sea, were crystallized in
his infantine memories by drives to the
coconut groves of Mahim in the sunset.
Seaward, 'there were far-going Arab shows
on the pearly waters, and gaily dressed
Parsees wading out to worship the sun';
landward, the palm groves swaying in the
sunset breeze. 'I always felt,‘ wrote
Kipling in old age, 'the menacing dark-
ness of tropical eventide, as I have
loved the voices of night winds through
palm or banana leaves, and the song of
the tree frogs.‘ It was in this after-
glow that he pictured the family circle
of indulgent parents and kindly, obse-
quious, native servants; this was the
background of his age of innocence, the
heaven that lay about him in his infancy.

From this "heaven" he was moved to Southsea in England
for the sake of his education. Not only did he miss the
affection of his parents, he became the victim of Aunty
Rosa's hatred and tyranny. First of all, she was jealous
for her own son. To this was added her evengelical zeal
with which she wanted to discipline him because, according
to her ideas, he had been overly pampered. She found him

:21

20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., pp. 13-160

26

very restless, clumsy, and very little used to discipline.
His notions of nursery etiquette, she thought, were simply
"disgraceful." She was resolved to do her duty by him. In
Kipling's own words, "it was an establishment run with the
full vigour of the Evangelical as revealed to the woman."22
He was considered the black sheep of the family. "I had
never heard of Hell, so I was introduced to it in all its
terrors..., I was regularly beaten. The Woman had an only
son of twelve or thirteen as religious as she. I was a real
joy to him, for when his mother had finished with me for the
day he (we slept in the same room) took.me on and roasted
the other side."23

The torment was not confined to corporal punishment.
When it dawned on him that "reading" was not "the Cat lay
on the Mat," but "a means to everything that would make me
happy. 80 I read all that came within my reach. As soon
as my pleasure in this was known, deprivation from reading
was added to my punishments."24 The greatest of his sins,
in the eyes of the Woman and her son, seems to have been that
of lying.

If you cross-examine a child of seven or
eight on his day's doin s (specially when
he wants to go to sleep he will contra-
dict himself very satisfactorily. If
each contradiction be set down as a lie
and retailed at breakfast, life is not
easy. I have known a certain amount of
bullying, but this was calculated torture
---religious and scientific."25

Perpetual harassment and neglect told upon his health. His
eyes went wrong and he could not see well to read. His
work at "the terrible little day-school where I had been
sent suffered in consequence, and my monthly reports showed
it." He tried, unsuccessfully, to keep one of these from

22. Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself for Friends Known
and Unknown (New York, 1937), p. 8.

23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., p. 9.
25. Ibid., p. 8.

27

his guardian and was well beaten and sent to school, through
the streets of Southsea with the placard "Liar" between his
shoulders.

Such persecution intensified a sense of justice which
seems to have been part of Kipling's nature. There is no
evidence to suggest that he resented his parents' abandon-
ment of him and his sister to the mercy of "Aunty Rosa."
Instead of blaming them he tried to think of some tresspass
for which they were being punished. This is not to say that
he developed some kind of guilt complex but to emphasize that
reflects a nature that looked for cause and effect in terms
0 justice. A boy between the age of six and twelve cannot
be expected to form a whole philosophy of life but the basis
or one can be firmly laid in this period of his life. Fail-
ing to find any just explanation of his separation from his
parents, he learned to accept it almost fatalistically. Simi«
larly, he learned to endure the tyranny of the 'WOman' as
something which was unjust without any doubt but about which
nothing could be done. His answer to the inevitable was
stoicism.

But his suffering did not dissolve his sense of good and
bad, right and wrong. Rather, it was accentuated. Life at
Southsea by its contrast with his earlier life, in Bombay,
brought home to him what made life worth living and what
militated against it. The distinction between the two facets
of life was further accentuated by his rare visits to his
Aunt Georgie's where "for a month each year I possessed a
paradise which I verily believe saved me. Each December I
stayed with my Aunt Georgie..., arriving at the house (I)
would reach up to the open-work iron bell-pull on the wonder~
ful gate that let me into all felicityw."2b The short-
lived felicity made the existence at Southsea even more
painful for "on a certain day---one tried to fend off the
thought---the delicious dream would end, and one would return

i

re n

h

26. Ibid., p. 13.

28

to the House of Desolation, and for the next two or three
mornings there cry on waking up. Hence more punishments and
cross-examinations."27 One of the things that made for hap-
piness was family affection. Short periods of happiness at
North End Road and the loyalty of Trix against the Woman's
virulence were as bulwarks against the general loneliness

to which he had to get accuStomed.

Life at Southsea also taught Kipling to ignore his
minor feelings or to push them down under an attempted tough-
ness. Doing things, the phrase is his sister's, was one
other way of keeping one's mind off the soreness of one's
heart. But the experience made him acutely conscious of the
deeper emotions, thus giving him an intense feeling for all
human beings for the rest of his life. The fundamental human
emotions he could never ignore.

In later life trying to explain why he had never told
anyone how he was being treated at Southsea, Kipling says,
"Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to
them they accept as eternally established. Also badly
treated children have a clear notion of what they are likely
to get if they betray the secrets of a prisonhouse before
they are clear of it."28 The first part of this explanation
seems to be closer to truth than the second because if Kipling
had grown conscious of the rightness and possibility of es-
caping from the Woman's clutches, he could have made the
attempt through the relatives whom he visited from time to
time. But the fact seems to be that Kipling not only con-
sidered the situation "as eternally established" but because
of his inbred sense of responsibility, he also accepted the
propriety of discipline imposed by his guardian. It is not
too much to assert that Kipling's stay at Southsea at least
intensified, if not produced, in him the need for authori-
tarianism. Being always told by the persecutor that one is

27. Ibid., p. 17.
28. Ibid.

29

in the wrong can plant the suggestion in the victim's mind
that the former is right. Even in later life Kipling did
not condemn Aunty Rosa except for her insensitivity, mis-
guided zeal, and unconscious hatred for him.

When Kipling went to the United Services College at
Westward Ho! he was precociously mature physically and in
other ways. He may not have become clear on metaphysical,
moral, and emotional issues, as a matter of fact he could
not, but the seeds of his metaphysics and ethics were al-
ready laid. And the school he went to was not an uncon-
genial soil for them to germinate in. First of all the
school continued, though in a much milder form, the harsh-
ness of his life. The school was a new establishment and
the rules of conduct which generally give one a sense of
security in an institution had not yet become a tradition.
Discipline was as yet mainly a matter of adjustment among
the boys themselves and hence irregular and harsh. Things
in Kipling's time had improved substantially over those in
the preceding years when Dunsterville had attended the school.
As the youngest boy in the school he had been cruelly ill-
treated by the undisciplined young ruffians who made the
first generation of seniors. When Beresford and Kipling
arrived, in "more civilized times," they listened with horria
fied fascination to his reminiscences of the heroic age.

At the time of joining the school,
Kipling was not "noticeably muscular
or sinewy, and was accordingly ineffec-
tual at fisticuffs, for which, in any
case, his exceptionally short sight un-
fitted him. He preferred to sidetrack
physical violence by his tact and
friendliness and by not quarrelling with
any boys unless he had allies. He was
always noticeable for his caution and
his habit of 'getting there' by diplo-
matic means."2

80 life for him at school was not really easy. Moreover,
he was still separated from his family and, therefore,

29.

”30

C. Beresford,Schogldays with_Kipling_(London, 1936),
2.

O
9

30

emotionally unsatisfied. Consequently the strain of stoic
endurance in him was reinforced. The brutality prevalent

at his time and in that before him made him respect rules

and regulations. In Stalky & Co. Kipling has the bullies

paid back in their own coin in imagination for what they did

in reality. Although this is as much a breach of just laws

as the one resented by Kipling, in essence it reflects Kipling's
rage at injustice. He proclaimed the book to be a tract and

a thorough reflection shows it to be one.

If the school life brought out the authoritarian in
Kipling, it did not support authority to the point where it
would become as tyrannous as the lawlessness it was intended
to curb. There was in Kipling a strain of the reformer if
not the revolutionary. While he considered subordination to
the basic rules as necessary and commendable he was tempera-
mentally opposed to the rigidness of all the prudish and silly
observances and restrictions to which unthinking people give
exaggerated importance. He was already conscious of a code
of social behaviour which would impose responsibility on and
guarantee rights to the individual. An individual who did not
abide by it must suffer but it was not to be interpreted
narrowly. When the assistant master, Rev. J. C. Campbell, who
had been noted for his brutal treatment of the students, waxed
sentimental in his valedictory address, everybody was moved
to forgive him but not Kipling who thought, "Two years bul-
lying is not paid for with half an hour's blubbering in
pulpit."30 '

Thus in his sympathy and attitudes, Kipling was, on the
Whole, a liberal rather than a conservative. Liberalism, in
fact, dominated the whole school atmosphere. It was only
in name a military school because it had neither the exteriors
of parades, uniforms, etc. that go with such schools nor the
characteristic spirit that prevailed in them. It is not too
much to say that most of the masters there would have thought
of these things as bad taste. The headmaster, "Crom," and
old friend of Kipling's parents, had been deeply influenced

30. Carrington, op. cit., p. 27.

31

by European ideas and was inclined towards liberalism. He
was not in holy orders, or even a strong churchman; the
school had, therefore, a relatively liberal atmosphere.

Being physically unfit to join the strenuous physical
activities at school, Rudyard had the opportunity to sit back
and survey the scene and evaluate it. His critical faculties
were further sharpended by reading, his passion for which
was encouraged and judiciously directed by the headmaster.
Toward the end of his school career he became the nucleus of
a small group of privileged students. From this vantage
point he could not only take a leading role in the school
life but directed and criticized it. The group, called
'Stalky & Co.‘ by Kipling in the book of the same name, felt
superior to their schoolmates in different ways. Rudyard's
role was in affect a wise, man-of-the-world air.

His participation in the life of the school was intel-
lectual, coming through talk as well as writing. It seems
to have been his parents' and his headmasters' aim from very
early time of his going to school that he should become a
writer. His own experience at Southsea, his voracious habit
of reading, the need to find compensation in his imagination
for the hardship of reality, the sharpening of his sense of
observation of moods and thoughts of people from their ex~
pressions or physical movements, the need to fabricate plauu
sible lies to escape punishment, had all laid the seeds of
his becoming a writer. When he began to try his hand at
writing, although he could turn out verses of an imitative
nature of all types of poetry, he exhibited a special ability
to produce lyrical and satirical poems. The inspiration for
these came, as it always does, from his passionate involve»
ment in life and a deep sense of prOpriety and justice. His
sympathies lay with people who considered themselves inno-
vators in ideas as well as in art. While still at school he
was closely connected, through family connections and through
Crom, with the literary world of London. He and his head-
master were quite at home among the London artists of all

32

kinds who were connected with the "aesthetic" movement.

Under the liberal influence of the aesthetes Kipling
tried to master the art of writing for its own sake. How-
ever, his sense of responsibility towards humanity had al~
ready been so highly developed that he could not give his
single-minded devotion to the mere beauty of his instrument.
He wanted to make it useful too. He was liberal enough to
be critical of the unthinking routine of custom and orthodony,
but he did not want to let his dedication to art make him
lose contact with reality altogether. The pain of life he
had experienced was too close to his mind to be ever forgotten.
The child who had felt the need for a just system to control
human dealing and the boy who had felt the need for a similar
kind of reasonable discipline in school was now about to step
into adult life where, he could already see that a responsi-
ble authority to control the affairs of men would be necessary.
The British constitutional monarchy came to his mind as a
symbol and instrument of this system. Unlike most liberal
aesthetes, who were carried away by their enthusiasm and
could think only in negative terms, he retained enough sanity
to see in the constitutional monarchy some sterling worth.
Probably this was rendered possible for him by his Anglo-
Indian connection. Not only his own parents but those of
most of his schoolmates were Anglo-Indians. He was acutely
conscious of the emotional and physical turfibils of the British
serving in the far-flung parts of the empire. They were there
out of a sense of duty rather than for gaining any great
personal profits. Most of the boys going to school with hia
were also preparing for service overseas. His weak eyesight
unfitted him for active duty of any kind but plans for his
going out to India as a journalist were already afoot. He
would do in writing what others were to do in civil and mili~
tary positions. He saw something praiseworthyimlthe duti-
fulness of the British overseas. So the entire imperial
venture became meaningful. The British monarchy stood as
the symbol of this venture and could not be attached without
peril to the stability of the whole empire with its centre

33

in England. It was this sense of responsibility that
prompted him to write a poem which surprised everybody be-
cause Rudyard had always been considered to be a rebel. As
editor of the newly resumed school paper, Chronicle, he
published in March 1882, the poem "Ave Imperatrix!" which

T. 8. Eliot considered a significant poem in Kipling's
writing.31 It was written on the occasion of an attempt on
Queen Victoria's life. After greeting her on her escape,
the poet, for himself and on behalf of his school, makes a
profession of faith in the Queen and the British empire.
According to Beresford, it surprised even Kipling himself.32
His values were not yet fully formulated for him but their
drift was becoming clear. His subsequent experience in India
was to complete the process of formulation.

It was this incipient sense of responsibility which seems
to have been at least one factor in his deciding to go to
India. His father arranged for him to work with a newspaper
at Labore because Rudyard had expressed his impatience to
get "a man's life and a man's work."33

Kipling's interest in public and political affairs must
have been reinforced by his voyage to India because he hap-
pened to undertake it at a time when he had literally to pass
through a battlefield. Even more significant to remember is
his satisfaction on returning to India, a re-assertion of a
sense of belonging. In his childhood, his dispatch to England
had meant a journey from happiness to misery. But in due
course of time he had found friends there and a promise of
love. So at the gateway to the Orient, he now had mixed
feelings about returning to India:

Port Said marks a certain dreadful and
exact division between East and West.

Up to that point---it is a fringe of palms
against the stay---the impetus of home
memories and the echo of home interests
carry the young man along very comfortably

31. Op. cit.
32. Op. cit., p. 243.
33. Carrington, op. cit., p. 37.

34

on his first journey. But at Suez one
must face things. People, generally the
most sympathetic, leave the boat there;
the older men who are going on have dis-
covered each other and begun to talk
shop; no newspapers come aboard, only
chipped Reuter telegrams; the world

seems cruelly large and self-absorbed,
...Then one begins to wonder when one
will see those palms from the other side.
Then the black hour of homesickness,

vain regrets, foolish promises, and weak
despair shuts one down with the smell

of stran e earth and the cadence of strange
tongues. 4

But he soon discovered that his apprehension was uncalled
for. India, the place where he had spent his happy child-
hood was still his home. He decided to describe his experi-
ence to his school-fellows to dispel any misgivings they
might have in regard to coming back to India:

The evening smells and the sight of the
hibiscus and poinsethias will unlock
his tongue in words and sentences that
he thought he had clean forgotten, and
he will go back to his ship as a prince
entering on his kingdom."3

But the real foundation of Kipling's satisfaction with
his new life was the happiness of his family life. He called
it the Family Square because of the four equally loving mema
bers that comprised it and because the security it provided
was impregnable. From this secure base he surveyed the
Indian scene and in about four years attained to a mature
point of view as a man and a writer.

The most fascinating and awesome feature of this life
was its intractable vastness against which even the Family
Square was hardly more than a bulwark. The feelings of
loneliness and helplessness which he had experienced at
Southsea and, to a lesser degree, at school, sometimes came,
in this country, with a rigor he had never knwon before.

34. Rudyard Kipling, Lgtters of Travel, 1892-1913 (New York,
1920), pp. 257-58.

35. Ibid., p. 258.

35

For administrative reasons the Anglo-Indians retained a
sitance from the natives. They never made India their home.
Rudyard, though having a sympathy with native India, was
essentially on the Anglo-Indian side of the two worlds into
which India was divided. This alienation of the average
Anglo-Indian from the life beyond the Anglo-Indian community
was partly the result of political set-up. To Kipling life
beyond his small intimate circle, howsoever interesting and
colourful, appeared overwhelmingly ominous. It strengthened
in him the streak of pessimism in the ultimate view of the
universe already bred into him by his early experience and

by Victorian thinking. But instead of succumbing completely
to this nihilistic tendency he tried to impose a meaning on
existence, however short-lived it might prove to be. Even

if the ultimate movement of the universe was not necessarily
directed toward human happines, valid values concerning human
existence could and should still be established. Their
establishment needed stoic endurance in the face of the inex»
orable order of things and a highly developed moral attitude
to make social life, the only way open to humanity, possible.
The seeds of these qualities, laid in his early life, came

to bloom.

Rudyard found in the life of the Anglo-Indian officers
an emotionally satisfying way of life. He has been often
blamed for idealizing them into superhuman figures but his
pictures of them are very faithful to reality. From the
time of the establishment of the training college at Hailybury
the quality of the East India Company personnel had improved
because of the interest taken by some eminent statesmen in
Indian welfare. Although the ultimate purpose of this reform
was to secure British interests in India, its immediate aim
was to rid the administrative machinery of corruption. The
young men who came to India did so not in the hope of amassing
wealth, as their predecessors used to do, but primarily to
earn a living. They displayed a great integrity in the per»
formance of their duty. Performance of duty, became, in fact,

36

a religion with them. The reason for this was part patrioa
tism, part sense of superiority to the natives, and part
missionary zeal, but the main force of it came from a need
for self-assertion that contained and dominated all these
factors. The Anglo-Indian officers' integrity, therefore,
was a combination of a stoic acceptance of the irrelevance

of human existence to the ultimate goals of nature and an
acute awareness of the need for values governing human intern
course. For the sake of this integrity these officers had

to face difficulties which are easily forgotten today. This

"was India in the heroic age, without
refrigerators, without electric fans,
without D. D. T. It was hardly yet
understood that cholera was a water-
borne infection, not known that mosqui-
toes carried malaria. An English man
might enjoy some rude luxuries in India,
but topical disease then struck down
its victims, high or low-caste, without
social discrimination."36

In the face of these difficulties they rose to such heroic
stature that today their presentation by Kipling seems romana'
tic. But the reality of their achievement can be witnessed
in the bulky output of autobiographies and descriptive works
of the period, g,g., Memorials of thefkife and Letters of Sir
Herbert Edwardes (p. 1886),Winston Churchill's §tory of the
Malak and Field F9522 (p. 1898), and Sir George Younghush's

A Soldier's Memories (p. 1917). The military and administra-
tive achievements of the British in India had reached their
climax before Kipling's visit to India but the traditions

and ideals of the men involved in these ventures were still
there to last for some time. The third quarter of the nineu
teenth century in India was "the day of subalterns, boys in
age, men in character, blessed with the adventurous ardour
and audacity of youth";37 it was the day of Henry Lawrence
and his "Young Men" through whom he created the basis of

36. Carrington, op. cit., p. 51.

37. Maud Diver, "The British Subaltern in India," Blackgpogjg
Magazine, CCLVII (June, 1945), p. 385.

37

sound administrative government in Northern India; it was

the day of Lieutenant Eldred Pottinger, "The Hero of Herat,"
of Lieutenant Eldred Pottinger, who, totally without experi-
ence, designed and built the Ganges Canal "on a scale of
magnitude hardly conceivable outside India," of Herbert
Edwards who pacified the wild Bannu tribesmen single-handed.38
Their ideal, a quotation from The Bengal»Army_Regulations,
is given in the beginning of "only a Subaltern":

"...Not to enforce by command, but to encourage by
example the energetic discharge of duty and the steady endu-
rance of the difficulties and privations unseparable from
military service." Adherence to this ideal demanded and
bred into them the qualities which answered Rudyard's own
inner needs. To the performance of duty and the endurance
against privations was added a sense of community with the
other Anglo-Indians and the combination provided Kipling
with a mystique to live by. The attitudes which had been
clamoring for clarification, though not yet fully formulated,
acquired greater definition. His experience helped him to
achieve an emotional balance which gave meaning to life.
Living nobly and usefully in the full consciousness of one's
ultimate destruction is no mean or drab mystique to live by.
The achievement of this accord with existence forms the theme
of "The Children of the Zodiac." The story is concerned
with the movement of Leo and the Girl towards such an
emotional balance.

Early in the story it dawns on them that there is no
such thing as immortality and that death is the final end of
man's life. Says Leo,

"Every one of those people we met just
now will die...”

"So shall we," said the Girl sleepily.
"Lie down again dear." Leo could not

see that her face was wet with tears.

A still deeper realization of the human situation comes to

33. Alan Sandison, "The artist and the Empire," in Kiplingjs
iind and Art (Stanford, 1964), pp. 146-47.

 

38

Leo when he hears his own doom in the words of the Crab,

one of the Houses of Death. He is inclined to "lie down

and brood over the words of the Crab," but he knows the
futility of doing so. The Bull knows how to make the present
moment worthwhile and to take the mind off the ultimate doom.
'"Well," said the Bull, "what will you do? ... You cannot
pull a plough... I can and that prevents me from thinking of
the Scorpion."' However, Leo can sing, and the Bull exhorts
him to use his talent in the same way as he is using his
physical powers: ,

"Help us now," said the Bull. "The tides
of the day are running down. My legs are
very stiff. Sing if you never sang before."

"To a mud-spattered villager?" said Leo.

"He is under the same doom as ourselves.
Are you a coward?" said the Bull.

Beginning with the song of the fearless, Leo soon moves
on to another aimed at giving meaning to the human situation.

This was a thing he could never have done
had he not met Crab face to face. He
remembered facts concerning cultivators,
and bullocks, and rice fields that he had
not particularly noticed before the inter-
view, and he strung them all together,
growing more interested as he sang, and
he told the cultivator much more about
himself and his work than the cultivator
knew. The Bull grunted approval as he
toiled down the furrows for the last time
that day, and the song ended, leaving

the cultivator with a very good opinion
of himself in his aching bones.

The story gives Kipling's view of the Artist's role in life---
namely, to help man achieve dignity, integrity, self-respect
and whatever little happiness that is possible for him.
Kipling's experience brought him into closer contact
with the subalterns and the administrators but even among the
British soldiers in India, he found the same ability to face
the loneliness of the human situation as he had admired in
their social and official superiors. Their type is presented
in Mulvaney's summary of his own life in "The Solid Muldoon."

39

As Kipling's characters are stoically reticent, it is only

by occasional glimpses that we see the inner workings of their
hearts. However, the three stories "The Courting of Dinah
Shadd," "On Greenbow Hill," and "The Madness of Private
Ortheris" seem to be purposely intended to give close-ups

of the insides of Mulvaney, Leoroyd and Ortheris to show
their consciousness of the sorrow of existence. The follow-
ing is a quotation from the first of these three stories:

When I awoke I saw Mulvaney, the night
dew gemming his moustache, leaning on
his rifle at picket, lonely as Prome-
thens on his rock, with I know not what
vultures tearing at his liver.

As a matter of course, they hide their depths under a puns
tilions observance of rules, living life in full loyalty to
"the God of Things as They are." Their garrulousness and
saber-rattling, and cynicism in everything except obedience
to order are a veneer only skin deep to conceal their deep»
seated agony in the same manner as their officers affect a
calm and reticence to hide theirs.

A Kipling character is basically a lonely, persecuted
individual with a bleak and austere vision. But his perse-
cution is the condition of his existence. It is the price
he has to pay to achieve and guard his identity. This reali~
zation is the foundation of Kipling's art. But because of
his English reticence and habit of under-statement, and the
very ability to withstand hardships in the same manner in
which his characters do, the crisis of the individual-
environment conflict in Kipling is generally assumed and
greater attention is paid to the actions rather than feelings
of the character. The conflict is reflected indirectly in
the insistence on discipline. The formation of a code of
behavior and the need to escape from loneliness knit indi-
viduals into a community. Because the number of Anglo-
Indians was small and they shared their work, they had strong
communaJ.attachments. It was a defensive mechanism.
Kipling's Anglo-Indians are lifetime exiles trying to keep

at bay the enemies among whom they are thrown.

40

This opposition is the basic note of Kipling's view
of India. The scene is dominated by an inscrutable spirit,
which for want of a better description, may be called India
itself. Kipling seems to wonder about it as Marlow, in
Heart of Darkness, does about the Congo: "Could we handle
that dumb thing or would it handle us? I felt how big, how
confoundedly big was the thing that couldn't talk and perhaps
was deaf as well." In "The Education of Otis Yeere," Mrs.
Mallowe sees very clearly the stark truth that in India "you
can't focus anything." The amorphous nature of the Indian
spirit tends to dissolve physical and mental definitions.
This is especially true of stories dealing with the country
side where "great, grey formless" India overwhelms and crushes
the individual's identity.

' It cannot be gainsaid that Kipling shared with other
Anglo-Indians the psychic experience which made them pitch
themselves as a unit against overwhelming odds. But it is
equally true that he tried harder than most Anglo-Indians
cared, to make a positive thing out of the situation. He
had a godlike pity for the suffering humanity. And in his
concern for humanity, he looked to Anglo-India not merely
as a place of refuge for himself but also as a means of
relieving the ills of mankind. Perhaps he could not avoid
rationalizing the privileged position of the British, his own
inner need to see and order imposed on the surrounding chaos,
and a certain sense of complacency about "serving," but he
tried to see what makes life function in the whole world,
and not just within the Anglo-Indian community.

Being in the situation in which he was, his sympathy
with the Indian remained considerably abstract. He tried to
establish contact with the real India but the gulf between
the two races was so wide and fixed that he could hardly go
beyond its fringes. He succeeded in getting copy of all
kinds by second hand information and was often able to de-
scribe the outer and inner life of his Indian characters
but he never seems to have become personally and emotionally

41

involved with Indians and was hence not fitted to interpret
their life faithfully. His pictures of native life are not
only rare but also rather superficial. He can make them
convincing and moving only when he deals with the fundamen~
tal universal emotions. His better stories concerning the
natives, such as "Lispeth," "Without Benefit of Clergy," and
"The Story of Mohammad Din," deal with these emotions.
Although the British domination in India had itself not
been blameless in the prevailing material and spiritual misery
of the Indian masses, he was touched by their plight as he
saw it. And the need to alleviate their suffering was so
pressing that there was no time to waste in wrangling over
the theoretic right or wrong of a political system. What«
ever was practical was the most effective system. History
was to blame for the state of affairs obtaining in the country.
The democratic sentimentalism like that of Pagett, M. P., in
"The Enlightenments of Pagett, M. P." was not based on the
practical experience of the Indian situation. This kind
of theorizing only put even more obstacles in the way of the
Anglo-Indian official who was already hampered by the machin-
ery which inhibited his actions. For want of planned agri~
culture and medical treatment there prevailed "an all-round
entanglement of physical, social and moral evils and corrup—
tions which call for immediate relief." Relief from famine
and disease were more important and useful for the Indians
than votes whose value they would not understand. The ad»
ministrator was always running a race with time: "Our death
rate's five times higher than yours....and we work on the
refuse of worked-out cities and exhausted civilizations,
among the lows of the dead." To build a happy future at the
expense of the present suffering thought Kipling, was to
defeat the very purpose with which one starts working for
mankind. He saw with his own eyes the efficient working of
the benign bureaucracy and had reason to believe in the
absurdity of democratic institutions. It has to be admitted
that he did not understand the role of capitalism in the

British empire but certainly aware he was of the exploitation

42

of the masses in the colonies. He considered it

an elementary consideration in govern-
ing a country like India, which must
be administered for the benefit of the
people at large, that the counsels of
those who resort to it for the purpose
of making money should be judiciously
weighed and not allowed to overpower the
rest. They are welcome guests here, as
a matter of course, but it has been
found best to restrain their influence.
Thus the right of plantation labourers,
factory operatives, and the like, have
been protected, and the capitalist,
eager to get on, has not always regarded
government action with favour. It is
quite conceivable that under an elective
system the commercial communities of the
great towns might find means to secure
majorities on labour questions and on
financial matters.

They would act at least with in-
telligence and consideration.

Intelligence, yes: but as to con-
sideration, who at the present moment
most bitterly resents the tender solici-
tude of Lancashire for the welfare and
protection of the India factory opera-
tive? English and native capitalists
running cotton mills and factories....
I merely indicate an example of how a
powerful commercial interest might
hamper a government interest in the
first place or the larger interests of
humanity.

The "larger interests of humanity" rather than any abstract
standard of absolute morality are the measure by which the
right or wrong of a political system should be judged. His
approach to society is purely functional, a matter quite
easy to be unmindful about in London:

Naturally, a man (in London) grows
to think that there is no one higher than
himself, and that the Metropolitan Board
of Works made everything. But in India
where you really see humanity, raw, brown,
naked, humanity---with nothing between
it and the blazing sky, and only the used-
up, overhandled earth underfoot, the nation
somehow dies away, and most folk come back
to simpler theories. Life, in India, is
not long enough to waste in proving that
there is no one in particular at the head
of affairs. For this reason the Deputy's

43

above the Assistant, the Commissioner
above the Deputy, the Lieutenant-
Governor above the Commissioner, and
the Viceroy above all four, under the
orders of the Secretary of State who's
responsible to the Empress. If the
Empress be not responsible to her Maker
---if there is no Maker for her to be
responsible to---the entire system of
our administration must be wrong. Which
is manifestly impossible.

Despite this sincerity, Kipling does not like to wear
his heart on the sleeve. His ideal was the man, who sure
of the basic goodness of his action, goes about his job with~
out putting on an air of piety or worried about proving the
goodness of his work. The reward lay in the secret satis-
faction of doing the job well and at the same time not at-
taching too much importance to the accomplishment. For an
Anglo-Indian officer, the performance of duties generally
involved doing things which demand a certain amount of tough-
ness, even callousness. A cynical attitude, pretended or
real, was a help if not a necessity in the maintenance of
law and order.

Kipling has been often accused of being cynical towards
the suject races. It has been pointed out time and again
that although he preaches the amelioration of their condi~
tion, he is not only devoid of feeling towards them but also
exhibits a strong strain of sadism in his attitude towards
them. It cannot be denied that to Kipling Indians never
came fully alive as human beings but remained more or less
an abstraction. So in his theoretic view of things as they
should be, he could at times refer to them as so much inert
matter. But it should be borne in mind that, while criti-
cizing his so-called ruthlessness, it is too easy to mistake
a character's attitudes for those of its creator. Kipling,
in presenting the Indian scene, tries to depict realistically
how things happen. He is not necessarily Pointing out a moral.
Besides, what is taken so seriously by critics is often
merely an overflowing light-heartedness of Kipling's manner.

44

In spite of the above explanation the charge that
Kipling shares the brutality of his characters has to be
answered. His presentation of it has definite overtones
of exuberance and commendation. This has been interpreted
as an evidence of his own rughlessness and brutality. But
such an interpretation reflects a superficial reading of
him. For, if anything, Kipling's apparent brutality is a
deliberate attempt to counter his essential gentlemenliness,
his sensitivity, and his sympathy for the underdog. Kipling,
as already suggested above, found something admirable in the
realistic, non-sentimental approach to life he found among
his compatriots. By nature he wasn't fitted to be callous.
And the nature of his workand physique didn't provide him an
Opportunity to prove that he could be violent if necessary.
In trying to prove his mettle he sometimes overshot the
mark. His superficial exulting in brutality is only a veneer
and reflection of his actual softheartedness. The proper
way to look at it is as a falsification of the Indian reality
and a distortion of his own feelings.

His stoicism, deep ethical leanings and his sense of
vocation as a man of letters combined together to produce
Kipling's writing in India. His values by this time, though
not yet fully formulated, had come to be well-established
and could be already defined from his writing. He was emo—
tionally involved in his subject rather than analyzing it
merely cerebrally. Anglo-India was his true element. His
exuberance is whown in the flippant-serious tone in which
he couched most his writing here. He simply depicted the
spectacle before him because the sigh of it thrilled and
satisfied him. While still in India he published Plain Tales
from the Hillg39 but his later stories about India resemble
these in spirit and tone. So all of his Indian stories can
be grouped and discussed together. Only a sampling of these
covering the entire range of his Indian stories can be given

39. (Calcutta, 1881).

45

here. It is based on Mr. Randall Jarrell's judicious selec-
tion In the Vernacular: The English In India.40

"A Wayside Comedy" conveys forcefully the sense of lone-
liness and exile that oppresses the EurOpean population in
remote places over the wide expanse of India. "Fate and the
Government of India have turned the Station of Kashima into
a prison; and...there is no help for the poor souls who are
lying there in torment...." The English population consists
of two couples and a single Captain. "You must remember...
that all laws weaken in a small and hidden community where
there is no public opinion." Such weakness manifests itself
in the moral unscrupulousness of Kurrell who, having had a
long affair with Mrs. Boulte, transfers his attentions to
the newly arrived Mrs. Vansuythen, towards whom Mr. Boulte
is also attracted. Both of them fail to get her response,
Boulte because Mrs. Vansuythen does not like him and Kurrell
because his past life is accidentally exposed by Mrs. Boulte.
Mrs. Boulte herself cannot win Kurrell back; his ardour for
her is completely extinguished. In spite of the jealousies
and the consequent anguish they have to suffer, all of these
people are compelled to live together. Once when Boulte and
Kurrell try to laugh it off their laughter sounds very un-
pleasant. It is "the mirthless mirth of these men on the
long white line of the Narkarra Road." "What is the use?"
says Boulte quietly to Kurrell,

It's too ghastly for anything.‘We must
let the old life go on. I can only call
you a hound and a liar, and I can't go
on calling you names forever. Besides
which I don't feel that I'm much better.
We can't get out of this place. What is
there to do? Kurrell looked round the
rat pit of Kashima and made no reply.

When both of them are gone tiger-shooting, Major
Vansuythen "insists upon his wife going over to sit with
Mrs. Boulte; although Mrs. Vansuythen has repeatedly de-
clared that she prefers her husband's company to any in the

40. (New York, 1963).

46

world." "But of course," as the Major says, "in a little
Station we must all be friendly."

"Lispeth," from the Anglo-Indian point of view, is
perhaps the most self-critical of Kipling's stories. Here
he suggests how arbitrarily and superficially a foreign re-
ligion, hence a foreign culture, is imposed upon the native
Indian traditions. Lispeth

was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill man

of the Himalayas, and Jadeh his wife.

One year their maize failed, and two

bears spent the night in their only

opium poppy—field just above the Sutlej
Valley on the Kotgarh side; so next
season, they turned Christian, and brought
their baby to the Mission to be baptized.

She becomes an orphan and is adopted by the Mission. "She
took to Christianity readily, and did not abandon it When
she reached womanhood, as do some Hill-girls." Then one
night she brings to the Mission an Englishman who has hurt
himself. "This is my husband..." says she to the Chaplain's
wife. "We will nurse him, and when he is well your husband
shall marry him to me." The Chaplain's wife shrieks with
horror. The Englishman grows well slowly and, when he is
leaving, Lispeth walks "with him up the Hill as far as Nar-
kanda, very troubled and very miserable." The Englishman
promises falsely that he would come back. Lispeth waits for
him until she finds out the truth. In disgust she gives up
Christianity and goes back to join the hill-folk.

The story brings out the hypocricy of the White people
in their show of concern for the natives. Lispeth accepts
them but they fail to accept her. However, Kipling also
succeeds in conveying that the real cause of the separation
does not lie in the behaviour of the individuals. The indie
viduals are in the grip of a situation which forbids the
mingling of races. '

"At the Pit's Mouth" confines itself to the flirtations
of the Anglo-Indians at Simla. The strength of the community
here is larger but it has the same forced close-knit unity

47

as witnessed anywhere else. Nothing is secret in this society,
which compels the Tertiam Quid to decide to elope with the
Man's Wife. His accidental death is a very fitting close
to the story because it symbolizes the pit's mouth Which he
had already reached because of the prudish machinations of
the Simla society.

In "A Bank Fraud" Kipling gives the character sketch of
a kind of man that is after his heart. The epigraph describes
Reggie Burke very aptly:

He drank strong waters and his speech
was coarse;

He purchased raiment and forbore to pay;

He stuck a trusting junior with a horse,

And won gymkhana in a doubtful way.
Then, 'twisxt a Vice and folly, turned
aside

To do good deeds and straight to cloak
them, lied.

As the manager of the Sind and Sialkote Branch Bank, he re-
ceives from England Mr. Silas Riley as his Accountant. In
his self-conceit, the Accountant considers "Reggie a wild,
feather-headed idiot, given to Heaven only knew what dis-
sipation...and totally unfit for the serious and solemn
vocation of banking." Because of his delicate health this
self-styled "pillar of the Bank and a cherished friend of the
Directors," cannot stand the rigours of the Indian climate
and falls sick. As he continues to deteriorate the Bank is
obliged to get a substitute. But Reggie out of concern for
his subordinate not only keeps the fact hidden from him and
continues to pay him from his own pocket but forges a letter
from the Directors giving Riley a promotion. To give peace
to the dying man's mind, he even begins to make a show of
having become religious and reads the Bible in the patient's
sight. Such is Kipling's love of people who do the right
thing without making a show of piety or a desire for
appreciation.

The title of the story "False Dawn" is very opposite.
The most memorable thing about the story is its atmosphere.
It is an atmosphere charged with unreality, the unreality of
a stage-show rather than that of a dream. Except for

48

Saumarez's proposal to the wrong girl, his request for the
rectification of his error, and the actual act of rectifica-
tion, the whole drama is enacted as a dumb-show. The night
and the weather at the picnic sight make a background against
which the characters look like confused and helples puppets.
Take, for example, the scene in which Saumarez makes his
engagement public.

As Miss Copleigh and I limped up, he came
forward to meet us, and, when he helped
her down from her saddle, he kissed her
before all the picnic. It was like a
scene in a theatre, and the likeness was
heightened by all the dust-white, ghostly-
looking men and women under the orange
trees clapping their hands---as if they
were watching a play---at Saumarez's choice.
I never knew anything so unEnglish in my
life.

After this, although Kipling says that "we were drOpping back
again into ordinary men and women," he has already given the
impression that the life of the British in India, especially
during the hot weather, fails to achieve concreteness. The
English never succeed in establishing contact with their
surroundings, thus failing to become part of them and truly
alive. Their life in India is like a false dawn.

Yet at points where human contact is possible, the sense
of belonging is not impossible to achieve. The deep pathos
of "The Story of Mohammed Din" comes from such a participation.
Mohammed Din playing in the garden, lisping a few words to
his father's English master, and then being suddenly cut
short in his very childhood by death, is so real that he
undoubtedly had a place in the author's heart. It seems
that cultural and social barriers fall before deep emotions.
They are hard to overcome in day to day affairs. Kipling
very poignantly conveys the tenderness a child's innocence
can arouse in one's heart. The profundity of regret over
an inadvertent mistake is conveyed most effectively in the
following words: "Heaven knows that I had no intention of
touching the child's work then or later; but, that evening,

a stroll through the garden brought me unawares full on it;

49

so that I trampled, before I knew, marigold-heads, dust-
bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into confusion past
all hope of mending. Next morning, I came upon Mohammed Din
crying softly to himself over the ruin I had wrought. Some
one had cruelly told him that the Sahib was very angry with
him for spoiling the garden...." The tragedy of the child's
death is accentuated by the Doctor's "They have no stamina,
these brats." But it retains a grandeur untouched by
sentimentality.

"Jews in Shushan" if not so tender as "The Story of
Mohammed Din" has a similar grimness. Fate does not permit
Ephraim the Jew to realize his dream of having ten persons
of his religion in Shushan so that they could have a synogogue
of their own. The story, whereas it depicts the helplessness
of man in the face of the inevitable, also reflects in the
alienation of the characters Kipling's own taste of it in
India.

"In the House of Sudhoo" betrays the same failure to
establish contact with India in another way. The story
itself is a partially true description of the hocus-pocus
that passes under the name of magic in India. But the seri-
ousness with which the whole affair is approached and nar-
rated involves an exaggeration which amounts to a mistrust
of the entire land. The epigraph juxtaposes the part of
India reclaimed by the British with the rest of the country
which is still unknown and similar to the foreigner.41

"Dray Ware Yow Dee" a monologue by a Pathan, portrays
his lust for revenge. Kipling has marvelously succeeded in
grasping the mores of another culture in this story. He also
imbucs his creation with a dignity and manliness which con-
trast with the servility and spinelessness of the average
Indian. The Pathan, although respectful, speaks to the Sahib
on terms of near equality. Kipling, in the epigraph taken
from the groverbs, even finds a rationale for his character's

 

41. Infra p. 55

50

feelings in Western terms. In the flow of the narrative he
has masterfully caught the flavour of the vernacular. Most
important of all, Kipling is conscious of the rigidity of
cultural boundaries: "I thought you were my friend. But
you are like the others---a Sahib. Is a man sad? Give him
money, say the Sahibs. Such are the Sahibs, and such art
thou---even thou." Still the barrier remains. The story
does not cease to smack of copy received at second hand by
a journalist. It betrays an attempt to bank upon the de-
scription of the customs of a strange people. And a value
judgement on these customs at times comes to the surface:
"Your Law! Ihat is Your Law to me? When the horses fight
on the runs do they regard the boundary pillars; or do the
kites of Ali Musjid forbear because the carrion lies under
the shadow of the Ghor Kuttri?"

Kipling achieves great heights in realism in literature
when he stays close to his personal experience. The loneli-
ness, boredom, and the rigors of the inclement weather which
were the lot of the average British official in India perhaps
find their best expression in Kipling's "At the End of the
Passage." The steady disintegration of the psyche under the
hell of this social vacuum and an intemperate climate could
be quite convincing even without the introduction of the
supernatural element. In fact, the use of the supernatural
detracts from the impact of the story. Without its interven-
tion, it would be a true representation of the "White Man's
Burden."

"William the Conqueror" also deals directly with the
"White Man's Burden" but on a much simpler and easier plain.
The job of the men engages in famine relief does involve hard
work, but it is mostly physical work. Instead of the over-
whelming oppressiveness of "At the End of the Passage," this
story is charged with a feeling of triumph, even crude gloat~
ing in the ability to manage things. The story has been
often very highly praised but there is little in it to justify
such approbation. It suffers from an utter lack of seriousness

51

or genuine sympathy with Indians. The latter do not come
alive in the author's description of them. And the romanti-
cism of the hardships of the English, and of Scot walking

at the head of a host of little, brown angels, is very forced.
Kipling here is perhaps at his most complacent.

The "White Man's Burden" on the plane of socio-political
responsibility is beautifully formulated in "The Man.Who
Would be King." The ideal of kinghood is given in the epi-
graph: "Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be
found worthy." Dravot and Carnehans muggle themselves, with
some ammunition, into Kafiristan where people live in almost
primitive conditions. By their superior intelligence, chance,
and better equipped for fighting, they establish themselves
as the rulers, Dravot becoming the Emperor and god of the
people and Carnehan his Commander-in-Chief. But the price
of this supremacy is self-abnegation, a non-interference in
the customs of the people they govern. For some time they
work selflessly for Kafiristan and the country becomes better
organized and strong. Then Dravot decides to get married.
Marriage between humans and gods is against the tradition
of the people. In spite of advice to the contrary, the
Emperor pushes his way into marriage. People get suspicious
of his godhood which results in a revolt. Dravot is killed.
Carnehan, who is left for killed, survives but is so crippled
and maimed that he hardly resembles a human being. The moral
lesson of the story is obvious.

Kipling is definitely biased in his ideas about the
ability of certain races to rule. This comes out clearly
again and again in his writing. The story "Namgay Doola"
is entirely devoted to this belief. Namgay Doola refuses
to obey the rajah of a petty state and fights back when the
former's ludicrous "army" go to arrest him. It is discovered
by the narrator that Doola has some white blood in him and
hence would rather die than be one of the rajah's subjects.
The rajah is persuaded to make him the commander of his Army
because of "the nature that God has given him."

52

But the ability to rule can be gradually acquired by
people of other races too. Puran Dass, in "The Miracle of
Puran Bhagat," by conscious effort equips himself with the
ability to manage affairs of state and rised to become the
Prime Minister of a native state where he does his job so
well that he is honoured with the title of K. C. I. E. But
at the height of his political power he renounces the world
to meditate on the Absolute like a true Brahmin. For years
he remains unconcerned with the affairs of men considering
them an illusion. But the feeling for humanity is so deeply
ingrained into him that he cannot help going out, with all
his beast friends of the jungle, to save a village from a
landslide. Puran Dass's enlightenment is of the highest
kind. He not only sees the law that should govern the affairs
of men but the greater Law which pervades all existence.

The crown for Kipling becomes a symbol of the link be-
tween these two laws. He is moved by the loyalty and rever-
ence which some people of the Dominions beer for the crown.
His admiration for some Indian soldiers' sacred regard for
royalty form the theme of "In the Presence."

His regard for the British soldier in India is expressed
in his numerous Soldier Stories. His pictures of them are
not sentimentalized. He does not hesitate to delineate the
crude aspects of their nature. Still his love of them is
unbounded. "0n Greenbow Hill" is the most memorable of his
Soldier Stories.

In the Plain Tales From the Hillg, the reader sees
the white man carrying his burden without the beat of drum
which seems to enter some of Kipling's later writings. In
fact, he never eulogized the empire as it actually was. He
admired the men who formed its foundation. They made him
see in the empire an instrument, which, if perfected, could
serve a high end. Since he could not be part of this venture
in action, he decided to dedicate his art to an ideal for
which he felt them to be striving. The sense of dedication
was intensified when he decided to return to London which

53

seemed like turning his back on the difficulties in which

his heroes lived. He felt that the British public had been
unfair in their evaluation of the Anglo-Indians. He also
realized that England's security lay in the hands of the
British overseas. So he very early began to draw the British
public's attention to the life of these people. Adverse critim
cisa of his work in intellectual circles gave a further fillip
to his efforts in this direction. 80 his stories about India,
writen while he was there in that country or later up to the
time of the Boer War, are all written in admiration of the
hard-working British officers and soldiers in India. The
burden of administration lies on the shoulders of the former
in a manner in which only he understands.

Gentlemen come from Endland spend a few
weeks in India, walk round this great
Sphinx of the Plains, and write books
upon its ways and its works, denouncing
or praising it as their own ignorance
prompts. Consequently all the world
knows how the Supreme government con-
ducts itself. But no one, not even the
Supreme Government, knows everything
about the administration of the Empire.
Year by year England sends out fresh
drafts for the first fighting line, which
is officially called the Indian Civil
Service. These die, or kill themselves
by overwork, or are worried to death or
broken in health and hope in order that
the land may be protected from death

and sickness, famine and war, and may
eventually become capable of standing
alone. It will never stand alone; but
the idea is a pretty one, and men are
willing to die for it, and yearly the
work of pushing and coaxing and scolding
and petting the country into good living
goes forward. If an advance is made all
credit is given to the native, while

the Englishmen stand back and wipe their
foreheads. If a failure occurs the
Englishmen step forward and take the
blame.

The most poignant picture of the Englishmen's hardships in
India are given in "At the End of the Passage," "Without

Benefit of Clergy," "In Flood Time," and "The Man Who Was.”

54

Here are bodied forth the physical and spiritual torments

of men under the most persecuting circumstances. And in

the background looms vast...the image of that old Sphinx

of the Plains complete in mystery as no other writer has
ever been able to suggest her. These serious elements of
the picture are mingled with anecdotes which, without mini-
mizing the hardships and patience of his protogonists, bring
in elements of a lighter vein such as the descriptions of
their amusements and frivolities. But the emphasis remains
on the hardships. Kipling conveys the gigantic nature of
their task by suggesting the vastness of the sub-continent
by occasional flashlight phrases. There is the India of
"the blazing sky, the dried-up overhandled earth," and it

is rendered more concrete by touches like "The stern, black-
bearded kings who sit about the Councilboard of India" and
the romance of "Look, there are the lights of the mailtrain
going to Peshawar!" Nothing can compare with "The City of
Dreadful Night" in making one realize the heat of India:

The men flung themselves down,
ordering the punkah coolies by all the
powers of Hell to pull. Every doorrand
window was shut, for the outside air
was that of an oven. The atmosphere
within was only 104°, as the thermometer
bore witness, and heavy with the foul
smell of badly-trimmed kerosene lamps;
and thin stench, combined with that of
native tobacco, baked brick, and dried
earth, sends the heart of many men down
to his books, for it is the smell of
the Great Indian Empire when she turns
herself for six months into a house of
torment.

The situation of these hard-boiled workers is not fully
understood or appreciated by the high-ups in the Indian
government. "Even the Secretariat believes that it does
good when it asks an over-driven executive Officer to take
a census of wheat-weevils through a district of five thou-
sand square miles." Kipling best satirizes this attitude
of the government in "Pig." The poor executive is left to
himself to take a lonely stand in an alien world that

55

stretches on either side of the main line connecting cities
from Calcutta to Peshawar and symbolizing the thin streak
of the tangible reality he can grasp and fall back on as
suggested in the epigraph to "In the House of Sudhoog:

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 tonight,

For we have reached the Oldest Land
Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.

Although Kipling admires the Anglo-Indian officials,
he does not fail to be objective about them. He knows them
as human beings and accepts them as such. It is instructive
to compare his pictures of them with the idealistic notions
about their heroism. While Kipling was still at school,
Bridges, later to Kipling's rival for the position of Poet
Laureate, wrote the following sonnet, The Growth of_;ove:

Say who be these light-bearded, sunburnt, faces
In negligent and travel-stained array

That in the city of Dante come today,

Haughtily visiting her holy places?

0 these be noble men that hide their graces,
True England's blood, her ancient glory's stay,
By tales of fame diverted on their way

Home from the rule of oriental races.
Life-trifling lions these, of gentle eyes

And motion delicate, but swift to fire

For honour, passionate where duty lies,

Most loved and loving, and they quickly tire
Of Florence, that she one day more denies

The embrace of wife and son, of sister or sire.

Contrasted with the flirtatious, adulterous, down-to-earth
cynical youngmen at Simla, Bridges' young men are the figments
of a poets' imagination.

Kipling's pictures of the British soldier in India are
relatively more idealized although he knows that "single men
in barracks don't grow into plaster saints." They are "no
thin, red 'eroes" of the kind the art critics wanted Dick
Hedlar's pictures to be in The Light That Failed. Still
there is some element of staginess about Nulvaney. The pro-
cess of mythologizing is, however, checked by the typically

56

British soldiers, Ortheris and Learoyd. They possess all

the cynicism that is necessary for the kind of action demanded
from them. Nonetheless, they are endearing figures. Like

the Anglo-Indian official they are not only ignored but con-
demned and shamed by the complacent British public:

“They talk 0' rich folk bein' stuck
up an' genteel," says Learoyd, telling
the story of his heart, "but for cast-
iron pride 0' respectability there's
naught like poor chapel folk. It's as
cold as the' wind 0' Greenbow Hill---ay,
and colder, for 'twill never change.

And now I come to think on it, one at
strangest things I know is 'at that they
couldn't abide the' thought o'soldiering.
There's a vast o' fightin' i' th' Bible,
and there's a deal of Methodists i' th'
Army; but to hear chapel folk talk yo'd
think that soldierin' were next door,

an' to'other side, to hangin'.... And
they'd tell tales in the Sunday school

0' bad lads as had been thumped and brayed
for bird-nesting o' Sundays and playin'
truant o' weekdays, and how they took,

to wrestlin', dog fightin', rabbit-runnin',
and drinkin', till at last, as if 't were
a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned
him across th' moors wi', 'an then he went
and 'listed for a soldier', an' they'd

all fetch a deep breath, and throw up
their eyes like a hen drinkin'."

"thy is it?" said Mulvaney, bringing
down his hand on his thigh with a crack.
"In the name of our God, fwhy is it? I've
seen it, too. They cheat and they swindle,
an' they lie an' they slander, an' fifty
things fifty times worse; but the last an'
the worst by their reckonin' is to serve
the widely honest. It's like the talk hv
childern---seein' things all round."

"Plucky lot of fightin' good fights
of whatsername they'd do if we didn't see
they had a quiet place to fight in. And
such fightin' as theirs is! Cats on the
tiles. T'other callin' to which to come
on...," said Ortheris with an oath.

The honesty of his heroes and the general efficiency
with which the Government of India worked convinced Kipling
that authoritarianism was the best system of government.

57

The imperial machinery as he saw it was not free from defects.
He was one of the bitterest critics of bungling at the higher
levels of administration. In The Masque of Plenty he sati-
rizes a commission appointed to enquire into the economic
conditions in India. One of the passages reads:

Hired Band, brasses only,_full chorus--
God bless the Squire

And all his rich relations

Who teach us poor people

We eat our proper rations--

We eat our proper rations,

In spite of inundations,

Malarial exhalations,

And casual starvations,

We have, we have, they say we have--
We have our proper rations.

It concludes with a summing up of the Indian peasant's plight
in the "Chorus of the Crystallized Facts" about "The Much

Administered Man":

In the towns of the North and the East,
They gathered as unto rule,

They bade him starve his priest

And send his children to school.
Railways and roads they wrought,

For the needs of the soil within;

A time to squabble in court,

A time to hear and to grin.

And gave him peace in his ways,
Jails-~and Police to fight,

Justice-~at length of days,

And Right--and Might in the Right

His speech is of mortgaged bedding,

On his kine he borrows yet,

At his heart is his daughter's wedding,
In his eyes foreknowledge of debt.

He eats and hath indigestion,

He toils and he may not stop;

His life is a long-drawn question
Between a crop and a crop.

This should serve as an answer to those who accuse Kipling of
being a complacent mouthpiece of Imperialism. But his thoughts
were forward-looking. He thought in terms of a world order.
The world, as it was in his day, was not yet ready for democ-
racy. Whatever the reasons and past history, under the cir-
cumstances, the British rule in India seemed to be the best

for the country. He tried to observe impartially and saw

58

that certain people were better equipped than others to do

the job of ruling. So he was Opposed to democracy as a matter
of principle. He felt that the interference of the British
Parliament in the Indian affairs was ill-advised and detri-
mental to the smooth functioning of the Anglo-Indian bureauc-
racy. In this connection his comments on the constitutional
changes in Japan are interesting. "We shall be happy with
this Constitution and a people civilized among civilizatiOns!"
said some of his Japanese hosts when he was in Tokyo on his
way to America.

"Of course. But what will you ac-
tually do with it? A Constitution is
rather a monotonous thing to work after
the fun of sending members to Parliament
has died out. You have a Parliament,
have you not?"

"Oh, Yes, with parties--Liberal and
Radical." "Then they will both tell lies
to you and to each other. Then they will
pass bills, and spend their time fighting
each other. Then all the governments will
discover that you have no fixed policy."

His experience on the West coast of the U.S.A. and his
later trouble with his own brother-in-law confirmed his be-
lief in rigid authoritarianism:

Turn now to the August spectacle of
a Government of the people, by the people,
for the people, as it is understood in the
city of San Francisco. Professor Bryne's
book will tell you that every American
citizen over twenty-one years of age pos-
sesses a vote. He may not know how to
run his own business, control his wife,
or instil reverence into his children, may
be pauper, half-crazed with drink, bank-
rupt, dissolute, or merely a born fool;
but he has a vote. If he likes he can be
voting most of his time-~voting for his
State governor, his municipal officers,
local option, sewage contracts, or anything
else of which he has no special knowledge. 2

Ruling, according to Kipling is a job, which like any other
job, requires not only a certain amount of know-how and abili-
ty, but also a highly developed sense of morality. Certain
peoples were better endowed with these qualities than others.

42. Ibid., pp. 75-76.

59

It was their duty to take upon themselves the task of gov-
erning and improving the world.

Kipling had strong intimations of a moral order control-
ling the universe. He was concerned with the problem of
retribution to the point of obsession. That is one chief
reason why his writing is replete with stories of revenge
and punishment. The universal order is vaguely referred to
as Law. Where it prevails poetic justice is possible. The
domain of its operation can be extended only by men specially
fitted to do so. The law is that frame within which man can
work to fulfil himself. Discipline is essential to make this
frame possible. "only the free are bond; only the bond are
free." His vision of our ideal system of government in the
future is given in "With the Night Mail":

That semi-elected, semi-nominated
body (The Aerial Board of Control) of a
few score persons of both sexes controls
this planet. "Transportation is Civili-
zation," our motto runs. Theoretically
we do what we please so long as we do
not interfere with the traffic and all

it im lies. Practically, the A.B.CT-
confirms or annuls all international
arrangements and, to judge from its last
report, finds our tolerant, humorous,
lazy little planet only too ready to

shift the whole burden of public adminis-
tration on to its shoulders.

The obsolescence of the "autonomous institutions" is the
subject of one of the extracts, from a newspaper of that
future time, that are added as an appendix to the story.
Crete, where these institutions still survive, has borne
with the confusion caused by them just because these ves-
tiges of the past attract tourists from abroad. But at last
they can no longer stand the "savage" system and compel the
A.B.C. to annex them.

In "As Easy as A.B.C." the inhabitants of Illinois
still remember the horrors of the democratic system of
government and get panicky when they smell the danger of
its being revived. They express their feelings in
"Hacdonough's Song":

60

Once there was the People--Terror gave it birth,

Once there was the People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, 0 ye slain!

Once there was the People--it shall never be again!

The trouble is caused by the would-be democrats who Kipling
calls "Serviles."

Whatever the weaknesses of his Utopian concept of A.B.C.
it is worth noting that its membership is based purely on
ability rather than on any narrow national considerations.
From his concern for efficiency and the vastness of the areas
over which he desired it to be used, stems Kipling's love of
machinery. He was enthused not only by its perfection and
precission but its power, reach and speed. In this respect
he was a predecessor of his critic H. G. Wells. He was cap-
tivated both by the romance of mechanical operations and
devices as well as the romance rendered possible by them.,&
He has been often accused of being tediously meticulous in
his descriptions of the working of machinery. His stories
about machinery are said to lack human interest. The main
reason for these charges is the old-fashioned view of litera-
ture according to which it is sacriligeous or impossible to
write literature about machinery. The myth has since been
shattered but the fashion of condemning Kipling on its basis
still persists. Kipling was among the first writers to
break away from these pessimistic, obsolete notions. He
showed that not only is it possible to create literature
about machinery but, in this age, also necessary to do so,
if there is to be any literature.

The mechanical efficiency as admired by Kipling suggests
the possibility of a similar organization in the affairs of
men. This mechanical attitude towards humanity is deplored
by many as an attempt to control the affairs of mankind by
main force. But Kipling nowhere suggests that the mechanical
subservience to authority is a current or desired state of
human existence. He only implies that such subservience will
have to be accepted as the condition of freedom and full
realization in a world which is being fast mechanized in all

61

its spheres. His writing about machinery is, therefore, not
irrelevant gibberish but is endowed with deep human signifi-
cance in a mythical form. The significance, of his animal
stories, at this level, is more readily admitted. But even
here the charge of over-simplification is not uncommon. The
world of The Jungle Books, and other books written specifi-
cally for children, is seen to be valid only when divorced
from adult point of view. Says Edmund Wilson,

It is as if the natural human feelings
progressively forced out of his work by
the rigours of organization for its own
sake were seeking relief in a reversion
to childhood, when one has not yet become
responsible for the way that the world is
run, where it is enough to enjoy and to
wonder at what we do not yet understand.
And, on the other hand, the simplified
morality to which Kipling has now com-
mitted himself is easier to make accept-
able to ones readers and oneself if one
approaches it from the point of view of
the child."

Thus Edmund Wilson detects in these stories an element of
irresponsibility. It has to granted that the stories are
primarily meant for children but the view of life presented

in them stems not from a cheap "schoolboy morality" but from

a profound perception of the cosmic order of things. Kipling's
"Law" governs not only the human race but the whole creation.
It imposes conditions by which alone can the individual

secure his freedom. But the focus remains on that freedom.
Small wonder, then, that his ut0pia verges on anarchy.

Both the idea of anarchy and the need for work to achieve
it are essentially western notions in as much as they empha-
size the importance of the individual in the aims of exis-
tence and in the means necessary to achieve these ends. In
his own day, he was bitterly criticized for glorifying action
at the expense of contemplation and other purely intellectual
pursuits. The decadent critics, the descendents of the
pseudo-romantic aesthetes, considered contact with reality
as defiling and tried to escape into an imaginary world of art.

62

Their condemnation of Kipling's glorification of action has
continued until recently. Edmund Wilson accused him of having
laid his art at the feet of the Anglo-Indian official.43
George Orwell who tries to be fair to his Anglo-Indian prede-
cessor still finds him lacking in sensitivity.44 This is no
place to go into a long discussion about the relative merits
of action and art. It should suffice here to say that not
only can art be related to action, but, if the literary his-
tory of most cultures is authentic evidence, it often has
necessarily to be concerned with action to be great. Dedi-
cation of one's art to noble action does not necessarily

mean a lack of sense of vocation as an artist. Kipling never
lost his sense of vocation as an artist. But he realized
that art should not be divorced from the problems of exis-
tence. The artist's place is in the midst of the world,not
in seclusion.

His ability to see the necessity of military prepared-
ness in a world that was becoming increasingly jingoistic has
also come under fire as his own jingoism. As suggested earlier,
much of his flaunted toughness was a pose rather than a re-
ality and basically opposed to his nature. But the times
called for it. When the whole world changes one has to take
the change into consideration. This does not mean, however,
that one has to yield one's own values to the onslaught of
the opposing forces. But one is often compelled to adopt the
same means as its enemy's in order to preserve those values.
Richard Le Gallienne proclaimed that Kiplinggs work was a
justification of the Englishman as a brute. The fact is
that Kipling realized that the veneer of brutality was a
necessary evil if the gentleman inside was to function effec--
tively.

War is important for Kipling in another respect too.

43. "The Kipling That Nobody Read," in The Hound and ghe_ggg
(New York, 1947), p. 151.

44. "Rudyard Kipling," in Critical Essays (London, 1954) p. 112.
45. Op. cit., p. 155.

63

It brings out the better qualities and weeds out lots of
pettinesses. Still the admiration is not for the war which
makes the virtues possible but for the men who have these
virtues. War still remains an evil.

It seems that for a while Kipling's approval of military
strength was motivated by a sanction of expansionism. In
the beginning such expansionism seemed to be feasible. But
gradually the external pressures on the empire and its own
inner weakness made him more defensive and fearful. The
imposition of their own culture upon other peoples had never
been his aim. The purpose had been to help the various peoples
realize themselves. Greater consciousness of the failings
of the system made his acceptance of other cultures even more
liberal.

The "Recessional" clearly marks the note of humility
in his attitude but the change seems to have started earlier.
With the outbreak of the Boer War, although he is said to
have been a virtual mouthpiece of Cecil Rhodes' aspirations
and hence to have been on the offensive, his exhortations
were the shoutings of a desperate man. He wasn't sure of
either the justice of the action against the Boers or the
certainty of the British victory in the wider context. From
then on his approach to the holding of the Empire was nega-
tive. As a writer this change ushers him into the best of
his periods.

For whenever Kipling aligned himself with a particular
system, he could not help falsifying himself because no sys-
tem is ever perfect. It hampered the flow of his deeper
humanity. Kipling proclaimed that only some of his books
were written under the influence of what he called his
daemon. In these it is the universal Law that prevails in-
stead of the British.

Unfortunately the charge of racialism and brutality
against Kipling had already become widely rampant before
he came to write Kim. So the novel has seldom received the
praise it deserves. In Kim Kipling is at his most human.

64

The pretense of enjoyment in brutality has given place to an
obviously defensive attitude about the necessity of action
in life. The lack of sentimentality, even cold-bloodedness,
with which the work of government is conducted is still con-
sidered necessary but the ruthlessness and violence it involves
are recognized or opposed to the play of tender emotions of
love and friendship. The need for the tenderness of affection
is more pressing than that for the efficiency of the govern-
ment for its own sake. The focus has shifted. Kim embodies
Kipling's love and fascination for India at its most intense.
As already pointed out, Kipling, like other Anglo-Indians
could not establish contact with the heart of India. However,
because of his sensitivity he could rise out of his cultural
isolation and try to explore India. And whatever he dis-
covered in his exploration, he not only accepted but fell in
love with. Kim, with his ability to have a double identity,
Indian and English, is a projection of Kipling's or any sen-
sitive Anglo-Indian's inclinations. So is the difficulty he
experiences in reconciling his love of India with his govern-
ment work. The India that was accessible to the Englishmen
was mainly the India on the road. Budhist ideas being an
important factor in Indian life the Lama is an appropriate
symbol of the Indian spirit. The holymen, although vitally
connected with the private lives of Indians, are nonetheless
public institutions and as such were accessible to even the
foreigner for whom it was not difficult to become interested
in them. Kipling's experience of India goes very little
beyond the public boundaries. Hence there is no interpreta-
tion of that life of the Indians which is real India. But
so far as it goes there is no mistaking either the faithful-
ness of the picture or the tenderness with which it is drawn.
Faithfulness, that is, in the presentation of the caval-
cade of life. In the plot itself, there is a slight manipu-
lation as there must be in all plots. The circumstances of
Kim's birth and upbringing and his childhood intrigues are a
preparation for the ideal role he will play in his work and

65

in his love of his Indian friends. Apart from this forced
romanticizing the rest of the story follows more or less
naturally.

The book opens with a scene showing Kim's feeling of
"perfect, equality" with his friends and the bonds of affec-
tion which unite him with everybody from the water carrier
to the policeman. His errands on the housetops are still
missions of love although the element of stalkiness is al-
ready there. His resourcefulness and practicality spring
from the goodness of his nature. And he is quick at distin-
guishing guile from innocence. This security gives him a
confidence which intensifies his devouring passion for life.

Because of his love of experience he is enthused at the
sight of the Lama. His first act of service to the holy man
is a casual act of charity but the latter's goodness and
innocent sincerity soon capture his heart and he accepts
the chelahood the Lama confers on him without his asking,
because it seems to be divine providence, and decides to
go with him in search of the River of Truth.

Although Kim is very considerate, even keen, in minis-
tering to the Lama's needs, there is a contrast noticeable
in the chela's outlook on life and that of the master. The
first thing that strikes us is the apparent helplessness
and the inability of the Lama to get along in the world.

He gains in stature during his visit to the museum while
talking to the curator. But as soon as he is out of the
turnstile he is little more than a senile old man living in

a fool's paradise, comic rather than touching in his condition.
It is as such that he is treated at the Kashmir Serai.

In contrast, the mastery with which Kim manages things
is at once fascinating and admirable. Two traits are promi-
nent in his character---his love of people and his stalkiness.
His stalkiness is loveable because it does not hurt but
saves. But it involves deviousness which, howsoever noble
its end, is, compared to the Lama's truthfulness, not basical-
ly an ennobling quality. Although Kim has already begun to
care for the old man, he is also using him in his disguise

66

of the chela to carry Mahbub Alias message. His smartness
never becomes offensive except when he manipulates the Lama's
goings about. In the beginning even this is condoned be-
cause the Lama cannot be taken seriously as yet. Materially
he appears to be utterly helpless and gullible and spiritu-
ally his search for the River of the Arrow seems illusory
and ludicrous. .

Our respect for the Lama grows substantially as we get
a closer view of the working of his mind. We begin to realize
that his naivete is connected with a quality not easy of
attainment, namely, his ability to embrace everything irre-
spective of its good or evil. Instead of opposing, or being
indifferent to the evil-doer, he accepts him as a fellow
traveller. The cobra they see on their way is as much on the
Wheel as man and hence needs sympathy. The Lama's attitude
is not intended to be the best solution to the problem of
existence. The Sikh Rasseldar, who once himself carried the
sword to help suppress anarchy, points out the need for vio-
lence. His skepticism of the Lama's outlook remains unanswered.
Yet this does not detract from the profundity of the Lama's
vision.

While the profundity and poignancy of his religious
pursuit makes for our veneration of the Lama, it makes him
less human because of his fear of involvemegt with the world.
Kim's exultation in participation in the life on the road
makes his manipulation amusing and acceptable, even commend-
able. The world around is concrete to Kim and the Lama passes
through it as through a haze. But gradually, his character
undergoes a change in this respect too. Theoretically with-
drawn, he begins to feel quite happy with Kim around and the
Sahiba to support them. And when Kim is being taken away
from him the agony of separation shows the extent of his
involvement. It is very significant that his agony arises
:not.from self-pity but from his concern for the child. So
far'he has been leaning on the child but now he becomes
responsible for him and wants to make sure that he gets the
right kind of education. So by the time he parts from Kim

67

we have had an inkling of his full stature.

Kim, on the other hand, has been picked up by a machine
which inhibits the free play of emotions. He has had plenty
of experience in stalkiness but in the bigger game, he is
now preparing for, there is not place for the warmth that
went with his earlier intrigues. Although Kim enjoys
Hahbub and Creighton's double talk and secretiveness, he is
being instructed to develop a coldly utilitarian point of
view. It is not for love that he should know India intimately
but for usefulness in the work of spying. Creighton's ex-
pectation from him is an ability to carry the picture of a
place in his mind; not for pleasure but to help the work of
the Intelligence Department. Kim resists being sent to school
at Lucknow because it shuts out the world where his heart is.
Hahbub Ali intervenes to work for him a compromise according
to which Kim can spend. his vacation in roaming wherever he
pleases. For a while the compromise works because Kim is not
yet conscious of the essential contradiction between the
impersonal nature of the rules of the Game and his affection
for the Lama and India. But when the Russian spies manhandle
the Lama, whom Kim and the Babu are using as a cover for their
own detective works, Kim is shocked into an awareness of this
contradiction and the sin he has committed in making use of
the Lama. He feels utterly wretched and tries to apologize,
"I have - I have...fl§l_M§i} But I love thee...and it is all
too late...I was a child...Oh, why was I not a man?" Trying
to expiate for the sin, Kim wears himself out physically and
mentally until he collapses. The Saheba's tender care gradu-
ally restores him to health and strength.

Excepting the Babu, all the characters that meet at
Saheba's are joined by bonds of love rather than expediency.
Mahbub's love Kim has become much stronger than his interest
in Government work. In spite of his aversion for the heathens,
his affection for Kim has also brought him closer to the Lama.
The Lama rejects his own spiritual salvation for Kim's sake.
And all of them have a tender regard for the Saheba whose

68

veneer of mock-cynicism hides a truly loving heart. The

Babu's idea of a dacoity at her house reveals the opposition
between the love and friendship that prevail there and the
demands of Government duty, making Kim|conclusively a judicious
comment on British imperialism as it existed. For Kipling
wants it to be transformed into a system which would enhance
love rather than create barriers among peoples.

Chapter III

A.E.W. Mason

A.E.W. Mason's writing, as a whole, falls more
properly under the category of "popular" rather than
serious literature. Of his two novels connected with
India, ihe Broken Road1 and No Other Tiger,2 the second
is more typical of his fiction than the first. As a
novel, it has to be classified as a "thriller." The
best that can be said about it is that it is one of the
top-ranking, best-selling thrillers and has to be dis-
missed as such from the point of view of more serious
writing. But The Broken Road is different. Although,
it must be admitted, at the very outset, that here too
Mason is not immune to a desire to cater to the popular
taste, the book is more seriously conceived than it is
usual with him to do. It is his "only 'novel with a
purpose,' and was the outcome of his study of social
conditions in India in connectioh with his parliamentary
work...."3 As a conscious attempt to study these condi-
tions, it, therefore, occupies a significant place in
the history of Anglo-Indian fiction. In an article,
"Three English Novelists and the Pakistani Scene,"
Benjamin Gilbert Brooks, compares Ihe Broken Road
favorably with Kim and A Passage to India. In his opinion,
the book "gives one ground for reflection on the degree
to which a preoccupation with the demands of a wide
public taste may thrust a writer in the direction of
higher literary values."4 It seems, therefore,
worthwhile to attempt an interpretation of the novel.

Mason believed that, in order to continue his career
as a successful writer, a novelist continuously needed

to experience new things.5

(London, 1908).

(London, 1927).

Roger7Lancelyn Green, A. E. W. Mason (London, 1952),

p. 10

Benjamin Gilbert Brooks, in Crescent and Green (London,
1955), p. 128.

. Green, opsscit., p. 93.

LJNH
o o 0

mp

70

Generally he refreshed his mind by travelling, mountain
climbing, or sailing. But his interest in public affairs
was also an important means by which he gained new ex-
perience and retained contact with reality. In his
political leanings, he affiliated with the Liberals. In
1903, Mason brought out a novel under the title The Truants.
The book compared unworthily with his earlier novel, Thg
Four Feathers, and disappointed the public. Partly to
find relief from literature and partly because of his
increasing interest in public affairs, he turned to
politics. He was recommended as a candidate for member-
ship of the parliament for the next election by the
Coventry Liberal Association. As his Conservative oppo-
nent, Kenneth Foster, warned his lieutenants, Mason was

a "strong candidate-~stronger perhaps than the Radicals
have had for a long time."6 Mason was very optimistic
about the political trends in the country. He told the
electorate of his constituency in one of his speeches,

I think there is coming into English
politics a serenity which has been lack-
ing during the last few years. The

days of hysteria have gone by, and I
hope very soon a Liberal majority will
be returned, pledged to a sound,
sensible and moderate policy.7

In his political speeches, Mason put to use his ex-
perience as an actor but his popularity was not the result
of mere theatricality. His deep sympathy with people is
shown in his play Colonel Smith and his novel The Turnstile,
both of which are based on his political experiences. One
of the politicians in the novel, remembering his political
career, speaks sentiments which appear to come from Mason's
own heart:

What remains in my mind is not the
excitement, nor the applause, is

not the difficulty of making speeches
about subjects with which one is not
half acquainted, nor fear of being
asked questions for which one has

6. Green, op. cit., p. 96.
7. 1b., p. 97.

71

no reply ready, but something quite
different. It is the memory of little
bare, raftered school rooms, hot with
gaslight, crowded with white faces,
faces so hopeful, so---intolerably
hopeful---the faces of people who

look confidently to candidates and
Parliaments for so much more than it
seems to me Parliaments and candidates
can ever do.8

Mason was elected to the Parliament in January,
1906. His maiden speech, called "Vice in the Compound"
in parliamentary circles, concerned the immoral condi-
tions prevailing among Chinese labourers in South Africa
as a result of the policy of segregation. But as a so-
lution he supported their repatriation to China instead
of advocating political reform. His attitude to the
colonial situation, like that of other Liberals of the
time, was pro-imperialistic. He expressed his faith in
the humane nature of British imperialism in a speech
addressed to an gm Egg committee even before his maiden
speech in the Parliament. His peroration needs to be
reproduced in full to convey his romanticism, consci-
entiousness and naivete:

For many years he (Mason) had taken
his pleasure in travelling in the
more or less untravelled corners of
the world, and he wished to place or
record his belief that on the whole
and in the sum, where the English
flag had gone, there the races which
came beneath its folds had enjoyed
greater security for their property
and greater well-being in their lives.
It happened that once in that very
troubled country which he trusted
would get some relief from the Algeciras
Conference, he came one afternoon to
a fortified caravanserai in which it
was prudent to sleep if one hankered
after going on again in the morning.
It was an hour before sunset, and
during that hour, the caravans with
their camels and their merchandise
came crowding into the caravanserai

8. A.B.W. Mason, The Turnstile (London, 1912), p. 239.

72

there to pass the night. Just before
sunset, while the gates were still
open, there came out from the guard-
room at the end of three Moorish
soldiers, a drummer, a bugler, and

one with a fife, and to his astonish-
ment, and indeed to some feeling
deeper than astonishment, there rang
out suddenly the Last Post, which

for many years he had been accustomed
to hear played beneath his window at
night in the parade ground of
Wellington barracks. The sound of
that peculiarly English tune ringing
out through the open gateway over the
wild country and summoning those

who were still without the caravanserai
into its shelter and security, seemed
to him then, and seemed now, to sym-
bolize the ideal of British Governments
in their dealings with their Colonies
and the races which inhabited them.

He believed that that ideal was still
being followed out by His Majesty's
Government today, and he should like
very ineffectively to place upon record
his very firm belief that the policy
which was being followed by them would
result in the ultimate benefit of the
Colonies, and was at the same time in
consonance with the highest traditions
of the British race.9

Even when he was actively engaged in politics,
Mason's chief interest in life was writing. But being
resolved to perform his duties as an M.P. to the best
of his ability, he saw "no reason why he should not com-
bine" his "work...in politics" with his "work in litera-
ture." One way of doing so soon presented itself to him.
He had realized that a Member desiring to succeed must
become the final authority on some special subject. He
decided to make India his specialty and to write about
the Indian situation in the form of fiction. So before
the very first year of his election was out, Mason went
to India to study the situation for himself. He stayed
there for about three months, seeing most of the country.
His special interest seems to have been in the Worth West

9. Green, op. cit., p. 101.

73

Frontier. At the Durbar at Agra, he managed to get an
introduction to and meet the Emir of Afghanistan. He
also spent some time at Quetta where he stayed with the
Governor's wife, Lady MacMahon.

The literary outcome of Mason's visit to India,

The Broken Road, began to appear in serial form in the
,lCornhill even before he returned to India. It deals

with an Indian prince, Shere Ali, from the tribal area

of the North West Frontier, who is sent to England to

be educated at Eton and Balliol. In England he is not
only treated as an equal by the people he comes into con-
tact with but is often given a special attention because
he is a prince. As a result he comes to identify him-
self with the English and to believe that the British
rule holds a better future for India. But on his return
to India he is not treated as an equal by the British
bureaucrats there. His love for the English changing
into a hatred, he falls in the trap of some religious
fanatics who want to raise a revolt against his father
and to do away with the British influence in the state.
The rebellion fails and Shere Ali is arrested and deported
for life.

The action of the novel is carried back and forth
between England and India. It begins with an eruption
of trouble over a road the British are building through
the state of Chiltistan. Chiltistan is not directly
governed by the British but it is in their sphere of
influence which is maintained through the Political
Agent. The road symbolizes the British influence.

It came winding down from the passes
over slopes of shale; it was built
with wooden galeries along the pre-
cipitous sides of cliffs; it snaked
treacherously further and further
across the rich valley of Chiltistan
towards the Hindu Kush, until the
people of that valley could endure
it no longer. (p. 1) 0

10. A.B.W. Mason, The Broken Road (London: Smith, Elder &
Co., 1908), p. 1.
All quotations from the novel are taken from the same edition.

 

74

When the road reaches Kohara, the rebels cut it
behind Linforth who is superintending its construction.
The whole province of Chiltistan has risen in revolt.
Linforth, taken prisoner by the rebels, is executed
before Luffe, the Political Agent, can reach him with
his meagre help.

Luffe, a seasoned soldier, a shrewd observer, and
an adept diplomat, is held thirty miles east of Kohara
in a small fort with the ruling Khan of Chiltistan.

At this time a son is born to the Khan. The Khan tells
Luffe that he has heard about "the English cities and
colleges" and he will send his son to England so that

"he may learn your wisdom, and so return to rule over

his kingdom. Much good will come of it." The Khan's
passion for things English is applauded by many
Englishmen as enlightenment. But Luffe considers it
unwise. "It was, indeed, greatly because of his enlight-
enment that he and a handful of English officers and
troops were beleaguered in the fortress." (p. 14) Luffe
dies soon after the prince is born. From his deathbed

he conveys his misgivings to Major Dewes but the latter,
failing to realize the seriousness of Luffe's dying
message, does not care to carry it to the higher authorities
at Calcutta.

Linforth leaves behind his wife, Sybil, and a son
who live at the foot of the Sussex Downs in England.
Sybil Linforth knows that the "Linforths belong to the
Road." An uncle of her husband's was the first to begin
the Road. He had known the "Power of the Road" and had
proposed its construction in an article in the
Fortnightly:

The road will reach northwards,

through Chiltistan, to the foot of

the Baroghil Pass, in the Mountains

of the Hindu Kush. Not yet, but it
will. Many men will die in the
building of it from cold and dysen-
tary, and even hunger---Englishmen

and coolies from Baltistan. Many

men will die fighting over it, English-
men and Chiltis, and Gurkhas and Sikhs.

75

It will cost millions of money, and
from policy or economy successive
governments will try to stop it;

but the Power of the Road will be
greater than the Power of Government.
It will wind through valleys so

deep that the day's sunshine is gone
within the hour. It will be carried
in galeries along faces of mountains,
and for eight months of the year sec-
tions of it will be buried deep in
the snow. Yet it will be finished.
It will go on to the Hindu Kush, and
then only the British rule in India
will be safe. (p. 46)

Her husband having been already claimed by the Road,
Sybil Linforth now feels that it is calling her son,
Dick, Who reads the forty-year-old article in the
Fortnightly again and again.

Dick meets Shere Ali at Eton. A close friendship
develops between the two. As they grow up a strong sense
of a common mission takes hold of them. It is symbolized
in their compact to complete the Road to the foot of the
Hindu Kush. Shere Ali considers himself as one of the
white men: "To the white man, the Road was the beginning
of things; to the Oriental, the shadow of the end. Shere
Ali sided with the white men." (p. 59)

Shere Ali falls in love with Violet Oliver, the
young widow of a Captain killed in a campaign in India.
But she can give him nothing more than friendship. She
is more attracted towards Dick Linforth but does not tell
him about Shere Ali's fascination for her. Shere Ali
also remains unaware of Linforth's interest in Violet.

At this point Shere Ali is suddenly asked by the
Indian Government to return to his country at once. There
is trouble brewing in Chiltistan because of the opposition
between the British Raj and the Khan who is spending the
revenue of his State chiefly on his own amusements. It is
claimed that the British Resident should supervise the
disposition of the revenue. The Khan is informed that if
he does not consent to the proposal he will be made to
retire to private life. The presence of the young prince

76

is necessary to give force to the threat because this

would make the Khan realize that he can be easily re-
placed at a moment's notice. By this time Shere Ali

has become so much attached to England that he finds it
very painful to leave. He knows he has in Chiltistan

work to do, the work of a white man. But he finds himself
in a situation where he cannot tell where his true identity
lies.

"Do I belong here?" he asks Violet.
"Or do I belong to Chiltistan?"

0n the one side was all that during
ten years he had gradually learned
to love and enjoy; on the other side
was his race and the land of his
birth. (p. 95)

Having no choice in the matter, he goes to India,
thinking himself a Sahib and hoping to further the British
influence in his state. On arriving there he is told that
the Government has no intention or wish to interfere with
the customs and laws of Chiltistan and, at the moment par-
ticularly, they expect him to throw his influence on the
side of the native observances. It has also been decided
not to carry on the Road beyond Kohara. So Shere Ali felt
that "he was to be nothing, he was to do nothing, except
to practise economy and marry---a nigger." (p. 99) He is
indignant at the attitude of the administration in keeping
him from following the inclinations acquired in England.
He cannot imagine himself to be one of his own people.

The secret overtures of the Mullahs, who seek to foment a
rebellion against the English and the Khan, he rejects
insolently, thus incurring their wrath. However, his ex-
perience is fast estranging him from the British and
pushing him towards his own people. Already words "began
to be spoken and the little incidents to occur which were
to ripen him for his destiny." (p. 116)

An English doctor, accompanying him on his way from
Lahore to Kohara, describes to him the acts of exceptional
daring performed by a Sikh and a water carrier during the
previous uprising. The doctor is embarassed to admit that

77

neither of the two Indians could be given’the Victoria
Cross because, "you see, we don't give the Victoria Cross
to natives.“ The prince realized with dismay that to the
white peeple, he and the bheesti and the sepoy were all one.
"The invidious bar of his colour was not to be broken.“
About nine months later Shere Ali happens to meet
Violet Oliver. Both of them have come to attend a Durbar
held in honour of a royal visitor from a neighbouring
country into India. Violet had intended to keep her visit
to India hidden from Shere Ali in order to avoid giving
pain to him. At first he feels hurt, his pride "urging him
to hold his head high and seek not so much as a single word
with her. But he had been alone for six months in Chiltistan,
and he was young.“ (p. 112) So he asks her for a meeting.
The meeting only aggravates his depressidn. Violet is
very sympathetic but in reply to his desperate insistence
that she marry him, she has to say, 'That's impossible...“
She does not have any strong feeling on the subject of
colour. "She was not repelled, as men are repelled." But she
knew how strangely others felt. Deeply troubled by Shere
Ali's suffering, she forgets to choose her words: “You
know that it's impossible. We can't alter these things.“
Shere unde stands that "these things" are "the natural law
that white shall mate with white, and brown with brown.“
"There came a dreadful look upon his face.“ He tells Violet,
“It's no less impossible that I should marry now one of my
own race.” He belongs neither in England nor in Chiltistan.

He is “a citizen of no country.“

78

From the United Provinces Shere goes to Calcutta where
he meets Major Dewes, who had retired to England but, having
felt out of his element there, came back to stay in India.
But unlike Shere, Dewes is 'a free man. He could go whither
he would.‘ "You are not sorry you came out to India,“ Shere
tells him. ”Well, for my part,“ and his voice suddenly
shock with passion, 'I wish to Heaven I had never seen
England." (p. 148)

Shere thinks that there is Just a chance of salvation
for him, if Linforth could be brought out to India. For
Lindforth's compaionship might help him to recapture some
of his old faith and bright ideals. "There was sore need
that he should recapture them.” He asks Colonel Dewes if
the latter has any influence with the higher authorites
to fetch Linforth out of England. The effect that his
inability to help has on Shere is described by the Colonel
to Ralston the chief commissioner of Lahore:

Shere Ali's face changed in a most extra-
ordinary way. All the fire went from his
eyes, all the agitation from his face. It
was like looking at an Open box full of
interesting things, and then-bang! some
one slaps down the lid, and you are staring
at a flat piece of wood. (p. 153)

Shere's love for the English is changing bitterness and
hatred. When he hears Hatch tell him and Ralston the story
of an Englishwoman, who was abducted during the Mutiny of

1857 and forced to become a Mohammedan, and who has been

living at Mecca since then, a change comes over him:

79

He was no longer onpressed with envy
and discontent. He was leaning forward
with parted lips and a look in his
eyes...as if hape had somehow dared

to lift his head within him. And
there was savagery too. (p. 166)

When he left Ralston and Hatch, ”he was thinking deeply..
and a queer and not very pleasant smile played about his lips.”
(p. 167)

Repelled by the English, the prince grows warmer to-
wards his own peOple. As a gesture he sends a gift of melons
and bags of grain to a Mullah he had once puncished by setting
him to work for a day upon a bridge. By the Resident the
gift is misunderstood as a mere gesture of good will to the
Mullah. But the ferment in Peshawar makes Halston suspect
a deeper meaning. He forces Futteh Ali Shah to interpret
the message to him:

The grain is the army which will rise

up from the hills and descend from the
heavens to destroy the power of Govern-
ment. The melons are the forces of the
Government; for as easily as melons they
will be cut into pieces. (p. 194)

Shere Ali goes to watch a prize-fight between a Jew
and an English soldier. Sitting beside him are two young
Englishmen who are talking about the dancing of English girls
for public entertainment which ought to be stopped because it
is not ”good for us,“ that is, for the British prestige.
Shere Ali clenches his hands in his bitterness with the Eng-

lish complacency. The fight becomes a symbol, almost a

80

message to him... All

that he had once loved, and now furiously
raged against, was represented by the sol-
dier, ...while, on the other hand, by the
victory of the Jew all the subject people
would be vindicated. More and more as the
fight fluctuated from round to round the
pe0ple and the country of Chiltistan claim-
ed its own. (p. 20)

That very evening of the fight Shere Ali throws his lot
with the Mullahs and begins to work for an uprising. In
taking this step he feels that he has found an identity:

'I will go north to the hills," he cried,
and with a shock he understood that, after
all, he had recovered his own place. The
longing at his heart was for his own country--
for his own pe0p1e. It might have been bred
of disappointment and deSpair. Envy of the
White PeOple might have cradled it, desire
for the white woman might have nursed it
into strength. But it was alive now. That
was all of which Shere Ali was aware. The
knowledge filled all his thoughts. He had
his place in the world, Greatly he re-
Joiced. (p. 221)

Ahmed Ismail, Shere Ali's follower and companion,
takes him on a pilgrimage to all the places which, in
Ralston’s words, ''could most inflame the passions of a native
against the English race." They go to Cawnpore, Lucknow,
and Delhi, places most associated with the mutiny of 1859.
The pilgrimage winds up at Ajmere where the prince makes
his public offering at the shrine of an important Moslem saint.
There he also waits for the final sign for him to go to
Chiltistan.

In the meantime Ralston has exerted all his influence to
have Linforth come to India because he thinks that if there

is any man who can still hold Shere Ali back, it is Linforth.

81

But because of the carelessness of the administration,
Linforth, on his arrival in India, is sent to a wrong place,
and it takes Ralston seven months to secure his release from
there to work for him. By this time it is already too late
to avert the catastrophe. Linforth goes after his old

friend and accosts him at Ajmere but the prince does not even
deign to talk to him except through his interpreter. Having
received the sign he had been waiting for at Ajmere, he de-
parts from there leaving Linforth utterly disappointed.

Violet Oliver is still in India, staying at Ralston's
at Peshawar. One night after Linforth's return from Ajmere,
she is scared twice by somebody mysteriously entering her
room. It becomes clear later that Shere Ali has tried to
have her abducted but the attempt has failed. Orders for
his arrest are issued. But the prince has already slipped
to Chiltistan. A showdown becomes unavoidable. There is
a little war. The rebels fight "with wild fury and recless
velour“ but they are soon put to rout. Shere Ali flees from
Chiltistan with a few devoted followers. After a long pur-
suit, Linforth comes up with him and his last three followers
camping in a wilderness. Taken prisoner, he is deported to
Burma for life.

The Broken Road is planned as a tragegy. The central
character, Shere Ali, is marked for doom from the very moment
of his birth. The warning sounded by Luffe goes unheeded as
it was feared it would. As a result, the prince is caught

in a situation which must carry him to its logical conclusion.

82

Yet he himself has to be the instrument of his own fall.
Moreover, his fall not only ruins him but affects a whole
people. After Luffe strikes an ominous note in his anxiety
over the future of the prince and the Frontier and his ad-
vice is ignored, Mason begins to cast Shere Ali in a virtuous
mould. He makes of him a true Sahib, his identification with
the English reflecting not so much a snobbish attitude towards
his own people as a dedication to their improvement and a
just pride in the ability to bring it about. The Road,
associated with the sacrifice of the Linforths, also becomes
a symbol of his mission and imbues it with nobility and a
sense of service. His friendship with Dick Linforth gives
an emotional appeal to his life and his life's work---the
"wider plans which embraced not a summer's holiday but a
lifetime, plans which they (Shere and Dick) Jealously kept
secret.“ Besides having an inner beauty of character and
the social graces which he acquires in England, Shere Ali is
also endowed with a physical charm. At twenty-four, he is
"tall, spare of body and wonderfully supple of limbs, and but
for a fullness of the lower 1ip...would have been reckoned
more than usually handsome." Because of all these qualties,

Duffs would undoubtedly have classed him

amongst the best of the native Princes who

go to England for their training, and on

that account, would have feared the more

for his future. (p. 56)

In spite of his sincere desire to work for the moderni-

zation of Chiltistan, he finds it painml to leave England

Iwiaen.he is suddenly asked to do so. He has become emotionally

83

attached to England as his home. He himself is not to
blame for the suffering that begins with his recall to India.
He tries vainly to end his torment by recapturing his identity
with his own race. Still he manages to have one consolation
in his mind as he reaches India---“there were his plans for
the regeneration of the country.“ But this too turns out to
be a delusion:

And lo! here at Lahore, three days after

he had set foot on land, they were shattered

---before they were begun. He had been

trained and educated in the West according

to Western notions, and he was now hidden

to go and rule in the East according to the

ideals of the East. (p. 98)

However, for awhile he does not abandon hepe and upholds
his ideals courageously. As he writhes over his inability
to carry on the Road, he insolently rebuffs the Mullahs'
attempts to win him over to their side. But gradually despair
sets in because “they will not let me help“ as he tells
Violet on her visit to India. Violet realizes the tragedy
of his life “as he sat beside her, his eyes gazing into the
courtyard, his face tired and hOpeless. There was nothing
to be done. Her thoughts told her so no less clearly than his
face. Here was a life epoilt at the beginning.“ (p. 134)

At the Durbar she watches the pageantry of the great
Indian Administration. She does not care for its pomp and
glitter. She is only conscious of its ruthlessness because
she has

“been face to face with a victim of the
system---a youth broken by it, needlessly

broken, and as helpless to recover from
his hurt as a wonded animal. The harm

84
had been done no doubt with the very
best of intention, but the harm had
been done.“ (p. 139)

Shere Ali is now a man in whom the forces of good are
fighting a losing battle. His ideals are beginning to
dwindle. He is aware of his moral decline and feels the
need to renew his idealism. He thinks that only Linforth's
company can help him do it.

He would awaken through some chance word

to the glory of the English rule in India,
the lessening poverty of the Indian nations,
the incorruptibility of the English officials
and their justice. (p. 150)

By the time Linforth comes, it is already too late.

But even if he had come earlier, his arrival would have
yielded little good because he is brought to India to

damp the prince's idealism, not to fire it. The tragedy

of the prince's life is reinforced by the frustration of
Dick's own dreams and a consciousness that this is the

common fate of most Anglo-Indians who come to India with
such dreams. Ralston, when he explains to Dick that his true
duty at the moment lies not in pushing the building of the
Road onwards from Kohara but in stapping it, is carried back
suddenly to his own youth, and is “surprised to recollect
that he, too--had once cherished great plans. He saw him-
self as he was today, and, side by side with that disillusioned
figure, he saw himself as he had been in his youth.“ (p. 225)

The government's policy of expediency, which shatters
Shere Ali and Idnforth's dreams of their life-long work, also
puts an end to their friendship. Expecting to meet an old

friend when he goes to see Shere Ali, Linforth encounters

85

a man who hates him. Linforth's helplessness in trying
to revive their friendship is pathetic.

“Surely you have not forgotten me,

Shere Ali?“ said Linforth, trying to
force his voice into a note of cheery
friendliness. But the attemp was not
very successful. The look of hatred died
away, it is true. But mere impassivity
had replaced it. (p. 260)

The situation in which Shere Ali is caught is not created
by the government policy alone. The Mullahs are always there,
intriguing to get hold of him. As soon as Shere Ali begins
to lean towards them, they pick him up, fan the flame of his
resentment, and involve him in their activities in such a
manner that he cannot go back. The attempt to abduct Violet
is the crucial step. Ahmed Ismail lays his plans too
cunningly. Shere Ali is compromised. There is now a price
upon his head.

‘ Although the prince goes wrong, he is not supposed to

lose the readers' sympathy. He is to be pitied rather than
condemned, as Halston points out to Linforth who, at the time,
is burning with rage against the prince:

“He's a man. I know these hill-pe0ple---
and like every other Englishman who has
served among them, I love them---knowing
their faults, Shere Ali has the faults

of the Pathan, or some of them. He has
their vanity; he has, if you like, their
fanaticism. But he's a man. He's flatterd
and petted like a lap-dog, he's played with
like a toy. Well, he's neither a lap-dog nor
a toy, and he takes flattery and petting
seriously. He thinks it's meant, and he
behaves accordingly. What, then? The toy
is thrown down on the ground, the lap-dog
is kicked into the corner. But he's not

a lap-dog, he's not a toy. He's a man. He
had a man s resentments, a man's wounded

86

heart, a man's determination not to submit
to flattery one moment and humiliation the
next. So he strikes... He goes back to his

‘ own pe0ple, and strikes... WOuld you rather
_he lag down and grumbled and bragged of his
successes, and took to drink, as more than
one down suth has done?... But which of the
pictures do you admire? Which of the two
is the better man? For me, the man who
strikes--even if I have to go up into his
country and exact the penalty afterwards.
Shere Ali is one of the best of the Princes.
But he has been badly treated, and so he
must suffer.“ (p. 302)

The words describing Shere Ali's flight--

that unhappy Prince, with deepair and

humiliation gnawing at his heart, broken

now beyond all hope, was fleeing with a

few devoted followers through the darkness.

(p. 335)
are obviously intended to strike a tragic note. After a
short period of bitterness Linforth also begins to~sympa~
thize with Shere Ali again. He can feel how humiliating it
would be for his former friend to be captured in central
Asia and brought back to India as a prisoner.

He was touched to pity, to a greater

humanity.... Linforth...had shed what was

left of his boyhood. He had come to recog-

nize that life was never all black and all

white. (p. 342)
Musing over the recent past and thinking about Shere Ali,
Violet, and himself, he feels, “Everything is Just wrong...
Everything is just not what it might have bee.“ Back in
London he relates the sad episode with which the story con-
cludes. Linforth captures Shere Ali in a wilderness far
away from the Indian borders and brings him to India. Says
Linforth to Violet,

"All the way back to India we behaved as
-strangers. It was easier for both of us...
I brought him down--along the Road which at

87

Eton we had planned to carry on to-
gether. Down that Road we came to- '
ether---I the captor, he the prisoner.

p. 350)

The Broken Road, though conceived as a tragedy, falls
short of becoming one because there is a discord between
the author's artistic and socio-political purposes. Pro-
duction of good tragedy demands that, if the artist is
faced with a tragic situation, he must explore the forces
of good and evil obtaining within this situation to the ut-
most limits of human perception. His ability to explore
these forces fully is impaired if he allows any preconceived
notions about the absolute goodness or evil of certain
factors Operating in the situation to enter his vision of it.
And the result of the artist's failure to see some of these
forces.because of such bias is to upset the tragic balance
of forces. And this is what happens in mason's view of
the problem he treats in The Broken Road.

About the time of Mason's visit to India, there had been
political unrest in the country for some years. The cause
of unrest lay in the strength gathered by Indian nationalism
during the last decade of the nineteenth and the first few
years of the twentieth century. Over these years, nationalist
sentiments became quite widespread and began to be eXpressed
in new ways. The Indian National Congress, formed in 1883
by an Englishman, Allan Octavian Hume, with the support of
the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, was pledged to loyalty to the
Crown and campaigned for constitutional reform in a peaceful

manner. It was dominated by upper-class Indians, who, in

88
spite of being westernized, were not treated as their equals
by the British bureaucrats. Their fight for constitutional
reform as representatives of their poeple was also a fight
for their own status. However, they made very little pro-
gress in their struggle for reform during the first two
decades after the formation of the Indian National Congress.
Their economic interests being safe under the British rule,
it was expedient for them to work for gradual change only.
But in the meantime, other forces, forces which were to
transform the character of the Indian National Congress,
were coming to the surface.

From the very beginning of the nineteenth century when
western ideas began to be consiously disseminated in the
country, there had been resentment among the orthodox, whose
sentiments were shared all over the land but who were helpless
before the rulers and their supporters. Yet their Opposition
found expression in the establishment, in the mid-century,
of Sanskrit colleges to revive indigenous learning to counter-
act the influence of western ideas spreading through English
education. This was the beginning of a nationalism aiming
to put an end to the British rule instead of seeking its reform.
The movement mainly affected the middle-class Indians, who,
unlike their upper-class countrymen, did no come into contact
with the British and far from being anxious to be their social
equals, wanted rather to throw them out of the country. The
suppression following the Mutiny did not permit them to raise
their head for some time but the relatively settled condition
of the country and its unification under the British rule

89

during the closing years of the last century rendered their
organization possible. They found a strong leader in Bal
Ganga Dhar Tilak whose fanatical Opposition to everything
British sent a wave of nationalism sweeping through the
country. In the beginning he advocated terroristic activi-
ties as a means for liberating the country but gradually he
also developed his technique of boycott, a refusal to accept
anything Of English origin, as a weapon Of fight against the
rulers. The success of his methods was proved in the Hindu
agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905

Tilak was a member of the Indian National Congress and
so were most Of his followers. His ideas naturally came into
conflict with those of the moderates who had hitherto dominated
the organization. Tilak exerted his influence in changing
the Congress into a revolutionary party and would have become
its president in 1906 but the moderates saved the situation
by putting up Dadabai Naoroji as a candidate. Sheer rever-
ence for the man who had spent all his life working for India's
welfare, made Tilak to compromise. But his influence changed
the Congress into an organization clearly committed to the
attainment of selfrule for India. In the fight for this goal
the boycott Of all things English was accepted a a legitimate
weapon.

SO at the time when Mason's attention was drawn to India,
opposition to the spread of western influence was becoming
an important feature of Indian nationalism. Some of the

westernized Indians, having failed to be accepted as equals by

lexi-

*Aa
‘“V.

90

the Anglo-Indians, tried to recapture their identity with
Indians and began to lead the fight for self-rule. Western
education, which was expected to strengthen the British rule,
was now beginning to undermine it. MOst Of the rulers of
the native states sent their sons to England for their
education. There was no danger of the Indian prices turning
nationalist because, first of all, they were generally too
spoiled by luxury to forego it. Secondly they had enough
freedom of action with ineir principalities to follow their
inclinations. Thirdly, their actual subondiation to the
British was not rubbed into them because of the outer show of
revernece.

Worried about the Indian unrest, but believing in the
basic goodness of British imperialism, Mason tried to trace
the cause Of the trouble in India. Very perceptibly he laid
his finger on one of the important factors contributing to
the Indian unrest, namely, the problem of the Indian who
tries to identify himself with the rulers and takes the con-
cept of the White Man's Burden seriously. In order to give
force to his argument, Mason took for treatment in his novel
a hypothetical situation most fraught with danger ensuing
from this problem.

The problem taken up by Mason is essentially a tragic
problem. It follows as a corollary of the course of history.
It is inevitable that the upper-classes should begin to imbibe
the culture of the ruling group. But the ruling group, re-
maining unchangeably foreign, neither assimilates the upper-

classes into itself nor is itself absorbed into these. Con-

91

sequently, disaster is bound to occur sooner or later. But
mason refuses to see any potentiality of harm in the British
rule over India as such. He comes close to seeing the in-
exorable course of history when he attributes to the Road
a power beyond that Of any government. It cannot be stOpped.
But it turns out that his belief in the power Of the Road
does not reflect a perception of the truth of history but his
wishful thinking about the future Of the British empire. He
believes that the British influence should increase continuous-
ly but gradually, Ralston, explaining to Linforth the advan-
tages of the policy he had tried to follow, seems to express
Mason's own point of view:

“I wanted to extend our political influence

there-~yes. Because that makes for peace, and

it makes for good government. The tribes lose

their fear that their independence will be

assailed; they come in time to the Political

Officer for advise, they lay their private

quarrels and feuds before him for arbitra-

tion. That has happened in many valleys,

and I had always a hOpe that though Chiltistan

has a ruling Prince, the same sort of thing

might in time happen there.“ (pp. 301-302)
What Mason fails to realize is that unless the rulers make
India their home, equality between Indians and the British
is impossible and the consequest uprishing against the
foreign rule enevitable. The tragedy of a life like Shere
Ali's is cause by forces much broader than mason is prepared
to admit. He likes to attribute it to the stupidity and
heartlessness of the Indian administration. The administra-
tion ignores Duff's advise and sends Shere Ali to England

for education. Its ruthlessness is condemned in Violet's

92
words quoted above. On the occasion of the Durbar Shere Ali
sees the head of the administrative machinery which has
played havoc with his life. His reaction appears to express

Mason's feelings.

A wild and unreasoning wrath had flushed

up within him, not against the system, but
against that tall stOOping man (the Viceroy),
worn with work, who was at once its representa-
tive and its flower. Up there the great man
stood-~30 his thoughts ran--complacent, self-
satisfied, careless of the harm which his
system wrought. Down here upon the grass
walked a man warped and perverted out Of his
natural course... But what did this tall
stOOping man care? (p. 151)

Mason is undoubtedly Justified in blaming the administra-
tion for its inefficiency and irresponsibility which engender
much heart-rending and trouble. But he sees only part of
the truth because of his prior commitment not to see any
harm in British imperialism as such. This bias results in
a loss of the tragic impact of his novel.

First of all, since he intends to show the prince's
career to be strictly controlled by the directions of the
government, he cannot permit him enough freedom of action
to acquire truly tragic dimensions in character. Only at
once place does he come close to attaining something like a
heroic dignity. This is when he tells Captain Phillips:

“I7... I am nothing. What could I do
who a week ago was still a stranger to my
peOple? I am a voice, nothing more, But
the God of my people speaks through me...“
(p. 319)
Even the effect of this is minimized by the Captain mutter-
ing to himself, “The man's in earnest.... He actually be-

lieves it.“ Otherwise throughout the novel he remains a

93

helpless plaything in the hands of the administration and
its agents. Even his reversion to his native identity is
manipulated by Ralston and Hatch by reminding him of the
horrors of the Mutiny. As he goes around preparing for the
insurrection all his movements are closely watched by the
government. It is also known that it is ridiculous for him
to fight against the Indian army. As Ralston tells Linforth
there would be

“More or less fighting, more or less loss,

a few villages burnt, and the only inevitable

end. We shall either take over the country

or set up another Prince.“ (p. 301)
Such helplessness can raise one's pity for a character but
not admiration. Shere Ali, on the whole, reamins a pitiable,
and Often self-pitying, character.

The force he gight against is also relatively petty.

Shere is not baffled by an intangible, universal order but
a more or less concrete enemy. The author's purpose is not
to express a sense of bewilderment or protest at the sight
of a terrible waste of what is admirable but to mildly
criticize the government for causing mental anguish to a prince
and, consequently, creating disturbance in the country. The
overall impression is that he is more concerned about the
disturbance than the prince. The sympathy with the prince
seems to be spurious and the anxiety over the maintenance of
law and order genuine. It may be concluded that the first
is an excuse for the second. This attitude detracts from the

nobility of the prince's character.

There comes a further conflict in Mason's attitude to

94

the whole problem. Last his criticism of the Indian govern-
ment should in any way reflect upon British imperialism as
an institution, he tones it down--through.Ralston's Justifi-
cation Of it to Linforth.

“Look!“ he said. “There's an emblem Of the

Indian Administration. The wheels creak

and groan, the bullock goes on round and

round with a bandage over its eyes, and the

little boy on its back cuts a fine im-

portant figure, and looks as if he were

doing ever so much, and somehow the water

comes up--that is the great thing, the

water is fetched up somehow and the land

watered. When I am inclined to be despon-

dent, I come and look at my water-wheel.“
(p. 300)

The effect of this is to confuse the reader's response to
the whole issue.

The author's cultural bias similarly results in
alienating Shere Ali from the reader's mind. TO Mason
everything English is good and everything oriental is bad.
The prince becomes apparently nobe only when he acquires
a veneer of the English culture but the real person underneath
is still a barbarian. Therefore, as soon as this superfi-
cial polish of sophistication is lost, the man is not
worth saving. To the contrary, he is dangerous and must
be held in check.

Thus, although prompted to write by his sympathetic
interest in India, Mason in 2g;_Broken Ros; fails to do
Justice to his subject because of the political and cultural
assumptions he makes before begging to treat it. The
book admirably catches the surface reality of the time---
the pomp and show of the Indian government, its inefficiency,

95
the hard life of the administrators, life at the Frontier,
etc.---but it misses the deeper realism--the true nature
Of the relation between British imperialism and the Indian

scene-~and, therefore, falsifies it.

Chapter IV

E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster's novel about India, coming as it does
from a man widely known for his humanism, is, from the
humanistic point of view, a surprisingly irresponsible novel.
It is a pity that such strong words Of criticism should have
to be used for a writer who, in spite of being rather detached
from the pressing issues of his time, has often succeeded in
providing a needed counterweight to the increasing coarse-
ness of modern life in the West. But Forster's great virtu-
osity as a novelist and his reputation as a liberal, by giv-
ing force and credence to a distorted view Of things, make
the failure of his vision in A Passage to India too serious
to be ignored. Since its first publication in 1924, barring
some abuse to which it provoked some Anglo-Indians, most of
its criticism has been very "safe." Critics have consist-
ently failed to notice here either the aberration in Forster's
perspective or his lack of genuine concern for humanity in
which this aberration originates. This is not to say that
an artist is obliged to use his art in the service of humanism,
but when, inherent in a work are factors to show that the
artist professes to do so, he lays down the concern for man-
kind as not only a fair but a necessary criterion for evalu-
ating his work. SO far critics have either failed to see that
Horster, in A Passage to India, is amenable to criticism on
these lines or, having perceived this, missed the basic inn
validity of his message. As Lionel Trilling has noted "the
public, political nature of the book is not extraneous; it
inheres in the novel's very shape and texture."1 But he by-
passes most of the irksome questions Which this aspect of the
novel raises, by saying, "Great as the problem of India is,
Forster's book is not about India alone; it is about all of

l. Lionel Trilling, E. M. Borstcr (Norfolk: New Directions
Booms, 1943), p. 114.

 

 

96

97
human life."2
plexing book where vision and nightmare tread close upon
each other's heels and often go hand in hand," is led to

Similarly Rex Warner, faced by "this...per-

say, "It is, I should suggest, in this combination of vision
and nightmare much more than in a polite and scholarly ra-
tionalism and good will that are to be found the sources of
Forster's genius."3 J. K. Johnstone, stressing only the
formal aspects of the novel, declares A Passage to India

to be "a worthy valediction."4 Frederick C. Crews, in his
3. M. Forster: the Perils of Humanism, barely mentions the
question of how the metaphysical implications of the novel
"bear upon the narrower issues of ethics and Empire" and
goes on to say, "It seems to me, however, that Lionel Trilling
comes closest to the truth when he says that A Passage to
India, rather than telling us what is to be done, simply re-
states the familiar political and social dilemmas in the
light of the total human situation."5 Since this light must
be cast from a great distance, there is an incongruity be-
tween the novel's trivial action and its hints of enormous
meaning:

This incongruity is essential to
Forster's intentions; indeed, if I were
to assign a single theme to A Passage to
India, I would call it the incongruity

etween aspiration and reality. Relig-
ously, politically, and simply in terms
of the characters' efforts to get along
with one another, this incongruity is
pervasive. The strands of the novel
are unified by the thematic principle
that unity is not to be obtained, and
the plot is trivial because Forster's
restatements of the ordinary questions

2. Ibid, p. 161.
2

.. Rex Warner, E. M. Forster (London: Longmans, Green and
Co., 1954), p. i7.

4. J. K. Johnstone, The Bloomsbur Grou (New York: The
Noonday Press, 19345, p. 553.

5. Crews, Frederick C., E. M. Forster: The Perils of
Humanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962),
p.

98

imply that all of human life, whether
great or small in our customary opinion,
is ensnared in pettiness.6

Failing to see through the complex manner in which ethical
responsibility is confounded in supernaturalism, K. w. Grans-
den considers this novel as Forster's "corrective to liberal
humanism" and praises the book in hyperbolic terms:

A Passage to India seems to say the last
word...spiritually, emotionally, morally:
it drained a whole tradition to the
dregs, and we are left with the alterna-
tive of contemplating an empty cup or
refilling it again from the past.

Similarly J. B. Beer, in The Achievement of E. M. Forster,
dismisses the political aspect of the novel as unimportant.
He does admit that it is

perfectly true that little attention is
paid within the novel itself to the sheer
vastness of the political and economic
forces at work in India. But the novel
ought never to have been read as an essay
in realpolitik. It is at once too local
and too universal. As a contribution to
a "practical" solution of the Indian
problem as it existed at that time its
value was limited, and the last chapter
acknowledges the fact.

Alan Wilde grasps the import of Forster's political message
when he writes: .

It is because the British do not under-

stand the true nature of India that their
rule is so unsuccessful, their contact

with the Indians so limited and meaningless.9

But the bearing of this view of the colonial situation on
Forster's art and vision escapes him and he joins in the
chorus of praise for the novel calling "it, as almost all

6. Ibid., pp. 142-430

7. K. W. Gransden, E. M. Forster (New York: Grove Press
Inc., 1962), p. 105.

8. J. B. Beer, The Achievement of E. M. Forster (London:
Chatto and Hindus, 1962), pp. 134-35.

9. Alan Wilde, Art and_Qrder: A Study of E. M. Forster
(New York: New York University Press, 1934), p. 175.

99

readers agree, Forster's most artistically satisfying and

philosophically profound novel...."10

Not to be outdone by their counterparts in England and
America, Indian critics like Narayana Menon,ll Raja Rao,12
Ahmed Ali,13 Mulk RajAnand,14 Santha Rama Rau,15 K. Natwar-
Singh,16 to mention only a few among a whole galaxy of Fors-
ter's Indian admirers, have paid homage to him as a master
who truly understand their country. Nirad Chandhuri's at-
tempt to see the novel more objectively in his "Passage to
and from India"17 is a cry in the wilderness. But even his
criticism barely scratches the surface of the novel. His
quarrel with Forster is over the lack of verisimilitude in
his picture of India. He misses entirely the core of Forster's
failure in this novel. It lies in his lack of genuine sym-
pathy in his attitude toward India in particular and mankind
in general, and in the consequent formation of a world view
to rationalize this lack of sympathy. The purpose of writing
the following pages is, first, to show that Forster professes
his regard for the dignity of the individual as his chief
concern in A Passage to India and, therefore, invites criti-
cism, on this basis, of his success or failure in measuring
up to his own commitment, and, then, to point out his said
failure, in this respect, with its impact on his vision and
his art. Although this approach entails passing a judgment
on his work, the basic intention is to interpret--to try to
understand what happens in the novel and how Forster came
to acquire the attitudes he exhibits in A Passage to India.

10. Ibid., p. 10.

11. K. Natwar-Singh, E. W. Forster: A Tribute (New York:
Harcourt, Brace an Wor , , pp. - .

12. Ibid., pp. 15-32.
13. Ibid., pp. 33-40.
14. Ibid., pp. 41-49.
15. Ibid., pp. 50-63.
16. Ibid., pp. 65-75.

1Y7. Nirad Chandhuri, "Passage to and from India," Encounter
(June, 1954) , pp. 19-240

100

The novel was chiefly the outcome of Forster's two visits
to India in 1912-13 and 1921. But his ideas about British
imperialism, formed even before his first visit to India,
went into its making. J. B. Beer traces the seed of these
ideas back to his school days at Sawston

when Herbert Pembroke, addressing his
house..., pointed to portraits of empire-
builderg on the wall and quoted imperial
poets.1

Forster liked to think that he was different from other
Englishmen in India. His attitude towards them was that of
a snob. In his biography of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson,
while describing their voyage together to India, he cannot
hide his glee at the "contrast between their clan and our
clique." Unlike the Anglo-Indians,

We played chess on Sundays, compared
Dostoievsky with Tolstoy publicly,
argued over the shape of the earth at
the breakfast table, balanced on bol-
lards instead of playing deck games,
and discovered another young officer,

a very different one, Kenneth Searight,
who pursued romance and poetry in a
solitary deck chair.

But his criticism of the Anglo-Indians was free from a criti-
cism of imperialism as an institution. This he believed in.
He often expressed anxiety about its preservation and devel-
opment. His political stance at the time of his first visit
to India is very precisely revealed in his and Malcolm Dar-
ling's reaction to the assault on the Viceroy's life at that
time. He writes in a letter,

He (Malcolm) thinks it a pity that Lord
Hardinge, finding his wound was slight,
did not go on from the hospital to the
Durbar, for then it would have made a
great impression and prevented the se-
ditious party from saying that the Viceroy
had never reached Delhi.... It is a dread-
ful business--not only in itself, but be-
cause it will strengthen the reactionary
party. Malcolm says that after the news
came, several Englishmen- officials of high
8. Beer, op. cit., pp. 34 and 131.
19. E. M. Forster, Goldsworth Lowes Dickinson (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Co., , p. 2.

   
 

101

position, too--were anxious for the
Tommies to be turned to fire at the
crowd, and seemed really sorry that the
Viceroy had not been killed, because then
there would have been a better excuse for
doing such a thing. 0

There is a great element of truth in his description of the
brutality of some Anglo-Indian officers but all officers did
not behave in this manner. Moreover, the rughlessness ex-
hibited by certain Anglo-Indians from time to time and their
social aloofness from Indians,1aults for which Forster con-
demned them, were not so much part of their innate tempera-
ment as the result of the circumstances of their situation.
British imperialism, which had from the beginning contained
within itself the germ of its own destruction, was approach-
ing its end. The Anglo-Indian officers, who had occupied

a more or less useful place in the set-up of things in India,
were fast becoming an anachronism, It was about time for
them to wind up shop. But caught between constitutional
reforms from above and the pressure of new nationalistic
forces from below and around them, they did not have a clear
sense of direction. All they knew was that they were there
to maintain law and order. But this was no longer enough
for Indians. England's relation with India had been basically
an economic proposition. The Anglo-Indians were merely the
instruments to secure the execution of this intention. How-
ever well-meaning an Anglo-Indian officer might be, he could
never become a true participant in India's life. There was
bound to be gulf between him and the Indians.

After the First World War, the cleavage between the
Anglo-Indians and Indians became even sharper because of
economic and political pressures in India as well as in
England. In India, the Anglo-Indians could not, in general,
understand the nationalist agitation because they still con-
sidered their presence salutary for the country. But the

20.1bid., The Hill of Devi (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Co., 1953), pp. 27- 23.

102

function of their stay was palliative rather than ameliora-
tive. It could not meet the country's needs. Hence the
force of the nationalist movement which clamored for eco-
nomic, political, and social change. Confused and irritated,
the Anglo-Indians were sometimes driven to acts of ruthless-
ness. Their predicament intensified the compactness of their
unity as a group of exiles entrusted with a thankless job.
Political and economic trends in England did not help matters.
The usefulness of the Empire as an economic proposition on
the national scale was decreasing. The representatives of
labor had begun to exert their influence in favour of in-
vestment at home. The imperial relation with India was be-
coming increasingly tenuous. But while it lasted, the
British in India were in a very precarious situation. They
could not realize what was happening. They worked on the
premise that the Empire was going to last indefinitely. As
suggested earlier, E. M. Forster's ideas rested on a similar
assumption. Yet he blamed the Anglo-Indians for their sepa-
ration from Indians whereas this separation was the natural
and necessary result of the conditions this assumption re-
flects. He did not make allowance for their being the vic-
tims of circumstances. There is in Forster's attitude
towards Anglo-Indians an element of irresponsibility which
George Orwell attributed to many ivory-tower intellectuals
in Great Britain:

All left-wing parties in the highly in-
dustrialized countries are at bottom a
sham, because they make it their busi-
ness to fight against something which
they do not really wish to destroy.

They have internationalist aims, and at
the same time, they struggle to keep up

a standard of life with which those aims
are incompatible. We all live by robbing
Asiatic coolies... A humanitarian is
always a hypocrite.... It would be dif-
ficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism
of the English in fewer words than in

the phrase,(Kipling's), 'making mock of
uniforms that guard you while you sleep.‘21

21. George Orwell, "Rudyard Kipling," in A Collegtion of
Essays b George Orwell (New York: DoublEday and Co., Inc.,

   

103

There was no solution to the Indian problem except in
the country's liberation and the departure of the British
from there. Resembling, as he did, the Anglo-Indians in his
failure to see this harsh fact, Forster's divorce from reality
was much greater than theirs. The racial situation being
as it was, he could not overcome the barriers separating
the two races. The Anglo-Indians, who spent the working
years of their lives in India, as compared to his two short
visits, actually knew India and Indians better and had to
make greater adjustments to Indian life than he could.
Moreover, his experience of India was mostly through a native
state which was less representative of the life of the sub-
continent than British India. It also differed from English
life to a greater degree than British India did. As a result,
Forster's attitude to India was more theoretical than that
of the Anglo-Indians and his feelings of alienation, there,
much stronger than theirs. His sense of bewilderment in
India is revealed in The Hill of D233 and his essays, "The
Suppliant"22 and "Advance India!"23
Forster brought with him to India Bloomsbury's ideal
of the gentleman, which comprised a perfect sensibility and

...a host of secondaries: a taste for
truth and beauty, tolerance, intellec-
tual honesty, fastidiousness, a sense
of humour, good manners curiosity, a
dislike of vulgarity, brutality, and
over-emphasis, freedom from supersti-
tion and prudery, a fearless acceptance
of the good things of life, a desire
for complete self-expression and for a
liberal education, a contempt for
utilitarianism and philistinism in
two words--sweetness and light.2

A very laudable creed, indeed, but it could flourish only
in a sheltered atmosphere like that of Bloomsbury. Nothing

22. E. M. Forster, Abinger Harvest (New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Co., 1936): pp. 315-18.

22. Ibid., pp. 208-12.

24. Clive Bell, Architectural Heresies, pp. 46-47. Quoted
in Johnstone, op. cit., p. 39.

104

could be more uncongenial to its practice than India, unless
the conditions there were changed. The change needed was
basically political in nature. And with politics Forster,
professedly, would have nothing to do, although this attitude
is itself implied a definite political stand. Confronted
with this situation, he partly declared it to be hopeless

and partly tried to find escape from reality in that other
creed of Bloomsbury according to which:

Nothing mattered except states of mind,
ou own and other people's of course,

but chiefly our own. These states of
mind were not associated with action or
achievement or with consequences. They
consisted in timeless, passionate states
of contemplation, and communion largely
unattached to before or after. 5

In the mystic trance of Hinduism, he found one such state

of mind, which resolved not only his ethical problems but
also showed a channel of relief from feelings of estrange-
ment in a foreign land. Thus, in spite of the fact that
Forster has often pointed out that A Passage to India does
not have any political import, his attitude towards politics
is vitally connected with what happens in the novel. Forster
himself felt uneasy about the publication of the novel. In

a note on the novel, he says,

The gap between India remembered and
India experienced was too wide. When

I got back to England the gap narrowed
.... But I still though the book bad,
and probably should not have completed
it witggut the encouragement of Leonard
Woolf.

Unfortunately, one is constrained to agree with Forster's
own verdict on his book about his lack of objectivity; and
to add that this weakness is directly related to his failure
to acquire a responsible interest in India.

25. Maynard Keynes, "Early Beliefs," in Two Memoirs. Quoted
in Johnstone, op. cit., p. 30.

26. The Hill of Devi, op. cit., p. 238.

105

The novel opens with a realistic description of
Chandrapore with its civil station, where the Anglo-
Indians live, standing on a rise above the main town, and
separated from it. This introduces the theme of cleavage
between the races on the level of reality. But the "fists
and fingers" of the Marabar Hills containing "the extra-
ordinary caves" already loom ominously in the horizon, and
give intimations of a malignant, supernatural power exist-
ing beyond the affairs of men and capable of affecting them.
The Marabar Hills set the mood in which the story begins.

Dr. Aziz, an assistant to the local Civil Surgeon,
Major Callendar, comes to spend an evening with his rela-
tives and friends at Hamidullah's. They are educated Mo-
hammedans. Hamidullah is a lawyer. He has studied at Cam-
bridge and had known the English as they were in England.
He and another guest, Mahmond Ali, a colleague of Hamidullah's,
are discussing the possibility of being friends with the
English in India. Both of them agree that it is impossible
buf Hamidullah knows it is possible in England. He thinks
that the Anglo-Indian society corrupts the young people who
cone from England with noble intentions. As a result,

They all become exactly the same, not
worse, not better. I give any English-
man two years, be he Turton or Burton.
It is only the difference of a letter.
And I give any Englishwoman Sig months.
All are exactly alike. (p. 4) 7

Aziz wants to forget all about the English and enjoy
the evening with his friends but his enjoyment is interrupted
by a message from the Civil Surgeon asking Aziz to come to
his bungalow at once. Reaching there, Aziz finds that Major
Callander has already gone without leaving a note. As he
stands there irritated, the Major's wife and another English—
woman appropriate the tonga hired by Aziz and leave without
even thanking him. As he walks back depressed and hurt by

27. E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (London: J. M. Deut and
Son Lt€., 1950). All quotations from the novel are taken
fron this edition.

 

106
the rudeness of his superior and his wife, he comes to a
mosque. He goes in hoping to compose his mind by being
away from the English and musing upon Islam. There he finds
Mrs. Moore, an English woman, the mother of the local City
Magistrate, Ronny Heaslop. She is visiting India with an
English girl, Adela Quested, who has come to see Ronny be-
cause they have known each other in England and are thinking
of getting married.

Aziz's meeting with Mrs. Moore is important for it
starts the main action of the story. But it is still more
important for the brief conversation that goes on in the
mosque. Forster, here, underlines the difference between
Mrs. Moore and the Anglo-Indians. At other places in the
novel, he attributes the failure of the latter to meet and
understand Indians to the "undeveloped" condition of their
heart, trying to find, thus, a solution to the racial prob-
lem in human terms. But he endows Mrs. Moore with an uncanny
power which, besides showing Forster's subjectivity in view-
ing oriental psychology, also betrays his desire to abandon
altogether the search for a solution at the level of every-
day reality. Supernatural intervention is suggested as the
only way out. Mrs. Moore's politeness, consideration, and
kindness are all closely connected with her perception that
"God is here." The same uncanny power which gives her the
intimations of God's presence also endows her with the ability
to know whether she likes or dislikes people without neces-
sarily understanding them. This, according to Aziz, is an
Oriental trait. That Forster agrees with Aziz will become
clearer later in the story. In the meantime he is completing
Mrs. Moore's communion with the universe. Aziz walks her
back to the Anglo-Indian club. When she leaves the club to
go home with Ronny and Adela, she experiences a strange
sensation of oneness with the universe:

. Mrs. Moore, whom the club had stupefied,
woke up outside. She watched the moon,
whose radiance stained with primrose the
purple of the surrounding sky. In England
the moon had seemed dead alien; here she
was caught in the shawl of night together

107

with earth and all the other stars.

A sudden sense of unity, of kinship with
the heavenly bodies passed into the old
woman and out, like water through a tank,
leaving a strange freshness behind. (p. 21)

The state of night reminds the reader that there was in the
mosque "an ablution tank of fresh clear water, which was
always in motion, being indeed part of a conduit that sup-
plied the city." By the time she reaches home and is about
to go to bed this feeling overflows her mind in the form of
a love of all creation:

Going to hang up the cloak she found

that the tip of the peg was occupied

by a small wasp. She had known this

wasp or his relatives by day: they

were not as English wasps, but had long

yellow legs which hung down behind when

they flew. Perhaps he mistook the peg

for a branch--no Indian animal has any

sense of an interior. Bat, rats, birds,

insects will as soon nest inside a house

as out; it is to them a normal growth

of the eternal jungle, which alternately

produces houses trees, houses trees.

There he clung, asleep, while jackals

in the plain bayed their desires and

mingled with the percussion of drums.
Pretty dear, said Mrs. Moore to

the wasp. He did not wake, but her

voice floated out, to swell the night's

uneasiness. (pp. 25-26)

Feelings like these are possible and highly commendable
Love combined with action makes the solution of human prob-
lems easier. But when it is offered as a substitute for
action, it is not only ineffectual'buthypocritical and dan-
erous. But such a substitution appears to be suggested as
the only way out of the predicament. The immensity of the
human problems is so great that it is beyond human beings to
tackle them. The implicit hint is that man should give up.
The Nawah Bahadur talks about the collector's invitation to
Indians to come to the "Bridge Party":

He had spoken in the little room near
the Courts where the pleaders waited

for their clients; clients, waiting for
pleaders, sat in the dust outside. They

108

had not received a card from Mr. TUrton.
And there were circles even beyond these
--people who were nothing but a loin-
cloth, people who wore not even that,
and spent their lives in knocking two
sticks together before a scarlet doll
--humanity grading and drifting beyond
the educated vision until no earthly
invitation can embrace it. (p. 28)

Lack of courage to face human problems begins to affect
the novelist's perspective in such a manner as to provide a
rationale for inactivity. Forster's satirical comments on
he missionaries betray, ironically enough, his own weakness.
The missionaries are more practical and to them man matters
more than other forms of life. Forster, by presenting their
puzzlement as to the future of all things, living or inert,
only confuses issues, implying that, since it is impossible
to take care of everything in the universe, it is not sensi-
ble to take care of anything:

All invitations must proceed from heaven
perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men

to initiate their own unity, they do

but widen the gulfs between them by the
attempt. So at all events thought old
Mr. Graysford and young Mr; Sorley, the
devoted missionaries who lived out beyond
the slaughter houses, always travelled
third on the railways, and never came up
to the club. In our Father's house

are many mansions, they taught, and there
alone will the incompatible multitudes

of mankind be welcomed and soothed. Not
one shall be turned away by the servants
on that verandah, be he black or white;
not one shall be kept standing who ap-
proaches with a loving heart. And why
should the divine hospitality cease

here? Consider, with all reverence, the
monkeys. May there not be a mansion for
the monkeys also? Old Mr. Graysford said
No, but young Mr. Sorley, who was advanced,
said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys
should not have their collateral share of
bliss, and he had sympathetic discussions
about them with his Hindu friends. And
the jackals? Jackals were indeed less

to Mr. Sorley's mind, but he admitted
that the mercy of God, being infinite,

109

may well embrace all mammals. And the
wasps? He became uneasy during the
descent to wasps, and was apt to change
the conversation. And oranges, cactuses,
crystals, and mud? And the bacteria in-
side Mr. Sorley? No, no, this is going
too far. We must exclude someone from
our gathering, or we shall be left with
nothing. (p. 28)

But the novel has not yet seriously dispensed with human
endeavour on the ordinary plane of reality as a means to
improving relations among people. On the contrary, in the
first part of the book, in spite of the subtle hints about
the ineffectuality of such endeavour, Forster's emphasis is
on recommending it, or rather on deploring the lack of it.

When Mrs. Moore happens to tell her son about certain
remarks Aziz had made against his boss, she is shocked to
find that Ronny wants to pass these on to Major Callendar.
Anglo-India has no respect for personal relations. All Anglo-
Indians are the product of Public School training. But there
being no privacy among them in India, the Public School con-
ventions have become even more forceful and have turned
Anglo-Indians into complete philistines. The finer side of
their nature is completely dried up. They can no longer
respond to other human beings as human beings. The only
way they can react emotionally is in rage or sentimentality.
Otherwise they remain quite different. Their

....ignorance of the arts was notable,
and they lost no opportunity of pro-
claiming it to one another; it was the
Public School attitude, flourishing more
vigorously than it can yet hope to do in
England. If Indians were shop, the Arts
were bad form, and Ronny had repressed
his mother when she inquired after his
viola; a viola was almost a demerit,

and certainly not the instrument one
mentioned in public. (p. 30)

What the English lack is a "developed" heart. Without
a developed heart one cannot enter into meaningful relations
with others. Its need in personal relations is so great
that even a well-meaning, honest girl like Adela is ill-

equipped for establishing real contact with Indians because

110

she resembles Anglo-Indians in this respect. She tells
Mrs. Moore, "If one isnlt absolutely honest what is the use
of existing?" But honesty is not enough. Fielding finds
something theoretical about her sympathy with India and her
criticism of the way she found the English behaving at the
"Bridge Party." '

The party has been given by the Collector, Mr. Turton,
to afford Mrs. Moore and Adela an opportunity to meet Indians
because they want to see real India. As expected, it is not
a success. Indians stay entirely on one side and only Field-
ing, the Principal of the Government College at Chanderpore,
.Adela, and Mrs. Moore approach them and try to talk. Even
'they fail to make the meeting meaningful. The only impor-
tant outcome of the party is that Fielding invites Mrs. Moore
and Adela to come to tea with him at the college. They ask
Aziz can also come to the party and Fielding invites him too.

Fielding is a "har-bitten, good-tempered, intelligent
fellow, on the verge of middle age...." He differs from the
other Anglo-Indians in his liberal attitude towards Indians.
He refuses to be a slave of Anglo-Indian conventionality be-
cause he thinks for himself: "I believe in teaching people
to be individuals and to understand individuals. It's the
only thing I believe in." He cannot be as emotionally involved
in life as Aziz can because he has a long experience behind
him. "Experience can do much, and all that he had learnt in
England was an assistance to him, and helped him toward
clarity, but clarity prevented him from experiencing some-
thing else." Still he retains a warmth of heart which gives
hin the capacity for friendship.

Up to the time of the Bridge Party a warm heartand kind-
ness are the norms sought for in the novel. It is true that
Aziz is excessively emotional at times but he is "safe really
--as safe as the shore-dweller who can only understand sta-
bility and supposes that every ship must be wrecked, and
he had sensations the shore-dweller cannot know." (p. 54)

The warmth of the heart is a quality which can be cultivated

111

by man and the creation of conditions for cultivating it is
also within man's reach. But after the Bridge Party, the
novel takes a serious turn. It begins to call for qualities
of character and mental and spiritual abilities beyond the \
reach of common man.‘ As already suggested, hints of this
demand have been dropped in Mrs. Moore's mysterious affinity
with the East.

Until the evening after the party, the occultism expressed
in.Mrs. Moore's character is still close to a normal sympathy
for mankind. The only thing she finds wanting in the Anglo-
Indians is a love for Indians. She does not doubt the sin-
cerity with which they perform their duties and makes al-
lowance for the circumstances which necessitate a certain
amount of harshness on their part. During the conversation
she has with her son that evening, she realizes the nature
of his problems:

He spoke sincerely. Every day he worked

hard in the court to decide which of

two untrue accounts was the less untrue,

trying to dispense justice fearlessly,

to protect the weak against the less

weak, the incoherent against the plausi-

ble, surrounded by lies and flattery. (p. 40)
\

Still, she wishes that he had spoken with less gusto. "How
Ronny revelled in the drawbacks of his situation!" "His
words without his voice might have impressed her..." She

felt, quite illogically, that this was
not the last word on India. One touch
of regret--not the canny substitute but
the true regret from the heart--would
have made him a different man, and the
British Empire a different institution.
(Italics mine) (p. 40)

And to Ronny's "The English are not in India to be pleasant,
but to do justice and keep the peace" she retorts with "The
English 332 out here to be pleasant.... Because India is
part of the earth. And God has put us on the earth in order
to be pleasant to each other. God...is...love."

This is not asking too much of a normal individual.
But it is important to notice that Mrs. Moore has perceived

112

the situation illogically, the regret she wantshor son to
have is of an uncanny nature, and the idea of God is brought
in to justify a love for mankind. Moreover, the Empire can
be transformed into "a different institution" by a touch of
this uncanny kind of regret. Mrs. Moore's rationale con-
tains two kinds of fallacy. Fist, that the nature cf the
British Empire is determined by personal rather than economic
factors. Secondly, not even these personal factors are
strictly within human control because of thei killogical and
uncanny nature. In other words, Forster has :egunto absolve
man of political and personal responsibility. As the story
moves, the trend in this direction becomes stronger, steadily
reducing thereby the significance of conscious human endeavour.
Mrs. Moore feels that the intervention of the supernatural

is becoming increasingly harder to escape. She

felt that she had made a mistake in
mentioning God, but she found him in-
creasingly difficult to avoid as she
grew older, and he had been constantly
in her thoughts since she entered India,
though oddly enough he satisfied her
less... Outside the arch there seemed
always an arch, beyond the remotest echo
a silence. (p. 41)

A deeper glimpse into the supernatural is provided by
a Hindu, Professor Godbole, who has also been invited to
Fielding's tea party. He has perceived God's omnipotence
and is reconciled to man's helplessness. All that man can
do is to pray to Him to come, although He never comes.
Godbole, secure in the knowledge that the best man can do
is to accept His will, is a picture of harmony. The harmony
of his inner self is beautifully reflected in his dress:

He wore a turban that looked like pale
purple macaroni, coat, waistcoat, dhoti,
socks with clocks. The clocks matched
the turban, and his whole appearance
suggested harmony--as if he had recon-
ciled the products of East and West,
mental as well as physical, and could
never be discomposed. (p. 59)

113

His song composes the situation ruffled by Ronny's inter-
ruption. By presenting this picture of composure, Forster
appears to recommend passivity. For Good and Evil are above
man. They are two aspects of the Lord. He is present in the
one and absent in the other. Yet absence does not imply
non-existence. So one is entitled to say, "come, come come,
come." Such intimations are beyond Aziz's reach: "The com-
paratively simple mind of the Mohammedan encountering Ancient
Night." But Forster makes sure to affirm, through Fielding's
thought, the presence of absolute Good and Evil. He feels
that Evil is inherent in the place itself:

Could one have been so petty on a Scotch
moor or an Italian alp?‘ Fielding won-
dered afterwards. There seemed no re-
serve of tranquility to draw upon in
India. Either none, or else tranquility
swallowed up everything, as it appeared
to do for Professor Godbole. Here was
Aziz all shoddy and odious, Mrs. Moore
and Miss Quested hotly silly, and he
himself and Heaslop both decorous on the
surface, but detestable really, and de-
testing each other. (p. 65)

But for the time being, it has been controlled by the ac-
ceptanceof Godbole's song:

Ronny's steps had died away, and there
was a moment of absolute silence. No
ripple disturbed this water, no leaf
stirred. (p. 66)

But it is only a lull before the storm. Premonitions
of impending disaster begin to be thrown in quick succession.
Men's affairs appear to be passing into the hands of a power
at once over-arching and underlying the universe. Adela
breaks her engagement with Ronny for logical reasons but
renews it impulsively. As their bodies touch each other

...one of the thrills so frequent in

the animal kingdom passed between them,

and announced that all their diffi-

culties were only a lovers' quarrel. (p. 73)

But the breach and the renewal of the engagement occur during
a car ride after Fielding's party. The cause of the accident

they meet on this ride is shrouded in mystery. Forster does

114

not merely suggest the possibility of some evil influences
being vaguely in operation. He makes their presence cer-
tain through Mrs. Moore whom he endows with visionary powers
by this time. Hearing about the accident, "Mrs. Moore shiv-
ered: A ghost! But the idea of a ghost scarcely passed her
lips. The young people did not take it up, being occupied
with their own outlooks, and deprived of support it perished,
or was reabsorbed into the part of the mind that seldom
speaks." (p. 81) This is no mere coincidence as the Nawab
Bahadur's story makes it clear:

Nine years previously, when first he
had had a car, he had driven it over

a drunken man and killed him, and the
man had been waiting for him ever since.
The Nawab Bahadur was innovent before
God and the Law, he had paid double the
compensation necessary; but it was no
use, the man continued to wait in an
unspeakable form, close to the scene of
his death. None of the English people
knew of this, nor did the chauffeur;

it was a racial secret communicable more
by blood than speech. (pp. 82-83)

Forster is obviously underlining the level at which contact
with the ultimate Reality is possible. And the inference,
which will become clearer as the action progresses, is that
only those who make this contact can become the agents of
good influence in human affairs.

That there is such a thing as ultimate Reality with
its aspects of Good and Evil is made quite explicit in the
second section, "Caves." The caves to which Aziz invites
Mrs. Moore and Adela symbolize absolute Evil. Forster's
description of the caves is superb in his use of vivid re-
alistic detail to convey the mysterious and the sinister.
It deserves to be reproduced in detail. First he emphasizes
the ancient nature of the hills in which these caves are
located:

(The) high places of Dravidia have been
land since land began... They are older
than anything in the world. No water
has ever covered them. If flesh of the

115

sun's flesh is to be touched anywhere,
it is here, among the incredible antiq-
uity of these hills. (p. 105)

Then their sinister aspect is described:

There is something unspeakable in these
outposts. They are like nothing else

in the world, and a glimpse of them

makes the breath catch. They rise abrupt-
ly, insanely, without the proportion

that is kept by the wildest hills else-
where, they bear no relation to anything
dreamt or seen. To call them "uncanny"
suggests ghosts, and they are older than
all spirits. Hinduism has scratched and
plastered a few rocks, but the shrines

are unfrequented, as if pilgrims, who
generally seek the extraordinary, had

here found too much of it. Some saddhus
did once settle in a cave, but they were
smoked out, and even Buddha, who must

have passed this way down to the Bo Tree
of Gya, shunned a renunciation more com-
plete than his own, and has left no legend
of struggle or victory in the Marabar. (p. 105-06)

The description of the caves themselves is ironically
simple. The "are readily described" physically. But one's
experience of them is impossible to relate.

Nothing, nothing attaches to them, and
their reputation--for they have one--
does not depend upon human speech. It
is as if the surrounding plain or the
passing birds have taken upon themselves
to exclaim extraordinary and the word
has taken root in the air, and been
inhaled by mankind. (p. 106)

Seen from the inside a Marabar cave is an epitome of
the universe. The symbolism of the following is obvious:

They are dark caves. Even when they

open towards the sun, very little light
penetrates down the entrance tunnel into
the circular chamber. There is little

to see, and no eye to see it, until the
visitor arrives for his five minutes,

and strikes a match. Immediately another
flame rises in the depths of the rock and
moves towards the surface like an im-
prisoned spirit: the walls of the circu-
lar chamber have been most marvellously
polished. The two flames approach and

116

strive to unite, but cannot, because one
of them breathes air, the other stone.

A mirror inlaid with lovely colours di-
vides the lovers, delicate stars of pink
and gray interpose, exquisite nebulae,
shadings fainter than the tail of a comet
or the midday moon, all the evanescent
life of the granite, only here visible.
Fists and fingers thrust above the ad-
vancing soil--here at last in their skin,
finer than any covering acquired by the
animals, smoother than windless water,
more voluptuous than love. The radiance
increased, the flames touch one another,
kiss, expire. The cave is dark again,
like all the caves. (p. 106-07)

Forster expends every possible detail of description
to associate the caves with the idea of non-existence and
death, the idea of God's absence in Godbole's terms. The
unsealed caves exceed in number those with entrances as the
dead exceed the living. "Nothing is inside them" and

if mankind grew curious and excavated,
nothing, nothing would be added to the

sum of good or evil. One of them is
rumoured within the boulder that swings
on the summit of the highest of the hills;
a bubble-shaped cave that has neigher
ceiling nor floor, and mirrors its own
darkness in every direction infinitely.

If the boulder falls and smashes, the
cave will smash too--empty as an Easter

egg. (p. 107)

The influence of evil which will reach its acme through
the main characters' contact with the Marabar caves is al-
ready gathering force. Both the ladies visiting India feel
its pressure as they journey towards the caves. The main
effect of Evil in the novel is on relations between people.
It alienates people from one another in many ways. Its
influence is manifested most definitely in.Mrs. Moore's
feelings. Of late she has

felt increasingly (vision or nightmare?)
that, though people are important, the
relations between them are not, and that
in particular too much fuss has been made
over marriage; centuries of carnal em-
bracement, yet man is no nearer to under-
standing man. (pp. 115-16)

117

On her way to the caves she feels, "this with such force
that it seemed itself a relationship, itself a person who
was trying to take hold of her hand." Adela also feels the
dullness of life gradually creeping over her, but, unlike
Mrs. Moore who succumbs to the overwhelming listlessness
passively, she resists it and feels restless. Boredom is
getting on her nerves. The monotonous and panicky "pomper,
pauper, pomper" of the wheels as the train crosses small
bridges over the winding, dry nullah, originating in the
Marabar Hills, sets the mood of the morning. The mood in-
tensifies as they approach the hills and the day advances.
As they leave the train, a mysterious kind of un-
reality descends on the scene. They become aware of

...a new quality..., a spiritual silence
which invaded more senses than the ear.
Life went on as usual, but had no conse-
quences, that is to say, sounds did not
echo or thoughts develop. Everything
seemed cut off at its root. (p. 120)

Even Aziz is out of his depth. Forster is introducing into
his world forces which can be perceived only through a mystic
experience. So Aziz's...

ignorance became evident, and was really
rather a drawback. In spite of his gay,
confident talk, he had no notion how to
treat this particular aspect of India;
he was lost in it without Professor
Godbole, like themselves. (p. 121)

The opposition between the influence of the Marabar and
mutual affection among human beings is underlined when Aziz
asks Mrs. Moore if she remembers their meeting in the mosque.
"'I do. I do,‘ she said, suddenly vital and young." But the
Marabar influence is on the ascendant. It subdues Mrs. Moore
physically as they enter a cave for the first time:

A Marabar cave had been horrid as far as
Mrs. Moore was concerned, for she had
nearly fainted in it, and had some diffi-
culty in preventing herself from saying
so as soon as she got into the air again.
It was natural enough; she had always
suffered from faintness, and the cave

had become too full, because all their

118

retinue followed them. Crammed with
villagers and servants, the circular
chamber began to smell. She lost Aziz
and Adela in the dark, didn't know who
touched her, couldn't breathe, and some
vile naked thing struck her face and
settled on her mouth like a pad. She
tried to regain the entrance tunnel,

but an influx of villagers swept her
back. She hit her head. For an instant
she went mad, hitting and gasping like a
fanatic. For not only did the crush and
stench alarm her; there was also a ter-
rifying echo. (p. 126)

The "echo" is the worst part of her experience in the
cave. It symbolizes the meaninglessness of everything from
the standpoint of the Absolute:

Whatever is said, the same monotonous
noise replies, and quivers up and down
the walls until it is absorbed in the
roof. 'Boum' is the sound as far as the
human alphabet can express it, or 'bo-um,'
or 'ou-boum' utterly dull. Hope, polite-
ness, the blowing of a nose, the squeal
of a boot, all produce 'boum.‘ Even the
striking of a match starts a little worm
coiling, which is too small to complete

a circle, but is eternally watchful.

No human being is responsible for the EVil which hits
iirs. Moore in the cave. She stands outside the cave watch-
ing for the possible villain. But she finds herself among
the mildest individuals, all of the very deferential to her.
idnat had felt like a naked pad on her mouth was "a poor little
txaby astride its mother's hips." Evil is, thus, shown to
lmave an independent existence of its own.

It has been pursuing her at a distance for some time
imit now it grabs her tightly and begins to crush one side
(of her character, the side which is connected by bonds of
lxyve with others at the ordinary human level. She declines
tun accompany Adela and Aziz to the other caves. Sitting
galormg the more she thinks of her experience in the cave,
time more unpleasant and frightening it becomes. She minds
iizznuch more now than she did at the time. She can forget

119

the crush and smells but is obsessed by the echo, which in
a mysterious way begins to "undermine her hold on life."
It comes at a time when she is tired and manages to murmer,

'Pathos, piety, courage - they exist,
but are identical, and so is filth,
Everything exists, nothing has value.‘
If one had spoken vileness in that
place, or quoted lofty poetry, the
comment would have been the same -

'ou - boum.‘ (p. 128)

She felt that however sincerely one might fightagainst un-
happiness and misunderstanding in the world, whatever sacri-
fice man might make for the sake of others, these would be
reduced to the same nothingness as the vilest of human actions.
Infinity and eternity terrify her because she sees them
through the Marabar:

Devils are of the North, and poems can

be written about them, but no one could
romanicize the Marabar, because it robbed
infinity and eternity of their vastness,
the only quality that accommodates than
to mankind. (p. 129)

Christianity as a religion is mere gibberish before this
nihilistic vision. All its words from "Let there be light"
to "It is finished" dissolved in a "boum."

The mood that has been developing for two months takes
definite shape. Nothing seems to give repose to her soul.
She does not want to write even to her children, does not
want to communicate with anybody, not even with God. For a
moment she thinks that she is going to be ill but then she
abandons herself to the vision. "She loses all interest,
even in Aziz, and the affectionate words that she had spoken
to him seemed no longer hers but the air's."

Adela also has a traumatic experience at Marabar. She
thinks somebody has assaulted her in a cave. It remains
unknown who the culprit is or whether there is any culprit.
Forster deliberately creates a mystery about the crime to
keep the source of Evil intangible. But, in the meantime,
Adela lays the allegation against Aziz, who is arrested as
soon as he gets back to Chandrapore.

120

Fielding believes that Aziz is innocent. He expresses
his opinion before the Collector and suggests that the accu-
sation rests upon a mistake. The Collector is very bitter
about Fielding's and other white people's mixing with Indians.
He points out to the Principal that the mistake lies not
in the allegation but in the attempt to be intimate with
Indians. In the Collector's sermon in support of maintain-
ing a separation between the races, Forster again tries to
show the insensitivity of the Anglo-Indians. The "twenty-
five years" for which the Collector has been in India "seemed
to fill the waiting-room with their staleness and ungener-
osity." His enunciation of the Anglo-Indian credd about the
inter-racial behaviour in the Collector's words is intended
to be criticism of their values:

Intercourse, yes. Courtesy, by
all means. Intimacy never, never.
The whole weight of my authority is
against it. I have been in charge at
Chandrapore for six years, and if
everything has gone smoothly, if there
has been mutual respect and esteem, it
is because both peoples kept to this
simple rule. (p. 141-42)

he manner in which Turton breaks down is also typical of
the Anglo-Indian sentimentality:

...I wish I had never lived to see its
(that day's) beginning, I know that.

It is the end of me. That a lady, that
a young lady engaged to my most valued
subordinate - that she - an English
girl fresh from England - that I should
have lived - . (p. 142)

But Forster leaves the reader in no doubt that the
rage and madness which sway the English, or the Indians, at
Chandrapore, are not of human origin. Fielding is confused
as to the source of it. He only knows that Evil is abroad
trying to overwhelm them all. It "had to be shoved back
into its pit somehow...." But he does not understand it and,
therefore, does not know how to control it. He "had always
gone about sensibly and quietly until a difficulty came right."
But this madness could not be handled in this manner. His

121

puzzlement at Adela's charge against Aziz also confirms the
supernatural character of Evil although Fielding himself
does not realize it. Otherwise why "such a dry, sensible
girl, and quite without malice," the last person to accuse
an Indian wrongfully, would accuse a honest man like Aziz?

The Evil has flowed into Chandrapore from the Marabar
caves is suggested over and over again in different ways.
One significant touch is in Fielding's noting that the
gully that begins at the mouth of the caves that Aziz vis-
ited with Adela "continues as a nullah across the plain the
water draining off this way towards the Ganges."

The existence of absolute Good and Evil, without being
attributed to any single human being, is confirmed by
Godbole when Fielding seeks his help in unraveling the mys-
tery. He believes that "All perform a good action, when
one is performed, and when an evil action is performed, all
perform it." Taking a concrete example, he explains that
if an evil act has been performed in a cave in the Marabar
Hills, Aziz, Fielding, Godbole himself, the guide, Godbole's
students, and Adela are all responsible for it. For when
"evil occurs, it expresses the whole of the universe. Simi-
larly when good occurs." "He distinguishes Good and Evil
from suffering. Suffering is what we think it to be, Good
and Evil are what they are."

That Forster agrees with Godbole is shown in the action
of the novel. The only means of surmounting Evil is to know
it and to invoke Good. Invocation of Good involves abandon-

ment of one's will to the Will of God whose

presence, in

Godbole's philosophy, is synonymous with Good. A person who
attains contact with Good in this manner becomes an agent

of good in men's daily affairs because his goodness is not
separate from theirs. This is why Mrs. Moore and Godbole
are such agents. Mrs. Moore is never as clear about her
perceptions as Godbole but Forster endows her with an in-
tuition which never goes wrong. Although the Marabar echo
has destroyed her interest in human affairs, yet she knows

122

that the echo and its influence are evil. This knowledge

is at once the cause and result of her goodness, which, with-
out any conscious effort on her part, influences other human
beings for the better.

Evil, which propagates itself in every direction and
seems to have an existence of its own, apart from anything
done or said by individuals, subsides wherever Mrs. Moore's
influence touches it. Adela tries again and again to think
logically but the echo, which haunts, destroys her logic.

It flourishes

raging up and down like a nerve in the
faculty of her hearing, and the noise
in the cave, so unimportant intellec-
tually, was prolonged over the surface
of her life. She had struck the polished
wall - for no reason.... The sound had
spouted after her when she escaped, and
was going on still like a river that
gradually floods the plain. Only Mrs.
Moore could drive it back to its source
and seal the broken reservoir. (p. 168)

Meanwhile evil is loose and she can even hear it entering
the lives of others.

Under the influence of the echo, Adela wants to stay
by herself. Personal relations seem useless to her. She
feels sorry that she cannot return Ronny's affection. She
has nothing to give. She tells Ronny: "What is the use of
personal relationships when everyone brings less and less
to them? I feel we ought all to go back into the desert
for centuries and try and get good." (p. 170)

Mrs. Moore has been similarly affected. Her tenderness
has vanished or "developed into a hardness, a just irrita-
tion against the human race." Still her presence is soothing
to Adela. As soon as she is permitted to leave her bed she
goes with Ronny to see Mrs. Moore. But she finds that just
as other people repel her, she repels Mrs. Moore who with-
draws her hand twice as Adela puts hers forward. She also
refuses to enlighten Adela as to the significance of the
(echo, saying, "If you don't know, you don't know, I can't

123

tell you." The secret can be known only by complete aban-

donment to the absolute moral order. If one fights against

it by sticking to one's own narrow laws and values, one will

remain in ignorance. It is because she stands by her faith

in the universal moral order that she thinks so poorly of

man-made laws. She refuses to stay in India and give evidence

in Aziz's case, telling Ronny, "I have nothing to do with

your ludicrous law courts, ...I will not be draggedixnat all."
Mrs. Moore is entering senility and becoming cynical.

She is very easily irritated.

Why has anything to be done, I cannot
see, Why all this marriage, marriage?
... The human race would have become

a single person centuries ago if mar-
riage was any use. And all this rub-
bish about love, love in a Church, love
in a cave, as if there is the least
difference, and I held up from my busi-
ness over such trifles! (p. 174-75)

Still she is a powerful embodiment of Good. Her goodness
is given her for her abandonment of resistance of powers
that run the universe. She is gradually merging with these
powers. That is why she knows that Aziz is innocent and
can convey it to Adela by a kind of telepathy.- Adela thinks
that Mrs. Moore has told her that Aziz is innocent and wants
to confirm it. Mrs. Moore replies: "'I never said his name,‘
and began to play patience... 'Of course he is innocent.'"
Everyday affairs of men have begun to irk Mrs. Moore.
She finds them awfully tedious and trivial. When, in her
conversation with Ronny and Adela, she scoffs at them "her
mind seemed to move towards them from a great distance and
out of darkness." Because of her basic goodness she knows
that her increasing indifference towards people and their
activities is to be condemned. To Adela telling her that
she is good, she retorts in irritation:

I am not good, no bad. A bad old woman,
bad, bad, destestable. I used to be good
with the children growing up, also I meet
this young man in his mosque, I wanted

him to be happy. Good, happy, small people.
They do not exist, they were a dream....

But I will not help you torture him for
what he never did. There are different

124

ways of evil and I prefer mine to
yours. (p. 178)

The less human Mrs. Moore is the more powerful and
extensive her influence becomes. As a human being, she in-
sists on getting out of India and sails for England. But
she stays there as a supernatural force. When she dies
onboard, and her body is "lowered into yet another India
- the Indian Ocean," the news of her death, reaching India,
transforms her into a goddess, "Esmiss Esmoor." There is
a definite suggestion at the trial scene that it is Mrs.
Moore's transcendental contact with Adela that drives the
echo away and she can see things clearly. Her conscious
effort to remember is suspended and she re-experiences her
visit to the caves and speaks of it "across a sort of dark-
ness." Finding herself mistaken in her allegation against
Aziz, she withdraws it.

The force of evil subsides. But it is not completely
suppressed. The Anglo-Indians feel humiliated and angry;
the Indians, excited by their victory, are beginning to en-
joy the warfare and want to perpetuate it. Only Fielding
and Adela stick to reason as a guide to action. But they
both feel it is inadequate to meet the reality that is India.
Fielding and Adela (the latter has moved to the College
since her recanting at the trial) discuss their common pre-
dicament. That their reason is powerless before the onslaught
of the supernatural is made plain when Adela tries to trace
back her trouble. It seems to have started at Fielding's
tea party when Godhole sang:

I enjoyed the singing...but just about
then a sort of sadness began that I
couldn't detect at the time...no, nothing
as solid as sadness: living at half pres-
surenexperesses it best. Half pressure.
(p. 208)

She tells Fielding: "I am up against something, and so are
you. Mrs. Moore - she did know ." Fielding, trying to find
an explanation for his feeling that reason is not enough,
attributes it to the approach of old age. He tells Adela

125

he has "felt it (supernaturalism) coming on me myself. I
still jog on without it, but what a temptation, at forty-
five, to pretend that the dead live again; one's own dead;
no one else's matter." (p. 209) Whatever the reasons,
Fielding and Adela are both

at the end of their spiritual tether;
Were there worlds beyond which they
could never touch, or did all that is
possible enter their consciousness?

They could not tell.... Perhaps life

is a mystery, not a muddle, they could
not tell. Perhaps the hundred Indias
which fuss and squabble so tiresomely are
one, and the universe they mirror is one.
They had not the apparatus for judging.
(p. 229)

Unlike Mrs. Moore, their place is in the Western world.

The difference between the spirit of the East and West, intro-
duced in the beginning of the novel by juxtaposing Mrs. Moore
with the rest of the English, becomes the novelist's chief
concern towards the end of the second section. The gist of
Forster's message is that the West is the area of reason

and the East that of mystery or muddle. The mystery or
muddle is created by the operation of the supernatural and

its resolution can be achieved only by a direct contact with
the supernatural itself. India is Mrs. Moore's element:

A ghost followed the ship up the Red
Sea, but failed to enter the Mediter-
ranean. Somewhere about Suez there is
always a social change...and during the

transition Mrs. Moore was shaken off.
(p. 222)

It is this difference between the East and West which,
according to Forster, creates misunderstanding between the
English and Indians even when the English make a sincere
attempt to do the right thing. India demands a complete
abandonment of self. Adela's "sacrifice - so creditable
according to Western notions - was rightly rejected, be-
cause, though it came from her heart, it did not include
her heart." Fielding's remark that "Indians know whether
they are liked or not - they cannot be fooled here.

126

Justice never satisfies them, and that is why the British
Empire rests on sand." reminds one of Mrs. Moore's ability
to tell whether she likes or dislikes people.

he obvious implication is that in India, harmony in
life can be achieved only through the development of a
superhuman faculty what enables people to perceive tran-
scendental reality. As even the most well-meaning Westerners
lack this faculty, their attempt to establish this harmony
remain puny. Individuals who cannot transcend their human
selves are insignificant aliens in this world. Whereas Mrs.
Moore's being expands to embrace the whole of their world
in all its vastness, Adela and Fielding, remaining on the
human level, can only achieve "a friendliness as of dwarfs
shaking hands." They "are at the height of their powers -
sensible, honest, even subtle." But these powers are not
enough. Naturally they are dissatisfied. When they try to
reassure each other, their words are "followed by a curious
backwash as though the universe had displaced itself to fill
up a tiny void, or as though they had seen their own ges-
tures from an immenue height...." In spite of their desire
to stay on the firm ground of reality, they cannot remain
immune to transcendental influences:

Not for them was an infinite goal behind
the stars, and they never sought it.

But wistfulness descended on them now,
as on other occasions; the shadow of

the shadow of a dream fell over their
clear-cut interest, and objects never
seen again seemed messages from another
world. (p. 230)

In a conversation with Aziz, Fielding tries to tell
Aziz that Mrs. Moore could not have been of much help at
the trial. He also thinksthat Mrs. Moore's tombs would
also be soon forgotten. These are symptoms of his failure
to understand the supernatural and his mistrust of it.
But to prove his point, Forster repeatedly forces it on his
attention. Fielding is also aware of the echo, though not
to the same degree as Adela or Mrs. Moore. He is conscious

127

of its essentially evil nature when he reflects on the con-
ditions of his own time as compared to those of the past:

In the old eighteenth century when
cruelty and injustice raged, an invisi-
ble power repaired their ravages. Every-
thing echoes now; there's no stopping
the echo. The original sound may be
harmless, but the echo is always evil.
(p. 240)

The echo is beyond his comprehension. Islam and Christiani-
ty also fail to account for it. "There is no God but God'
doesn't carry us far through the complexities of matter

and spirit." When he tells Aziz that "something that Hindus
have perhaps found" is worth treating in poetry he vaguely
feels that Hinduism alone has tried to explain the problen
of absolute Evil.

As the second part of the novel approaches its close,
all the major characters are scattered. Aziz decides to go
to a native state. Godbole has already gone to one.
Fielding and Adela leave for England. Before they leave
there has develOped a coldness between Aziz and Fielding.
Though tangible reasons are enumerated, Forster wants to
leave the impression that India is basically a land of
muddle. In the description of Fielding's feelings as he
enters Europe, this impression changes into a verdict:

As he landed on the piazzetta a cup

of beauty was lifted to his lips, and
he drank with a sense of disloyalty.

The buildings of Venice, like the
mountains of Crete and the fields of
Egypt, stood in the right place, whereas
in poor India everything was placed
wrong. He had forgotten the beauty of
form among idol temples and lumpy hills;
indeed, without form, how can there be
beauty? Form stammered here and there
in a mosque, became rigid through
nervousness even, but Oh these Italian
Churches. (p. 245)

But Fielding forgets that the cause of discord between
the works of man and earth, and the muddle which he sees
in India, do not lie in the nature of things, as he eems
to believe, but have their bases in the political and

1 28:?

economic conditions prevailing there. Still, Forster en-
dorses Fielding's views as they are:

The Mediterranean is the human norm.

When men leave the exquisite lake, whether
through the Bosphorus or the Pillars of
Hercules, they approach the monstrous and
extraordinary; and the southern exit leads
to the strangest experience of all. (p. 246)

The essential message of A Passage to India is almost
completely conveyed in the first two parts. The Third part,
"Temple," is intended to reinforce the vision created in the
first two parts and to make it more explicit. The scene
shifts to Mau, the Capital of a Hindu state. The time is the
greatest Hindu festival of the year, the Krishna Festival,
which celebrates the Lord's birth. As the second part was
dominated by Evil, emanating from God's absence, the third
is filled with Good because of His presence. Under the
wholesome influence of His presence, all muddle is resolved.
The oft-quoted description of the harmonious state of mind
reached by Godbole needs to be quoted at length to Show the
act of self-abandonment which underlies his mystic experience:

Godbole consulted the music-book, said

a word to the drummer, who broke rhythm,
made a thick little blur of sound, and
produced a new rhythm. This was more
exciting, the inner images it evoked more
definite, and the singer's expressions
became fatuous and languid. They loved
all men, the whole universe, and scraps

of their past, tiny splinters of detail,
emerged for a moment to melt into the
universal warmth. Thus Godbole, though
she was not important to him, remembered
an old woman he had met in Chandrapore
days. Chance brought her into his mind
While it was in this heated state, he

did not select her, she happened to

occur among the throngs of soliciting
images, a tiny splinter, and he impelled
her by his spiritual force to that place
where completeness can be found. Complete-
ness, not reconstruction. His senses grew
thinner, he remembered a wasp seen he for-
got where, perhaps on a stone. He loved
the wasp equally, he impelled it likewise,
he was imitating God. And the stone, where

129

the wasp clung - could he...no, he could
not, he had been wrong to attempt the
stone, logic and conscious effort had
seduced, he came back to the strip of
red carpet and discovered that he was
dancing upon it. (p. 249-50)

Happiness has come to man. He has not created it, for
it is beyond him to do so. He does well if he knows how to
receive it. At midnight the Lord is born.

Infinite love took upon itself the form

of SHRI KRISHNA and saved the world. All
sorrow was annihilated not only for Indians,
but for foreigners, birds, caves, railways,
and the stars; all became joy, all laughter;
there had never been disease nor doubt, mis-
understanding, cruelty, fear. (p. 251)

Reflecting upon his religious experience next morning,
Godbole remembers how he had tried "to place himself in the
position of the God and to love her (Mrs. Moore), and to
place himself in her position and to say to the God: "Come,
come, come, come." He knows that this is inadequate but this
is the best he can do. "It does not seem much, still it is
more than I am myself."

The 'Caves' had dispersed the major characters in the
novel. 'Temple' brings Godbole, Aziz, and Fielding together,
if only temporarily. Godbole is the Education minister of
the state, Aziz is the King's doctor, and Fielding is visit-
ing as an Education officer. But the overwhelming impres-
sion is that their meeting is possible only at the spiritual
level examplified in Godbole's trance. Aziz's idea of the
British and Indians becoming friends after India is liberated
is ridiculed by Fielding: "India a nation! What an apotheo~
sis! Last comer to the drab nineteenth-century sisterhood!
Waddling in at this hour to take her seat!" (p. 281) Fielding's
internationalism is part of Godbole's monism which Forster
vaguely recommends as the final solutionfof human ills.

As the novel closes one is left with the impression
that the amity or hostility between Indians and the British
is determined not by human endeavor but by some supernatural
forces symbolized by the material objects which make the
riders' horses swerve apart:

130

"Why can't we be friends now?" said
the other, holding him affectionately.
"It's what I want. It's what you want."

"But the horses didn't want it -
they swerved apart; the earth didn't want
it, sending up rock through which riders
must pass single file; the temples, the
tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the
carrion, the Guest House, that came into
view as they issued from the gap and saw
Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they
said in their hundred voices, 'No, not
yet,‘ and the sky said, 'No, not there.'"
(p. 282)

Pointing out the dangers of seeking the truth about
India through the study of the mystic tradition associated
with it, Louis Renou says in his Indian Literaturg, "What
people seek from India is, at bottom, what the possess in
themselves....India is an alibi, the mythical setting in
which a certain literary esotericism achieves its fulfil-
28 They "seek to muse about cosmogonies and myths;
to imagine a universe explicable on monistic and pantheistic
lines...."29 Forster does not go quite as far as that. But
he comes close to doing so. In A Passage to India he hardly
touches the reality of India which makes his view of India,
hence of life, unauthentic and misleading. Criticizing the

Western attempts to understand India through its mysticism,

ment."

Renou says,

What would have been desirable, on a
more real, positive plane, is that India
should have been fully integrated into
the wider humanism that we can see being
worked out before us today.30

‘One feels the same way about A Passage to India.

28. Louis Renou, Indian Literature (New York: Walker and Co.,
1964), p. 136.

29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.

Chapter V
Edward John Thompson

A British historian, Michael Edwardes, describing the
predicament of the Anglo-Indian officers during the twenties
of this century, in his The Last Years ofBritish India,
praises Edward Thompson for having faithfully captured
this predicament in his novels about India and regrets
that these novels have been “unjustly neglected.”1 Thompson's
novels about India are the outcome of his life-long mission
to foster good will between the English and Indians. In his
poetry, for he's also a notable poet who writes in English
about the scenery of India, he emphasizes the importance
of vision, but his novels, though not entirely lacking in
vision, are written primarily with a view to assessing the
Indian situation sympathetically but fairly and to suggest
a solution for the problems presented by it. Such seriousness
of purpose gives his novels an important place in the study
of Anglo-Indian fiction and Britishplndian relations. But
there is another reason why his novels deserve to be studied.
It lies in the importance he attached to the study of liter-
ature in cross-cultural understanding. In the preface to
his study of the Indian poet, Rabindra Nath Tagore, he says,

I wish to serve more than his fame; for, while
it may not greatly matter whether the English-
speaking world cares for Tagore, or India for
Wordsworth or Emerson, it does matter whether

East and West care for each other. I believe
that no other nation would have served India

 

‘1. .Michael Edwards, The Last Years of British India,
on on,. , p. 1

‘31

132

better than my own has done; but, on the whole,
they have shown themselves very incurious as to
its thought and literature. Resentment of this
neglect has estranged educated Indians, and is

a factor of first-rate importance in the present
strained situation.

I undertook the appalling task of reading,
through this bulky literature, because I wished
to understand the people among whom I was living;
I wrote this book in the hape of serving two races.3

In the light of these views, Thompson's novels need to be
studied both as attempts to enhance cross-cultural under-
standing and as literature.

Edward John Thompson was born at Hazel Grove, Stockport,
in England in.1886 but his earliest memories were those of
South India where both his parents were Wesleyan missionaries.
He was sent back for education to England where he also
worked for some time. In 1910 he took orders and returned
to India to teach English literature at Wesleyan College
at Bankura, Bengal. He became interest in Bengali literature
and made it his special concern to study it. The changes
that occurred in the Indian scene after the First World War
led him to take interest in the country's political issues too.
He

“apposed the widespread approval of the action of

General B. E. H. Dyer at Amritsar in 1919. Thompson

now became convinced that Indians and British would

be fundamenXally irreconcilabile until India had self-
government.

Edward Thon son, Rabindranath Tagore, Poet and Dramatist
London, 192 , p. -v i.
4 H. H. Margolionth, ”Edward Thompson“, in Dictionary of

National Biography, 1941-1950, London 1959, p. 879.

133

He left India in 1923 to take up a lectureship in
Bengali at Oxford University, but retained his connection
with India and

worked hard by public and private writing and speaking

for Indian self-determination and for the changed

outlook in England which made possible the hand over

of power in 1947.

At the same he did all he could to strengthen the 'the
ties of spirit" which he heped would always unite the two
countries. Thompson had many Indian friends. The most
eminent among them were the Poet Laureate Rabindra Nath
Tagore, M. K. Gandhi, and Jawahar Lal Nehru.

The period of Thompson's stay in India was a crucial
period in the history of BritishpIndian relations. The
Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 had, as a message from the
King-Emperor addressed to the princes and people of India
put it, brought them "a greater share in legislation and
government."6 The reforms had come as a result of an immense
upsurge of nationalism during the early years of this centnny.
The wave of enthusiasm engendered by it had split the Indian
National Congress into two sections--the moderates and ex-
tremists. The extremists, led by Bal Gangs-Dhar Tilak,
strongly demanded non-cOOperation with the British and the
use of violence as means to attain independence. This ushered

in an era of terrorism all over the country.' The moderates

5 Ibid
6' °
. R. P. Masnig; Britain in India London, 1960, p. 86

134
knew that terrorism would only lead to repression by the
government and still further acts of violence. They
"stressed the urgent need of conciliatory measures to quicken
the pace of constitutional advance."7 The British Parliament
of the day, with a big Liberal majority, also appreciated
the need for conciliation. Fortunately there was a happy
combination of two sagacious statesmen at the helm of affairs,
John Morley at Whitehall as Secretary of State for India, and
Lord Minto as Viceroy in India. Both of then.believed that
"while anarchism must be firmly checked, earnest efforts
should be simultaneously made to satisfy the demand for further
installments of reform."8 The moderates accepted the Morley-
Hinto Reforms and co-operated with the British administration
in creating a peaceful atmosphere, though still campaigning
for further reform. Terrorism did not come to a complete
stop but its rigour was reduced to near insignificance.
The outbreak of the First World War brought the moderates

and the British still closer. They thought that the cause
of the allies was also India's cause.

Fur. Gandhi offered himself for active service,

and declared that Indians in the U.K. 'should

place themselves unconditionally at the disposal

of the authorities,‘ while at the 1914 session

of Congress the President spoke of British and

Indians mingling their blood in the cause of 'honour,

liberty and justiceé' ...As the months passed

the feeling grew that India's great contribution

to the war effort more than.ever entitled her to
a liberal measure of self-government. Throughout

. Ibid.
Ibid.

(ID-NI

e O

135
1915 the moderates continued to predominatege

and in spite of their dislike of the Defence let--
necessitated by the continuance of revolutionary
activities-~they took pride in India's past in the
war, :gd were resolved not to embarrass the govern-
ment.
The reasons underlying this accord were basically
economic. The government found it expedient “to buy up the
wealthier section of the Indian bourgeoisie. This was done by
promising to give India self—government, provided she would
help in the prosecution of the War, and by granting in 1916
a 3% per cent import duty on cotton.” 10 The over-whelming
competition of Imperial capital being suddenly removed,
“Indian capital was presented with a free field for development.
...The wealthy bourgeousie suspended the political struggle and
helped the British Government in war recruitment and in re-
straining the less moderate elements in the nationalist
movement, the petty bourgeois 'extremists.“ 1‘
But the government was unable to make use of its pepularity.
Intent “only upon governing whether Indians liked it or not,
it was unable to channel enthusiasm into productive endeavour."12
Being composed mainly of men with little experience of the
mechanics of modern government, it had never been particulary
efficient. The war intensified its “inefficiency, and soon the
Indian army in Mesopotamia found its supply lines from India
in hopeless chaos.“3 In order to set matters right, the
government imposed “restrictions and pressures upon Indian
businessmen which soon convinced them that they should--in the
10. Joan Beauchamp, British Im erialism in India, London

‘2. Ibid., pt 57
,3. Edwardes, cp. cit., p. 37
. Ibid.

136

interests of their own business-support the nationalist
movement."14 Other factors emerged and contributed to the
deterioration of the atmosphere. The Huslims in India were
disturbed by the war against Turkey whose ruler was the
Caliph of Islam. Tilak succeeded in eliminating the influence
of the moderates in the nationalist movement. He also succeed-
ed in persuading the Muslim League to join Congress in the
“Lucknow Pact." '5
Perturbed by the nationalist activity that followed this
entente between the two great political parties of India, the
government in London sent E. S. Mbntagu, the Secretary of
State for India, to see the situation for himself and to
personally find the Opinions of the Indian leaders themselVes.
Before leaving for India he had
. 'declared that the policy of His Majesty's‘
government...is that of increasing the association
of.Indians in every branch of the administration
and the gradual development of self governing
institutions with a view to the progressive
realization of responsible government in Iadéa
as an integral part of the British Empire.
But in the Mbntagu-Chelmsford Report published in 1918 the
promise of his initial pronouncement was considerably
whittled down because of pressure from conservative quarters.
Still some moderates like Gandhi urged that any hasty rejection
of the suggestions made in the Report would be a misfortune

for the country.17 But events occurring between Montagu's

visit and the passing of the Act on the basis of his findings

14. Ibid.
15. Griffiths, 0p, cit., p. 299
16. Ibid.

170 Hagani, Op. Cit. p. 114‘15

137
destroyed the Indian people's faith in the sincerity of the
British promises.

The "announcement of the scheme of reforms almost
coincided with the report of the Rowlett Committee. Revolu-
tionary crime had for long been rife in Bengal and there and
elsewhere in India had been a source of constant anxiety
during the war."18 The committee had therefore, been
appointed to investigate the extent of revolutionary con-
spiracies and to recommend legislation to deal with the.
Indians iterpreted this as "giving with one hand and slapping
down with the other.'19 Gandhi, as the leader of Congress,
began a campaign against the 'Rowlett Acts.” Gandhi had
intended his movement to be one of peaceful resistance, but
other factors, such as the pressures of unemployment and high
prices, demobilization after the War, the renewed arrogance
of the Anglo-Indians returning to their Jobs in India, etc.,
precipitated the outbursts of public indignation. There were
riots in Western India and scattered, unorganized attacks on
isolated Europeans and government buildings throughout the
country.

The Anglo—Indians could not understand the change that
the war had brought in the Indian scene and generally refused
to accept it. They were not accustomed to seeing their au-
thority challenged and wanted to suppress the agitation
ruthlessly. General Dyer, who ordered firing without warning

18. Griffiths, 0p. cit. p. 300
19. Edwardes, op, cit. p. 41

138

on a densely packed crowd in a closed area, called Jallian-
walla, at Amritsar, expressed in his evidence before the
commission inquiring into the incidents the general Opinion
of most of the civil and military in India.20 He stated
frankly:

I fired and continued to fire until the crowd
dispersed, and I consider this is the least amount
of firing which would produce the necessary moral
and widespread effect it was my duty to produce if I
was to Justify my activities. ...It was no longer a
question of merely disprersing the crowd, but one of
producing a sufficient moral effect from a military
point of view not only on those who werg present, but
more especially throughout the Punjab."-1

Jallianwalla became one of the great rallying calls of
Indian nationalism. It was the most decisive turning point
in British-Indian relations. The two races which had been
so ar more or less Joined by a ruler-subject relationship
became sharply divided into hostile camps. Even the most
broad-minded Indians like the Nobel Laureate Rabindra Nath
Tagore, dissociated themselves from the government. In his
letter to the Viceroy, written to renounce his knighthood,

he said:

Knowing that our appeals have been in vain and
that the passion of vengeance is blinding the noble
vision of statesmanship in our Government, which
could so easily afford to be magnaminous, as befitting
its physical strength and moral tradition, the very
least that I can do for my country is take all conse-
quences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of
the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a
dumb anguish of terror. The time has come when
badges of honour make our shame glaring in their in-
congruous context of humiliation, and I for my part
which to stand, shorn of all special distinctions,

20. Ibid., p. 44
21. Ibid.

139

by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their

so-called insignificance, are liable 33 suffer a

degradation not fit for human beings.
From this time the hostility between the nationalists and
the Anglo-Indians never ceased. The tactics of warfare and
the pitch of tension varied from time to time but the possi-
bility of the two races becoming friends was lost for ever.
The twenties and the early thirties was the worst period in
British Indian relations.

It is in this atmosphere of racial and political ten-
sion that Thompson's An Indian Day (1927) is laid. The
novel opens with Vincent Hamar, a magistrate, coming to
Vishnugram, a remote district town in Bengal 01 the mid-
twenties of this century. He has been transferred here
from Surigunj because he has fallen in disfaver with the
Anglo-Indian community of that town for acquitting some
Indians tried for conspiracy. He is happy for the change
because in this remote place he hopes to meet the Indian
mind in its purity unembittered by the eating ef the fruit
of the tree of political knowledge.‘ He disapproves the
unreasonable attitude of the Indians at Surigunj. He ~
sympathizes with them in their aspirations but is apposed
to the fanatical belligerance they bring into their demand
for better rights. ”Yes, he was their friend: but they need
not line up racially, and ostentatiously draw him over from
his own folk.f(p. 45) Not that he is in any way influenced
by the attitude of his community, in the performance of his

22. Thompson, op.cit., p. 273

14C

duties. On the contrary he has the courage to perform his
duties honestly even at the cost of being ostrasized by his
own countrymen. But he is wary of being associated with
Indians either because he feels that they are dominated by
wrong political notions. Remaining aloof from them, he
tries honestly to do what he considers to be Just and right.

In other words, Hamar believes that the British in India
have a mission to accomplish and that the country is best
served if every Anglo-Indian discharges the duties entrusted
to him honestly. He is sympathetic towards Indians but does
not feel the necessity of really understanding them. Like
most other Anglo-Indians he does not attach much importance
to the kind of work done by the Christian missionaries in
India. Due to this limitation, he happens to offend Alden,
a missionary teaching at the Missionary College at Vishnu-
gram, and his sister-in-law, Hilda, by expressing, in an
indiscreet question, his skepticism about the usefulness of
missionary work in India. They think that, like most Angle-
Indians, he is cpposed to missionary work because it makes
Indians less servile. They are not fully Justified in making
this assumption because he is not apposed to this kind of
change in the attitude of Indians and he at once apologizes
for his indiscretion. But the incident, by showing his
emphasis on material change, underlines his lack of contact
with and understanding of the Indian pe0p1e. He thinks of
them as an abstraction and is devoid of any deep feeling for
them. On the other hand, Alden, because of his personal
contact with them, knows them as human beings, shares their

1#1

life and feels for the.

Still closer to the people among whom he works is Alden's
bosmn friend Findlay, a missionary in charge of the station
at Kanthala about sixteen miles out of Vishnugram. When
Alden tells him about his conversation with Hamar, he falls
into a wistful mood and says, "We never seem to turn out
anyone with manners--we're a race of efficient boors seemly.'
(p. 84). In efficiency, dedication to his work, and in enduring
the hardships involved in doing it, he is as good as the best
of the civil servants. But for him the mere performance of
one's duties is not enough. To become satisfying to the
worker and truly productive for the country, his work should
be combined with a love of the peOple for whom he works.
Findlay loves Indians and India. He has come to belong in
India. Passing over a section of ten miles between Vishnugram
and Kanthala, he attains to 'an exaltation of spirit that was
sometimes unbearable; he loved his country with a passion that
was very near worship." (p. 80) The sense of belonging
often intensifies into mystic experiences of the following
king:

Suddenly the whole landscape was alive! ...He felt
that exultant mood of which the Hindu mystic spake--
'whan he saw the ever-walling, ever-dancing waves of
Bari, God sporting in His creation, tossing up and
taking back ever-new forms of play, water flashing and
leaping and sliding at an Eternal Child's will. ...God
had ceased to be a doctrine or hymn or exhortation: He
had become comrade and playfellow.... (p. 89)

lindlay's action spontaneously flows from this sense of

oneness with God's creation rather than the narrower motives of

1#2
organized Christian charity or the pride of carrying the
White Man's Burden. The springs of his action lie deeper than
reason. Reason devoid of love cannot sustain prolonged selfless
labour. There are moments when reason inhibits his vision
and he lapses into a nihilistic disenchantment of the worst
kind:

'""“And then,‘from'an”fnfinite height‘above him;""‘”
poised in the dazzling azure, rang out the kite's call--
the voice of utter indifference of aloofness crying
in the wilderness, content to be there, motionless
itself, and gazing out on a lifeless world. The
wind shrivelled...the scents faded. The sale shed
their sudden vigour, and were emblems, the faint
scrabbles of a hand that had long ceased writing.

The ever dancing, ever sportive Hari sank into the
quiescent Immanence, his waves subsided into the din
motionless expanse of unexpressive ocean, a face
without vision. That cry would sound on for millions
of years, while the phantom generations went their
way. “No man has seen God at any time": and Findlay
was content that it should be so. Nothing mattered,
there was nothing to trouble about-~it was all process...
and out of that Indian noon temptation came towards
him, disguised as eace. Why not let things slide?
Why not shut his eyes to the wretchedly unethical
lives of most of this Christian crowd, why not

take the easiest way, be king, always kind, never
vigilant? When one remembered the pit whence they
were dug, the centuries of servitude in their

blood and outlook--why not leave them as they were?
God is love, God is leisure, God is peace. (p. 90)

But he recovers from such moods with the re-assertion of love.wn
rindlay and Alden contrast with Hamar in their ability
to achieve spiritual affinity with Indians. Neogyi, the Deputy
Commissioner of Vishnugram, placed in a situation in many ways
similar to that of Hamar, also differs from him because he is
an Indian and loves his people. This gives to his commitment-
to the British raJ what Hamar lacks, an affectionate under-
standing of Indians. Educated at Oxford, he resembles very
much the English officers in India in habits and in bearing.

143

He is “unlike an Indian in the higher services. Once away
from the platfor, he did not chatter, he had dignity, sense
of duty efficiency. If he had inferiority complex he kept
it from appearing or influencing his actions.“ (p. 35) His
natural understanding of his own pe0p1e makes him better
suited to his Job. But he is baffled by the general lack of
understanding of Indian affairs found in the official circles.
He is harassed by his immdiate superior, Deogarhia another
Indian, who wants him to use his influence to get a protege
of his, the RaJa of Kestanadi, elected to the state council.
The raJa is 'a dullard, illiterate, destitute of any
discoverable shred of marality, a drunkard, a leper.“ (p.97)
Caught between the unscrupulous Indians and the not very
understanding Anglo-Indians, he still tries to do what he
considers to be right.

Of the chief characters in the novel, Hamar, Alden,
Findlay and Neogyi are actively engaged in working for India.
India is still a man’s world. Hilda is the only woman who
takes interest in the situation but she is more of an ob-
server rather that a participant in the situation.

Fresh from England, she is intended to be an impartial
commentator on the scene. She has faith in Alden and Findlay's
work. India has aroused her sympathy. She gives the British
full credit for what they have done and are still doing for

that country, yet feels that their work has not been greatly
fruitful because most of her countrymen have not cared to

144

understand India and Indians. This weighs her down.

Completely detached from action, except through his
influence on others, but observing the scene and commenting
on it, is a holy man, Jayananda who sits perpetually cross-
legged under a banyan tree in a clearing in the forest. He
was once a revolutionary, but now, having 'genuinely chucked
politics, once and forever: he was dreaming on infinity,
withdrawing from existance into union with the Farmathman,
the Absolute, that unconditioned, pulseless silence over whose
surface our brief loves flit and twitter for their imaginary
hour.” (p. 95) Harassed by the rigours of his position,
Neogyi comes to find relief in talking to the Sadhu. Findlay
also turns up for a visit the conversation that ensues
emphasizes the contrast between Findlay and Neogyi's in-
volvement with people and their compulsive desire to work
for them and the Sadhu's detachment.

Due to his absorption in work Findlay ignores his wife
and child. The child gets sick. As summer comes he sends
his family to DarJeeling in the hills but himself stays in
the plains because he has still more work to do. There has
been a drought, the resultant failure of the crop has caused
a famine and there is need for relief work.

The famine aggravates the general discontent already
present in the country and unscrupulous politicians exploit
it as much as they can. In the ensuing confusion it seems to

Hamar that every deed of man is futile, and his own the worst

145

mockery of all.“ Still he Joins Findlay in his relief work.
Hilda, who is staying with Findlay's family at Darjeeling,
muses about the ineffecuality of the English woman's life in
India. Findlay also deplores their idleness and the harm

done by it. Finally Hilda is able to Join Findlay and Hamar
but not under happy circumstances. The condition of Findlay's
son deteriorates and both mother and child have to be sent to
England as a last resort. But the boy dies on the voyage and
the mother, crazed by grief, commits suicide by Jumping inte
the sea. Findlay passes through a mood of deep despair and
tends to lose interest in his work. But faith and perseverance
pull him through and he regains his tranquility.

In the meantime Hamar and Hilda have fallen in love with
each other. Neogyi is transferred from Vishnugram.due to the
machinations of Deogarhia whom Neogyi has quietly resisted
and Hamar openly condemned. Before leaving Vishnugram, Neogyi,
accompanied by Hamar and Alden, goes to visit the Sadhu. The
Sadhu appreciates Hamar's work but the emphasis during the
conversation is on the need to understand one another. The
novel closes with a feeling that a beginning in this direction
has been made. Hamar's contact with Indians has changed him.
“And they'll change the attitude of any man who gives them a
chance," says Alden. (p. 282) Findlay and the Sadhu. in their
states of mind, exhibit an ideal of love not only for the
pe0ple around them but for the entire universe. Findlay rises

from his mood of dispondancy:

146
"Suddenly the Love that had all day long been
offering its strong arms of comradship drew his te

Itself. In a moment the long months of sorrow were

swept away from his mind.1 (p. 296) He feels 'one

with every leaf and bird and human creature.‘ His

service “vile" for sometime, because devoid of love,

becomes meanningful again. He becomes ageless and
raceless like the Sadhu who tells him in exaltation

that ”thy home is in the universe, and thou and I

are one. I serve the Lord of the Ascetics, Siva the

Naked, whose dress is the ten directions the four

Quarters of the Sky.“ (p. 299)

An Indian Day is thus a plea for an understanding between
the subJects and the rulers in India. There is no doubt about
the honesty and seriousness with which the Anglo-Indian officers
do their work in India. Moreover, Thompson's firm belief,
that the British rule is fundamentally based on altruistic
principles, is in many ways proJected into the novel. That the
British raJ has ushered in a humane era in Indian history is
the import of the ironic comment on an old cemetery which
Hilda frequents during her lonely rides in the country:

Here, when women were chaste, before the evil

age had corrupted the pure minds of India and the

foreign raJ had put down the good customs, women had

burned serving their lods. (p. 112)

Headley, while supporting Hamar in his stand at SurigunJ,
enuciates the professed British policy in India. He tells
Hamar, "You're right to stick up for Indians; it is their ‘
country, it doesn't belong to a clan of Jutewallas from.Dundee.'
(p. 7) The Government's aim is 'to clout anyone who's in the
wrong, Indian or British.” Headley's championship of the
Indians' rights has'“lost him no friends even among his own
nation.‘

All Anglo-Indians believe in the White Man's mission in

India. They take pride in their dedication to this mission.

147

”Doing one's Job” has acquired literally a religious sig-
nificance for them. During his conversation with MaJor Hender-
son and his subordinate, who, like most Anglo-Indians, are
antagonistic towards him because of his verdict in the conspir-
acy case, Hamar happens to mention that he "had done his Job.‘
In claiming this “the accused had, all unconsciously, flung
up the one flag that an Englishman accepts." (p. 16) Musing
about the role of the British in India, Hilda comes to the
conclusion that Anglo-India is a man's civilization for every-
body has "to get on with his Job, knowing its necessity to
that complex vessel of India's destiny." (p. 207) She con-
siders her countrymen "the engine-room staff that we have
set on board the Empire we found derelict and adrift.‘ (p.209)
She finds them ”patient, in the main fair and anxious to
be fair.“ .
The White Man's efficiency and helpfulness are illus-
trated by the promptness with with Findlay, Alden, and Hamar
come to the rescue of the famine stricken people. They and
the other ”EurOpeans at Vishnugram had taken up the challenge
of Fate itself, and had sworn that no life should perish.”
(p. 175) Their faith in action contrasts with Jayananda's
detachment from the world. Findlay marvels at the Sadhu's
tranquil withdrawal: ”on all sides there is misery and
sickness and poverty and bitterness and cruelty. ...how can
your mind be at peace? For you have imagination to bring its
echoes even here." (p. 157) The Sadhu cannot accept action

as the supreme good but he admits the limited usefulness of it

(D

148‘

and feels that the good Englishmen have become indispensable
for the country. Half-seriously, half-mockingly he complains
against the Indians' independence on the English. He tells
Findlay,

... it is you-and the few who are like you--

who have corrupted my pe0p1e. You have made it

impossible for us to hate the English and to rise

resolved to sweep them out of our land, though we

died in our millions to do it. There is not a

swaraJist in this district who does not, when

envisaging the future, take it for granted that

we shall somehow still have Alden at the College,

and you here for famines and floods.” (p. 160)

Thompson is very anxious to point out that British
imperialism is not based on exploitation as it is made out
to be in some quarters. The Indian problem, which had re-
mained more or less a matter of concern for the British and
Indians, up to the First World War, began to loom on the
international scene after the War which left Great Britain
a weaker power with its international prestige considerably
reduced. Thompson is at once irritated by Britain's defen-
sive attitude about the empire and the meddlesomeness of
the United States:

Britain is restive about this Empire of here, she

does not care what her own people think, but she is

anxious to conciliate--if necessary, to deceive--

these spies who come from outside, especially if they

come from that annoying, powerful, wealthy America

that is so highly moral and meddling. (p. 214)
He wants to keep India a closed affair between the British
and Indians, pleading with them to set their house in order.
Since there is too much trouble around, he tries to find the

cause of it. He does it mostly through Hilda, Alden and

149

Jayananda's observations. Hilda attributes the crisis in
BritishpIndian relations to the Anglo-Indians' lack of
sensitivity. She wonders,

were there a hundred of her own countrymen who saw

India's past with eyes of understanding and sympathy,

or a hundred who knew how their presence in the land

and their overwhelming prestige with the outside

world, even in matters relating directly to India,

affected the noblest Indians? (p. 124)
He admires her countrymen for working hard but ”intellectu-
ally the community was third-rate.” She thinks that the world
has never ”seen such stupidity yoked with such patience,
watchfulness, courage, boundless capacity for work, in-
difference to pain and discomfor.” (p. 208) She marvels that
men and women of her race should have lived and worked in
”this despised Bengal,” year after year and yet carried away
nothing but bitter and disdainful memories.

The insensitivity of the English manifests itself in
there irresponsible talk which Alden finds so obnoxcious:

I could worship the ordinary saheb for his decency

and genuinesnessl Only, only, only...when our

nations are so decent and so honourable, why-~why--

why--do we always talk talk as if we were half cad,

half imbecile? (p.180)
Such talk further narrows their outlook on life. HaJor
Henderson is a person ”naturally generous and sympethetic,
but warped by long listening to mess politics and mess
philosophy. Hamar finds him full of an utter confusion of
thought, preJudice, false history, secondhand report, memory
of personal annoyances or fancied slights. Still, because
of his basic decency, he can recognize the caddishness of

the cliches that comprise the usual club talk. During his

150

visit to Vishnugram, he happens to give utterance to one such
cliche, viz, 'there isn't an honest man in the whole gang
(all Indian).' But he is mortified by his lapse.

He could have bitten his tongue off as soon as

he had spoken. He knew that his speech was unpardon-

able: it might have passed in a club, but not anywhere

else where gentlemen congregated, ”themselves by
themselves”...and without a liberal sprinkling of

brainless cads. (p.109)

Lack of sensitivity and shallow talk have created among
the Anglo-Indians a herd-morality which does greater harm than
the stock Opinions Indians hold about their rulers because the
rulers' Opinions have much wider and deeper repercussions
than the subJects'. Alden knows that Indians can be vexing
in many ways but he regrets that the English themselves
”never shake free from..herd-morality, any more than they do:
and...go on Judging them because they're not, first-rate
Englishmen in dark skins.” (p.123) He thinks that the
difference between Indians and Anglo-Indians is based on the
difference between Indians and Anglo-Indians is based on the
difference in their respective ethics. To the English Indians
are ”worms” and Indians think that the English are very ”rough
and rasping.” Jayananda is of the same view. Justice,
firmness, integrity are the keystones of the Englishman's
morality and for Indians kindness is more important than any-
thing else. The solution naturally lies in the British and
Indians knowing each other as they really are instead of each

race proJecting its own bias in Judging the other. This is

151

the moral of An Indian Day.

It is illustrated by the story of Hamar's transformation
from a typical Anglo-Indian official into a man who really
sympathizes with and understands India. When he is introduced
in the novel, his experience has already "knocked him aslant
from sympathy with official lines of thought,” and he is hun-
gering for an existence that has 'a real hold on the land where
it is passed.‘ Yet on his return from the war he does not
want to be as much segregated from his compatriots as the
events compel hum to be. In

most matters his straying mind had been shepherded

back to the beaten path of Anglo-Indian thought. In

most matters, not all. There were some well trodden

roads which the War had closed to him for ever'. (p.60)
When he goes to help Findlay, the missionary notices,

He had a number of annoying tags, the second-

hand creed of his service; but he was willing to

see another side--anyone's side, in fact--and he did

not repeat a fallacy once corrected by experience.

(p. 172)

He observes again,
Bags of this old righteousness still fluttered

on his person, and Findlay sometimes had cause to

wonder at a bad-tempered smartness picked up in a

club or a stock evasion of some problem that called

for lonely thinking. (p. 176)

At SurigunJ he mistrusted the political aspirations of Indians.
But his contact with them has enabled him to understand these
better. He can feel 'the pulse of wild excitement and hatred,
...both great, that was knitting the educated classes together.‘

(p. 199) lot is is easy for him to realize that

152

if an Indian once were caught in the wild web of in-
trigue and left for ever the shallow, dishonest folly
that we call education and the bitter struggle for
the tiny prizes of official service, and if he came
to some waste place as the sun was setting--or in
the glory of the passionate down--how could he help
feeling that the landscape was a living creature,
appealing to her sons for liberation? Aliens were
'civilizing' her beauty, they had brought in mills
and factories and heavy, squat, white buildings;
they had no homes here, they merely ruled and
criticized and had their pleasure and went away.
They did not care to understand, they did not love
or praise or feel happiness. (pp. 199-200)

During the trial Of the second sonSpiracy case under him,
when the pent-up chagrin and outraged national feeling of
the Opposition burst on his head and he seems to lose all
his Indian friendships for a moment, he feels very lonely.
There friendships have come to matter to him tremendously.
He has "begun to catch by flash and glimpse“ knowledge of
how this race feels and thinks. Although he wants them to
remain peaceful in their struggle he fully appreciates the
need for reform.

Thompson's message in An Indian Day is very idealistic
and is the outcome of a sincere desire to be friendly with
Indians. His love of the Indian landscape is reflected in
passages like the following:

He (Hamar) awoke in a rushing Indian dawn;

the east in a hurry was flushing from white to gold,

from gold to red, from red back again to gold. The

mango groves were shaking to the mad laughter of
kokils, the birds whose mirth brings in the morning.

The sky rocked to the winnowing of wings, the wild

pigeons striding to their business. A blue roller

was absorbed in sun worship; he would sWOOp up, up,
up as if he was going straight to the heart of that

153

brightness.... Across a sea of green forest,

Hamar caught a glimpse of temples and of palm-

bordered pools. (PP. 32-33)
But love of landscape is one thing and that of peOple another.
An understanding like the one preached by Thompson could not
be achieved by the British and Indian in India. It is doubt-
ful whether Thompson himself ever attained it. The British
as rulers having always remained foreigners, had never become
intimate with Indians. The conditions prevailing the country
after the First World War, as already explained, made it imp
possible that the two races should come close together. The
relations between them could not be improved by mere good will.
The conflict was basically economic. It lay between the Indian
economic interests and British capitalists investing in
India. If Indians were to be granted better rights, the
British investment in India must decrease. The Anglo-Indian
officers in An Indian Day, like to think that they can keep
in check and mock the 'Dundee-Dumddum merchants' who weep
with "whiskey and self-pity' because Indians are not grateful
to them for choosing to be millionaires at their expense. But
it is the merchants who ultimately decide whether imperialism
should continue or not. If they choose to quit, and quit
they must if Indians are to be given equal rights, how can the
officers stay in India and enhance the understanding advocated
by Thompson. Hamar, Findlay and Alden's Indian friendships
never cOme alive because they have no basis in reality. The

shadowy character Of their love for Indians appears to be an

154

index of Thompson's own failure to surmount the barriers he
makes his character cross. His solution amounts to little
more than wishful thinking.

In contrast with his message of hOpe, the moods of frus-
tration find a convincing expression in the novel. The loneli-
ness of Neogyi's position proves that the cleavage between the
English and Indians has become unmendable. Discontent "had
settled on Neogyi's peOple and it had left him, too, unhappy.”
He is not one of the sahebs, no can he be trusted by the nation-
ists. His attempt to be reasonable, like Hamar's reasonable-
ness is utterly futile. They are both fed up because they are
having the worst of both worlds.

Findlay's heart is also often utterly weary.

He thought with despair of all the earnestness

and unselfish enthusiasm that is squandered because of

sheer stupidity, and of the compact and complex or-

ganization of preventing thought which Christendom

has built up. (p. 87)
His nihilistic visions have so much power than, contrasted
with them, the reassertion of meaning in life seems forced. A
contradiction seems to enter Thompson's own vision Of life.
On the one hand he recommends action and Opposes it to the
Sadhu's actionlessness. Still there is a force and conviction
in his visions Of a universe in which humanity becomes an
irrelevant factor. Witness for instance, one of Hilda's
experiences:

In some tiny glade far within, she listened to the
drytongued whisper Of the leaves. The noises which

the generations raise seemed to be nothing-the
struggles Of insects flung into a sea which is drowning

155

them. The rustle was the eternal voice of the sea

itself, the sound which was before man and will be

after man has perished. All was unreal, nothing

mattered. (p. 135)

And the Sadhu's justification for renouncing the world:
I thought of myself as I; and these aliens in my

land were pressing, it seemed, upon that self which I

though the most precious thing in the three worlds.

...We were clamouring against each other with voices

that were already dying into the great spaces, were

being robbed of their momentary being by the eternal

Silence. At last...I saw that all was passing, and

that the English would be gone from the face Of the

land, and forgotten as Akbar and Allah-ud-din are

forgotten, who also were great names in their day.

(1)- 158)

It would not be too much to say that ThGMpson is half-
inclined to shut his eyes on the misery Of the underdog. This
in spite of his good intentions, because his love for Indians
cannot be more than an abstraction. But the tribulations of
his own countrymen are a reality. He is one of them. His
feeling for them is genuine. He can easily see ”past the
noise and foolishness, to the love and heroism that are not
noisy, not foolish but only wasted." (p.88) I'Findlay the
Englishmen, alone in the wilderness and amid childish minds,
life's meaning and happiness vanished for ever' is more real
to Thompson than an Indian can ever be. Could it be that his
search for a solution of the Indian problem is actually motiva-
ted by the predicament in which he fins the Englishment in
India and the concern for Indians is brought in only as an
excuse? His condescending attitude towards Indians, as ext
hibited in the foregoing quotation and at many other places in

the novel, combined with the contradiction between its pro—

156

fessed message and the emotional impression it leaves, persuades
one to answer in the affirmative. An Indian Day is faithful to
realith insPite Of Thompson.

His A_§arewell to India (1931) is a continuation of‘ég
Indian Day. It focuses on Alden as An Indian Day does on Find-
lay and Hamar. The political situation has deteriorated. Its
influence has reached Alden's students. As Douglas the Prin-
cipal is away on furlough, Alden is Officiating in his place.
The college is as much infested with intrigue and terrorism as
the world outside. One evening a student is assaulted in his
room in the dormitory and badly cut up. The police Officer,
Mayhew, like most Anglo-Indians, attributes this incident to
nationists-inspired violence and it is next door to impossible
to find the culprits. But Alden refuses to assume the truth
of this belief blindly. He persists in his search for the
criminals.

‘Kayhew's conjecture is right because the terrorists
are behind the evil deed. They get worried Over Alden'b
perpetual inquisitiveness and his long wanderings in the
country in search of a clue. They know that he has actually
been to their den in the woods. Alden is sincerely dedicated
to India's welfare but he is Opposed to the use of violence.
The terrorists under the leadership Of Dinabandhu warn him
against his interference by sending him mysterious messages.
But he refuses to pay any heed to these. Finally Dinabandhu
sends him an ultimatum through the Sadhn, Jayananda, to
leave the country or he would be killed. Alden is adamant

157

in his resolve to stay but Thompson saves the situation by
making him sick and sending him to England for recovery.

The entire novel is built round this meagre stOry con-
tent. There is very little action. The novel is a collection
of conversations and descriptions conveying the political
tension in the country. In many ways A Farewell to India is
a more realistic novel than An Indian Day. Thompson is now
more acutely conscious of the impasse that the British-Indian
relations have reached. As Alden tells Mayhew, the end of
the British rule has come. It is now only a matter of hiding
time. Alden says,

Mayhew, we neither govern nor misgovern. We're

Just hanging on, hOping that the Last Trump will

sound 'Time!' and save us from the bother of making

a decision. (p. 151)

Thompson is fully aware of the economic forces that
lie behind the political agitation. The Sadhu explains this
to Alden, who, as Findlay puts it, “jawed to Dinabandhu
as if we were still in 1925, instead of 1929'.

Your diehards are still on the old chatter

about Indian agitation being the work of a few half-

baked clerks. They have never been told that it

has drawn in merchants and businessmen who have

traffic in every continent, who don't care a pin's

head what Macaulay wrote, and have wasted pretty

little time on literature, but do know that with

economic power you can do pretty well everything. (p.83)
As a result nothing is ever going to be normal again. I‘The
unchanging East has become a Vesuvius."

The India Of the Sadhu and Alden's dreams is gone. They
and Findlay are "out of date and Obsolete." It is no use

trying to perpetuate the tradition of paternalism. Alden,

158~

in spite of his sincerity finds himself again and again
manuevered into a position where whatever he does is wrong
and misrepresent him. "Fate was daily playing this trick

on Englishmen now.” As An Indian Day is chiefly a criticism
of the Anglo-Indians, A Farewell to India is primarily a
condemnation of the excesses of Indian nationalism. Now
'the boot was on the other leg?. Alden feels that all acts
of good will are a sufferance. An imerious and reckless
nationalism rules the stage.

There is a great element of truth in Alden's observation
that the nationalist are intoxicated by fanaticism rather
than ruled by reason. As he mentions to Alden,

When what India needs is to keep her nose to
facts, she' s gone Off into abstractions. We cut

down the Opium, and they get drunk on print. (p. 68)
Practically nine-tenths of the things they say against the
British are lies. One can show them up to lanyone with half
a brain, who would listen". Thompson is very perceptive in
making Alden see that the crisis has gone deeper than the
reach of reason and is impossible to avert. It "no longer
matters what they do or say, or what we do or say. The
quarrel has gone deeper, down to where the bhuts live.9
(p. 118) He is

beginning to believe in bhuts-~in something dull,

stupid brute, malignant, Invulnerable, with feet

that take hold Of the very soil. And it is in league

with other bhuts, that are not bhuts at all, but

devatas, living in an upper air of dreams and
enthusiasms. It' s an unnatural alliance, but

powerful. (p. 119)

The description Of Gandhi as the embodiment of an impersonal

force is also admirable:

159
He (Alden) saw and heard a man who had ceased to
be one of us and had become an elemental being--a

gust blowing up from the earth, a passion enclosed---

in a wizened, worn out body. ...Through a human reed

suffering was speaking--not its own, but a nation's...

Behind the Speaker were forces of ruin, which he was

servin , though aware of the, and anxious to escape

them. pp. 143-144)

Painfully conscious Of the unfortunate state of affairs
in India as he is, Thompson refuses to see that this crisis
is the logical outcome of Great Britain's political relation
with India. It is quite true that the Indian problem is not
l'exactly what the outside world chooses to think it is--a
relation of brutal overbearing alien with the subjugated
native.9 But is is equally true that the British-Indian
relation remained far from becoming “a tradition of close
comradeship.’ Alden concedes that Indians have “a deadly
black“ case against the British but they do not know how
to handle it. He wishes that the nationalists would let him
handle their brief. But his belief that he can make 'a
good Job" Of it only shows that he is still clinging to the
dream of ushering in a better India under the paternal
trusteeship of the British rule. As argued above, trans-
ference Of political power to Indians was bound to create a
conflict between them and the British. And the nationalistic
hysteria, that Thompson deplores, was the natural accompani-
ment Of the agitation this conflict engendered. By refusing
to admit the inevitability Of the situation facing him,
Thompson betrays his sentimentality and lack of realism.

He mistrusts the very forces shaping the modern world.

The Sadhu and Alden regret the change that has come over India.

160
The India that is emerging is corrupted by the sight of
wealth, power and arrogance. The Sadhu complains that the
English have shown Indians a world that crowds life with
possessions. Alden admits the evil of materialism which
dominates thought and life in the West:
It has shortened life by half, and made it

a thing that races by, from youth to middle age, and then

to senility and impotence. We can't wait: we can't

wait. And we believe there is nothing, sheer nothing,

Vairagi, once this life has vanished. That's why,

we're so greedy of time and goods, and so reckless.

Given if we buy what we want by the suffering and

robbery of others, does it matter? (p. 90)
It is easily conceded that materialism as a philosOphy of
life did play a significant role in India's movement for
indipendence and that its influence was not all for good.
But the point is that its domination is a fact of life and
needs to be faced as such. Moreover, materialism and its
impact on India is not quite as much of an evil as Thompson
makes it to be. But these aspects Of the situation do not
interest him because he is so much committed to the Imperial
dream that he cannot think Of any other. Both the Sadhu and
Alden are nostalgic not for what was but what they believe
could have been. Since the British could entertain feelings
of piety and complacency in regard to their responsibility in
India better when the country was settled than when it was in
ferment, they were naturally in favour of a status guo. Thomp-
son, in this respect, appears to be no different from the other
Anglo-Indian. He is basically opposed tO all change. The
forces of change which have definte motives behind them appear

quite arbitrary to him. The action of the bhuts, who have

161

taken up the quarrel for the Indians, is not necessarily
determined by the merits Of the case. It is whimsical
Alden says tO Hilda,
I think the age from time to time, in one land

or another gets sick of a certain peOple, and gets

rid of them. It isn't reason, it isn t even the

sword, that kicks them out. It's the bhuts. (p. 117)

In A Farewell to India, to a much greater extent
than in An Indian Day, Thompson's deeper concern is over the
predicament of the Englishman in India. His anxiety about
India's future and affection for Indians are forced and
superficial. Nowhere, I'in the whole wide world," is “a
raggeder job than the Englishman's in India.“ Out Of disgust
Alden is becoming increasingly indifferent towards India.

This India, which had seemed to grave and serious

a Job and had drawn him here in all the eager hOpeful-

ness of first man was growing featureless and voiceless.

What had been a landscape and a face was becoming shadow

and a dream." (p. 263)
‘Botwithstanding his professions of love, an attitude akin to

Alden's in India moods underlies Thompson's response.

Chapter-VI

Georgeeorwell

George Orwell is chiefly remembered today for
his Animal Farm and l285,gthe two works most vividly
expressing his horror at the fast-vanishing respect for
the individual in the modern world. In his essay “Why I
Write," he says that, although politics are not the high-
est of motives for writing, yet historical forces compell-
ed him tO become a pamphleteer: -'Every line of serious
work that I have written since 1936 has been written,
directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and Egg;

.1

democratic socialism. But the theme of liberty forms

the main strand of all his work. He first became acutely
conscious of this political problem in Burma where he
served for five years in the Indian Imperial Felice. In
the same essay, he also says that, at the age Of about
sixteen, .

I wanted to write enormous naturalis-
tic novels with unhappy endings, full
of detailed descriptions and asserting
similes, and also full of purple
passages in which words were used part-
ly for the sake Of their sound. And in
fact my first completed novel, Burmese
Dale, which I wrote when I was thirty
‘u. projected much earlier, is rather
that kind of book.2

 

 

 

Orwell's opinion of his own novel is far from being Just,
because, in its basic design and content,.Burmese Days
is very similar to his later novels. It poses the same

1. A Collection of Essays by George Orwell (N.Y.l954),p.318.
2. Ibid., p. 315.

.153.
problem or "conflict, 'be'twaen1‘sensitive'indivtdual 1nd
the relentless socio-peittimenie ”M, which is
presented in Keep thenepidietra 1111335 and mg.

Orwell’s experience insane: “occupies-‘an important
place in his parser. It "influenced the course or his
life'm ‘his development “as-“an mist and-thinker very
deeply. Apartmitspearingen his over-all philosophy
as an artist, his'att'ttude'to ‘Bfifim"“mmeM‘in
itselfeunstitutes1"preninenteeitsmentminphtsmtnl mks-
up, girvinghim; thus, a” conspicuouspositior-in the history
or Anglo-Indian literature. "The purpose of the present,
chapter 'is “to ‘study Orwellvs response 'to'the 'eoiunial
situation inane-Ia, in particular, «and British imperial-
isn in general, as reflected “in"his‘wrtttng. "The focus
or‘studyis'Bumese‘fim, Orwell's oniynovel contingent
or his'Burmese experience, but ‘his"otha"writtng[ directly
despri’eing-t‘h‘rs "experience“or‘indtreetir'd'erivingfm it
are 1h¢W""W achiwe’1“full'"und'erstanding ~01“
OrwelPs—rttitud‘e try-“Britishfinperialisn. I Glimpses of his
actutl'pzpsri‘ence :in 'Bumvare‘given “in'fiis~~~essays‘, "A
Hanging‘f'end *8hwting1n3liphrnt.‘ messengers-s his
views on 'Briti’sh‘imperiaiisn'in'general, he continued to
emm‘mmghm *his fiteraryminmnot -
entiretr'eenfinedvt'owtut‘vtttlly'eenneet‘ed-mwiiththe :m-
Ject. The more ""tamou'smong “these; are "Rudyard€K‘l;plfmg,ft -,
"A8 I Please," "A Lost World,' and fThe Lienind the Unicorn!

164

Burmese B-‘IE was pchlished in 193h but it is almost
certa'inly'derivedintirely frommaterials collected-veer-
ing Orwell's'nctual stay in Burma because it remains prac-
tically untouched by the political sophistication he had
achieved “during the seven years between his departure from
Burmr'andthevdete ofpublication wattire novel. In '11:; '
Roadto Liga__n' Men-he refers to the politicalr‘naivete‘ er
hissearlierdays, admitting that threes—not at thet time
cleereither-ahout-the true nature of British imperialism
or shout itsfltur‘e. "Bet‘this‘iao'lr‘or'maturity‘inontlook,
insteadoof’d'etrectingfrom ‘the'velue‘woi‘the novel was 't
reflection pf 'th e' sensitive “ 'Engiishman isn-espouse “to "the
situation in the British colonies, adds to its "spontaneity
and'reprssentetive quality. Except for-hissensitivity,
Orwell, at this stage or his life, wasnot“very"‘dirrerent
fron'pther ‘mgiishmen maths Winning ”in-his
fromhiscompatriotsin ‘Barma. "hike most imperial --sermts
he was born of Anglo-Indian parents and like most of
them he had been educated “in“a Public School "in ingland.
It is~trne~thatwhiieetill ‘fi'ml he showed radical
. inciinationsetutwthet-m~primeriiy~as~a~sesult"of the
intellectual climate his generation was growing up in
led the uglish young men going to serve in the colonies
could not ”in unaffected by it. And the disparity

165
betweenthsri'ch‘and ' poorstudentmwhich Orwell-was so
acutely aware or, was the common experience of the Anglo-
Indian children studying inwhgland. Allowing for the

comparativelywindependent atmosphere at ~~£ton, ~0flell
camsto humfrom ~an “intellectual ‘ climate which “was
more or'less typical of the time. The boys were mildly
Boiohie {this was in 1918) and he felt 'very‘angrywith‘
the "old'men whohad made "such a mess of things. They

derided the O. T. C., the Christian
religion even compulsory games and
the Royal family. When the English
master seta general knowledge paper
which included "the question, ‘ ’Whom do"
you-consider the-"ten greatest men now"
living?' fifteen boys out of sixteen
(avera e a e seventeen) included Lenin
in the r 1 st. th‘-1919 a

weremade to some ponds in the
traditional manner “hymarching the '
boys into the schoolyard, carrying
torches, and singing tinge songseuch
‘8 'Rule Britannica.‘ The boys guyed
thewhole proceedingwnd sang tiasphe-
mous and seditious words to the
familiar tunes. Orwell was by no
means the only one-who felt that
society needed recanting, tut‘it'was
unlikely that any of the othersrrelt
as keenly as he did that ta real "fault ,
in the English systemwas the network ‘
or prejud ge hosed on arbitrary money
divisions.

Orwell went to Burma as an Indian “Imperial Police
Officer {-Burmawas-a part of British India gruntiiwl935)
atrtimewhenielations-tetwoen the rulers and'their

3. Geigge Orwell, The Read to Visa-Pier (London, 1937),
P- 1. . .. .

166
subjects were ‘3‘ very low ebb. . Until the end of the
nineteenth'century,’ the‘-British officials could rest
complacent "in"the*“beiief'*'that*theywere helping the
country's development because "the “nativeswere too
suppressed to raise a voice «against than. Theupper-
classes generally coaoperated'with 'the-British only *
mildly” campaigningforwery‘gradual constitutional “reform
which was more to‘their own benefit than that of the
masses. loreover,“tln'British~ruie—which~had-brought
law and order had not yet‘shown its enervating effects”
on the economic condition “ofthe'people. By”‘the"turn'of
the century this economicpressure began to be felt by
the lower-middle class, which had, byothistime, also
acquired some hair-Fbaked‘notions' ofdemocracywnder the
influence of Western education. liner liberalization of
the"regime'“under-'ths‘pressure'-~cf-the-Bcgiish"fariiament ,
and‘the "settled" condition ofthrdominionpermitteda -
locss organisation “of this 'tiass‘which , “gradually—absorb-
ing quite a few of the political representatives of ‘the
upper-‘ciassesrandwrcstiy ~1ed-bythem teganto *ciamor
forsevoiutionarymchanges. ‘l'his irritated the Anglo-
Indiantureaumtswhwhad teeniongmaowstomed to any
opposition. nevertheless, the subjectsi 'agitation won '
than tome-“concessions “in the fem "of" "nintcallorley reform
at “the end of'the “first decade of the presentcentury.
The beginning of the World War brought co-operation

167
between the 'rulerrand'the ruled tecanse the latter
believed-that thaw te allowed "to-govers-themselves
ifathe Britishm “the War. Their hope being-however,
frustrated wtheyrturned try-violence l,~ or non—vi olentanon—
cooperation-withthegovernment, to‘aohi‘eve their objec—
tive. This eggravated the cleavagetetween the Anglo-
Indians‘nnd the natives. Theiormer even now believed
thattheywrere still helping the“ growth of'the "country
in "the 'best possible-*manneramd , "being'accnetomed ' to
movement. Here and 'there'this exasperationturshintc
violence. sandwich-etween “thewpolieies‘of‘the mm
gorernmentend the rise of nationalism in India, the
Anglo-Indians constituted an anachronism. But neither
the British parliament'nor these officers‘had‘yet
realized this truth. * It 'is‘in thisrtnosphereofsocial
and political tension that the" story of mating; '
moves. ‘

. fi'he scene is Xyauhtada, a 'small'townin Upper
Bum, important 'as 'a-"reiiwarterminne. its population
consists of afar thousand Burmese some Indians,a ‘
reams, 1nd a very-small hut eompact tcmmunity
cf‘mropeans. Beingremote from the centers of politi-
cal activity. Wade, so far, has been comparatively
little affected by the nationalist movement. The

..9

168

Anglo-Indian “community still maintains 'an—almost'acomj-
plete'social ‘isolationvfromathrother-races. thrust,
because there is achinhin thearmour ‘in'the person of
l'lcry, an officer ofee timber company,‘vwho socializes
withan Indian, Dr. Veraseami, the Civil Surgeon of the
local government hospital. This relationship forms the
structural center of the story

Bertha Deputy commissioner has received ward
from the central government that an Indianjmembershould
be elected to the local Officers' Club which has until
nor been exclusively-Angle-lndian. fill club-«mentors ,
with the exception of nary, resent the order and consid-
er it‘an encroachment on the instrument of'their'
printer. Theresentmentranges, through different
gradations, from the mild, complaining tone of the
Deputy Oomnis‘sioner'tothemorbidoutburstst-f Ellis.
Yet“ they "downot fseem '*to'have“a'“choice“in“the' matter. ‘
The obvious candidate for membership is Dr. Yeraswami
becausehe is the- WMin officer-“and is
sentimentally attached toathe Britishnnd-their vulture.
Inwpite "of a ludicrous side to his-"character, there is
«momma-them i sto~~be~admitted to the club,
it will be the Indian doctor. ‘-

Mthetoctortasaicrmidablrrival in the
local Bumose negistrete, U Bo Kyin, its, having raised
himself, by unscrupulous means, from utter obscurity to

169

his”"present' position, ‘ has becomeevennnore “unscrupulous
in-hie'grab‘rformoneyranl prestige. He is secondosly
to Dr. Veraswami in the official hierarchyofthe natives.
He-aspiresnot only tembe the first but to achieve the
ultmte in advancement “for rnativeuviz, decoration
by‘the governor. “Membership of the club being-e neces-
sarymstep in ”this direction, he is resolved to eliminate
the ~only and obvious obstacle 'in‘hisway.‘ He arranges
the publication, in the local native paper, of vituper-
cue attacks on the Deputy Commissioner and then tries to
attribute them to Dr. ,Verasmi. -~~Ee~~has~-agents~who
write anonymous letters 'to the "Europeans intent: to
prejudice them against his rival. He "even'arranges'the
esoape‘of‘e “prisoner—fruit “Jail as sell use rebellion
in"'a"“uearbywillage, and then tries "to "i;mplicate"‘*the
doctor‘s-namedn'Ieachacase. he succeedstn-giving'the
impression “ofhelpingthe-suppression “of-"the—rebel lion.
when his plans go a little out of control and “two Bur-
mese hill knell, the Divisional Forest Officer, he is
delighted because the incident will ultimately prove to.
his'udvuttge.

In spite of the fierce campaign U Po Kyin is
running to dmlish Dr. W's reputation with the
We, the latter remains quite unharmed. His
friendship with Flory is saving him. Not because 1'1er

170
goes out of'his'saytodefend him but simply because

friendship'eithvewhitemn-gives the‘npetive a prestige
which makes his position impregnable. U Po Kyin expands
1119st to include 11017 'in hie-web. “E, indirectly
warnshinsgeinstthenanger of 'tssoeieting‘with the
doctor. ‘ But "Flory," sithonghnot casti‘n a ”heroic mould,
is “oomgeous 1nd sensitive ' wenough to rebuff “his.

Being 'r-Ruropesn,‘ "he - isn verreifficnlt ‘ target for the "
native magistrate but U Po 'Kyin lies “in“wait‘undtbides
histime. . ,

Just as Flory‘s reistionohi‘p-with Br.~¥ortsmi
is the structural hinge of the story, his life in Burma
is its—spiritnshfocns. “Heine-been in this-hnd'for
fifteen years. He detests being here but cannot get
out. Rigors of the climate nrrpsrt-bfhistroubl'e but
the “in thing that makes life unbearable'is 'loneliness.,.
Evenrt'his'wouid'tot 'betoo'tsd' if'"'t'his murmur-
vated by the nauseating‘tslh and~behaviorof~the oniy
shite peOple 'Within"'his'reach. 'flhile ompingoutinthe
Jungle, “he nan'fint'n‘toiersblrezisteneefibutdn
meta. “his““countrymenisnphiiistinism‘mskesrhm “sisk .
indulgence in themesbanal, “prejudieedrgoesip‘whieh
is repeatedryear'tfter‘vyear. ~~fie h~ineelf~~hee teken to
heavy drinking as a fan of relieffromthenintolerable

171
conditionef-hirsoeiel "life. But ire-still retuinee
greater sensibility‘than'the other'whiteein‘the station.
He “distinctly"'differs“fromthem*in“h‘is *love""of'hoeks,
birds‘and'tlcwers, and "also ~exhibits *a' better taste in
his ~ reitt ionewith people‘.

At the time the story'is told, Flory‘is thirty
five. In the earlyyears of his stayinBurma, hemhad
held outagsinet the enervatmg atmosphere in‘the hope
thathe1ouid soon 'btnbletsgotbsoh‘hone. “fie had“ em '
enjoyed his life‘as“‘an"sdventure. inttheflarhadsome
and Flory tras‘nnable'to get *‘leavl. Leave ‘was “finally
granted‘tft'erthe War end tboard't bottsailing for
Mgland, and the hope of beginning a new life in England,
which'hi s ~ long stay -‘ inf-Bemfilrd- elmost completely
destroyed ,‘“"grerin”*him*sgtin. ' Mon-reaching eolonbo *
he was recalled to'his'post “because three oth‘erVemployees
of the firm had suddenly died of cholera. Ilory
resumed his :cbwand-“gave wen-Veep. for-himself. He
abandoned hinself'to a life of bored dissipation, When
in--—Eyauhtade he got «innit-st hone-erin- the club, stayed
in bed till‘late'in'the afternoon, and 'hept’a‘hurnese ‘
girl Ila Hla ‘ilay“‘to ‘relievewhis“sensual-"urges.

Then an English girl come to Iyauktada to stay
with‘her—sunt‘snl mole, “the Escherst'eens. Ir. backer-
steen is the manager ofthrfirn-Plory-Worhs for ”and,

172
until klizabeth '~ cane , hiswife "had ‘been ‘the only "white
womnrst-thestation. ' Onthe very-second ~d-ey of her
arrival , Elizabeth "encounters ‘a "bison ‘and Flory,
happening to saveher, «makes her~aequain~tanee. In
her "lack of sensitivity, Elizabeth is 'remarktbly'*"simi-
lar‘to her aunt and the other Anglo-Indians but,
famished for-a breath of life from home, Flory sees in
her whatever satisfies his nostalgic feelings ‘and falls
in love with her. Not much impressed in 'the "beginning
because ofthe‘ugly-“birthmark en Flory's face"and his
general "awkwardness , "she 'getsoarriedtawarduring “a
hunting expedition when she shoots for the first time
and'f'su'ccessfu‘liy, while * Flory, bagging t --leopari,
attainsheroicstatureinher eyes. Bin isready 'to
giveintutfi‘atragairintervenesin the fomof the ‘
military “policeman ‘Verrall , “who 'is"'young , -' single , and .
an*honourabie'in"the’civil list. Hrs. Lackerstoeu
decides to turn her niece's attention in this direc-
tion. so far she had; ' encouraged her flirtationssith‘
Flory and kept the facts of his private life hidden
fromher. *But'now-shetelle‘herthat Flory keeps a
Burmese mistress, although the latter has already told
Ila Hla Hay that there is no longer any place forher in
111*"1'm‘ 1101'? 13‘ P011te but adamant in doing this. ’
lla Hla lay, who doesn's love Flory, but whose prestige

173‘
among thenativee iseffected, resorts to blackmail

but Flory‘quietly pays to keep her 'away.

Neither firs. hchersteen nor "Elizabeth is really
interested in knowing about Flory's personal life.

Their interest doesn't mean anything tO'the‘army officer,
who treats the entire population of Kyauktada, European.
or native, as so much rubbish. He refuses to go to the
club or to mirwith the iocal Anglo-Indians in ~any other
way. "The‘iiachersteens;ucrazed—by~theinsnobbish desire
to hook him, are compelled to go up tohimnnashamedly
inorder to introducethemseives. Terrailnotices
something '"attractivetin Elizabethisrfigure-tnd“ 'comes "
to"the club todancewithher. He"still~~‘treats'*every-
body else with insolence but “heeps'company'with Elizabeth,
They-go'out-on long near together and most probably he
seducesher. "But he is only "playingwith her ~and~has
n0” WWW her. I;

As this flirtation goes _on, the story moves back
tO'thetroad'erteaiitynof‘Kyauh—tada. terresult‘of
Hamil . emmurdrer during therebel lion incited ’ by
UVPo Kyin, there is a racial tension in the air.‘ fSOIIe
nativerboys'jeerwatmthervoiatil‘e Ellis.~~-He hitstne of
them with his stick. Theboy'ishurt inthe 1mm
the injury leads to "his blindness. The natives are
enraged‘andHa-‘hngrbutdisorganized crowd f mob ‘ the‘ club
at night demanding that Ellis be surrendered to them or

174
they will demolish the club. Theywsu'rreund the clue
on three sides; the fourth is flanked by a river. The
telegraphwires‘haveteeruisconnectedrand‘the Europeans
at 'the club nrenotproperirurmed. They" seem tote '
easrvictimefcr-themob; Flory-thinkeof tupian‘ of
escape‘and executesit. He swimsdown the riverfcr
some “distance and then, walking'to thepolioe lines,
orders'the' soldiers "'to'*fire " inmthe-"air . The crown is
dispersed' without much violence-end Flory --becomes~-*the
hero of the European community.

Dr. Veraswami has‘aisofoughttraveiy—for the
Mopeaneinthetiot. his election to the club-seems
tO'm‘1'W'WW. - "Unfortunately,“scon
afterthrincident, ‘Yerrall ieaverfiyauhtada'without
even saying good-bye to Elizabeth. This again makes
Fldry‘ eligible in h‘er'and‘her aunt‘s eyes. lioness -
because, of late, his prestige'has'been"substantially
enhanced. A‘rhestageishowset for his eventual marriage
to Elizabeth. But U Po Kyin has not yet played out. He
sends Ira Hl'a llayto the Anglican service on a Sunday
to insult Flory‘tytshing "him, ‘ "in'therface “of—‘the“oon-
gregation, for money due to the wrongs he hasjdonsto
her.‘ Elisabeth, who is present there, is so much revolt-
ed by the spectacle of Flory'swhumiliation that «she

refuses to marry him. In utter despair, Flory'goes to

175
hismud shoots himself. “Bore-ft ‘of'his “patronage,
Dr . "Veraswami isdestroyed trthe machinations "of
U Po Iyin'who 'ac'hi'eves‘his election “to"thrciut. He
continues to prosper until heissdecnrated “by‘the
governor. But 'threehayssftu“his~final“triumph, he
dies (7an fit of apoplexy, leaving unbuilt the pagoda
which were to assure him a peaceful life in the here-
after.
Burmese Days is a bittermcomment entire-condi-

tions prevailing'under the‘-British rule in Burma.-
Most “of Tlory's‘hitterness “is“vented “on “thephilistin-
in of the Anglo-Indian communitybut at times he sees
the root-of theprohlem-in the hypocrisy of the very
concept of imperialism. Orwell's View of imperialism
was not as 'mature when he was in Burma as'it'beca‘me“
in later life. Still, overr'at'that cerirstagein his
1 its {Wot its hasi c'"~in'jus'ti‘ce . In - an
article in the "Partisan Review, ‘Bept.-Oct., ‘I9h2, he
saysthat

it istrue that I "served““five‘years

in ’the "Indian fol-ice. It isslso

"true‘wthat I-“gave-uptm :ch, partly“

because it‘didn't‘suitme but mainly

because I would not any longer has

~someth-ing--<-a-bcut it from the/inside.

The "whole historymof-this is to be

found in my writings "including "a '

novel which I think: can claim was

a kind "o‘f'prophecyyr *what happened

this yearfin'Burma. .
h. John Atkins, geerge'crieii (London, 1951.), p.75-76.

176
Earlier, referring~to his Burmese experiencein- file
Road tq Wign"Pier', , he triedto explaih'hor'the 'injuse
tice inherent in imperialism was bound to affect a
sensitive individual involved in—it. "It is not possible

to be part of such a system‘wi‘thout recognizing it as
an unjustifiable tyranny.” As a result,

every Anglo-Indian is haunted by a
sense of uilt' which he usuallycon- '
scale as est he can, because there‘
is noireedom of speech, 1nd merely"
to “bewarheard‘ "making a seditious
remarrmy damagehis career. ' All
over India ‘there are Engli'shmen‘who
secretly loathe the system'of'whi'ch

" they 'are partrand‘just "occasionaliy,
_when "they are ' quite certain of “heing
in "the right ‘uompany, “their"“hidden
bitterness overflows. I remember a
night I spent on" the train with a
mu! "in“the Educational Service, a'
strangertrmyseli‘whosrnure "'I “never
discovered. It was too hot to £190?
andwe spentihehight in talking.
Half an hour‘s cautious questioning
decided each ' of‘us‘that—thevther
was'*sare"; ‘and'then for'hours,"while
thewtrain"jolted""s'l‘owly*‘through*""the
pitch-hiauirnight ,sitting *up-in "our
bunks withbottles of'bee'r'handy,‘1re
damned the British m ire---dmned it
from the inside, inte ligently and
intimately. It did us both good. ‘
But “we-had "been speaking hidden "things ,
and in "th e '“haggard'”morning light" when
the‘train-"crawled into Mandalay, we
parted a? guiltily as any adulterous
couple. ‘

50 Ibide, PP. 176-770

177

In Burmese Egg the tyranny of the system
does not become obvious except in the rude behaviour
of Europeans, yet it is criticized by Flory Who
believes that "...the British hpire is simply a
devicevforo'giving 'trade monopolies “to 'the English-m-
errather to gangs of Jews and Scotchmen. Of course
we keep the peace in India, in our own interest, but
what "does all this law‘and order business boil down
to? lore tanks and more prisons---that is all it
means.’r (pp.36-3’)‘)6 He also traces the corrupting
influence of this hypocritical situation on "the "mind
of the English in India, when he talks to Veraswami
about

the lie that we're here to

uplift our poor black trothers
instead~nfto~rohthem I sup-

pose it's a natural enough lie.

But it corrupts us it corrupts uss
in myryou can‘t Iiimntgine.

an “everlasting sense ofvheing a
sneakanda liarthattormentsusand
drives us to justify ourselves night
and day. It's at the bottom of half
our beastliness to m natives. We
Anglo-Indians could be almost bear-
able if we'd only admit that we're
thieves and c on thieving without
any humbug.‘ p.36)

The connection batman the vested interest in
imperialism and the behavior of the employees is not

6. George Orwell, mandala (New York, 1963). All
quotations used here are from the same edition.

178

clearly brought out in the action of the novel but
flory's diagnosis has a great element of truth in it.
The'smugnesswofwthe'nngio=indianMofficersvhasaits
origin in their ignorance of the basic economic struc-
ture of imperialism. They feel they“are serving the‘
cause of humanitywwhercas in reality they are quite
expendable stooges. Thewcountry‘is“really“held“by
force“for"which their presence mereiyaserves"as a
veneer.

Givenche army; the officials

and‘the"businessamenrcanorub
aiong safely enough even”if they"
are fools. And most of“themrggg
fools. .A dull,~decent people,
cherishingmand“fortifyingwtheir
dullness behind a quarter of a
million~bayonets. (Ppi60a61)

The safety of their position and the sense of self-

righteousnessamahcathen“perfect~autocrats"easily
irritated by any interference from above aneruthlesshy
provoked Many-disobedience from telow. "Westfield I
is irked by the increasing intervention+of rules and
regulations in the administrative machinery:

All this paperachewing and clip-
‘passing. Office 'are the

real rulers of this country now.

our number's up. Best thing "we

can do is to shut up shop and let'em
stew in their own juice. (p.30)

And Ellis fanatically demands the use of force to keep

the native under control:

179

We could put things right in a

month if we chose. It only needs

a pennyworth of pluck. Look at
Amritsar. Look how they caved in
after that. Dyer knew the stuff

~to give them. Poor old Dyer.

That was a dirty job. Those cowards
in nngland have got something to
answer for. (p. 50)

The beatitudes of a pukka sahib are;

Keeping up our prestige.\

The firm hand (without the velvet glove).
We white men must hang together.

Give them an inch and they'll take an ell.
Espirit do Corps. (p. 163)

Small wonder that with this philosophy of life they
become the brutes Flory finds them to bee:

Dull boozing witless porkers. Was
it possible that they could go on
week after week, year after year,
repeating word for word the same
evil-minded drivel, like a parody

of a fifth-rate story in Blackwood's?
Would none of them ever t 1 o
anything new to say?‘ Oh, what a
place, what people. What a CiVilitg
sation is this of ours--this godless
civilisation founded on whisky,
Blackwood's and the Bonzo pictures.
God have mercy on us for all of

us are part of it. (p. 3) ‘

A privileged position can be easily rationalized into the
assumption of the existence of natural gradations among
people. The dominant position is justified on the basis
of racial superiority which finds different ways of
expressing itself, some of them quite amusing. A Eurasian,
himself trying hard to be identified with the superior

race, warns Flory and Elizabeth:

180

Also, sir--madal, may I advise to you,
wearing only fiomnighat istnot judicious?-
in April, sir. .Eumwuhe natives all well,
their skulls Inllldllint. But for us ‘
sunstroke ever menaces. :Hqu deadly'iS‘
the sun upon European skulls. (p. 104)

And the belief is not*uncommon among the Europeans them- as
selves. Laurence Brander's evaluation of Burmese Days is
very apt:

The novel is, like any Orwell book,
an intellectual achievement ant it is
satire and caricature which give the book
its special quality.

A novel about English life in India
written by someone of intelligence, is
likely to be critical. The power of the
Indian climate and the Indian scene is
very great and they affect everyone who
lives there. India‘s strength lies in
extremes. It can bring wisdom and the
virtues associated with the religious
life; but if it does not do that--and
usually it does not---then it dries up
the character. English people developed
or dried up, and most of them became
mentally and spiritually desicated.8

Even Orwell‘s own hatred of imperialism was not entirely
induced by the injustice of it but by the very eppressive
nature of the situation. That is why he could not under-
stand his reaction clearly as he tells later in The Road
to Wigan Piern
I was in the Indian Police five years, and
by the end of that time I hated the imperial—
ism I was serving with a bitterness which I’

probably cannot make clear.9

8George Orwell (London, 1954), p. 75.
992, 923., p. 175.

l8l
Perhaps being a policeman made matters worse for

him. "I was part of the actual machinery of despotism."
He was not even like "men who are doing something which
is demonstrably useful and would still have to be done
whether the British were in India or not, forest
officers, for instance, and doctors and engineers."

The police were responsible for "a double oppression....
Not only were we hanging people and putting them into
jail and so forth; we were doing it in the capacity of
unwanted foreign invaders. The Burmese themselves
never really recognized our jurisdiction."lo It was
only this situation which could produce cads like
Verrall:

He despised the entire non—military
population of India, a few famous
polo-players excepted. He despised

all Indian regiments, infantry and
calvalry alike. It was true that he
himself belonged to a native regiment,
but that was only for his won conveuid
ence. He took no interest in Indiana,
and his Urdu consisted mainly of swear-
words, with all the verbs inrthe third
person singular. His Military Enlicamen
he looked on as no better than Coal“.
(p. 172)

Or prudes like Mrsz_Lackersteen or Elizabeth. The

lq‘.‘ “

latter soon after her marriage, is transformed into a
woman whose
servants live in constant terror of

her.... She knows how to put the
wives of subordinate officials in

lOIbid., p. 177-79.

182

their places—~in short, she fills
with complete success the position
for which nature had designed her
from the firs, that of a burra
memsahib. (p. 244)

She reminds Laurence Brander of "Sir Richard Burton's
prOphecy in his Scinde, written in 1850, that the
memsahib would eventually finish off the Empire."‘

The same experience of brutality, as found in

"11

Burmese Days, characterizes "A Hanging. But the

incident described here is not particularly connected

with imperialism. Similar episodes could happen in
any jail in any country where capital punishment still
exists.- Still, the piece is important for evoking the
inexorable brutality of man-made law which he also
describes in The Road to Wigan Pier,

The wretched prisoners squatting in

the reeking cages of the lockups, the
grey cowed faces of the long-term con-
victs, the scarred buttocks of the men
who had been flogged with bamboos, the
women and children howling when their
menfolk were led away under arrest---
things like these are beyond bearing
when you are in any way directly reSpon-
sible for them. I watched a man hanged
once; it seemed to me worse than a
thousandmurders.12

The feeling of tenderness and respect for human life

as such becomes almost unbearable because of a deft,

11In Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (New York,
1950), ppe 15-18.

1292. Cit., p. 178.

185
realistic touch in the description as the prisoner is

blindfolded and led to the gallows: "And once, in
spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder,

he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the
path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never
realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious
man."

Orwell's feelings in "A Hanging" are symptomatic
of a complex in him that goes deeper than a simple
denunciation of the injustice that imperialism involves.
His total reaction to imperialism, when he was in Burma,
was emotional rather than rather than rational. He
seemed to be looking for all possible excuses to get
out of the mental torture it was to live in Burma.
This becomes more obvious when we consider that side
of his character which was rather favourable inclined
towards imperialism. For he had a side so inclined.

John Atkins, citing a review of Graham Greene's
novel, The Heart of the Matter, by Orwell, seems to-
suggest that Orwell must have had a harsher aspect in
his character. He seems to raise his eyebrows at
Orwell's comment that Major Scobie

would not be an officer in a colonial
police force if he were the kind of man

we are told he is---that is, a man whose 13
chief characteristic is a horror of pain..

1592. Cit., p. 76.

184
Muggeridge also points out a "Kiplingesque" side in

Orwell‘s character:

When I used sometimes to say to Orwell

that he and Kipling had a great deal in
common, he would laugh that curious 14
rusty laugh of his and change the subject.

But to this we will return later.

It is important, first, to consider Orwell'S'
mature and more balanced views on imperialism. As
early as the time of writing "Shooting an Elephant,"
he had realized the helplessness of the individual
caught in the mill—stones of imperialism:

Here was I, a white man with his gun,
standing in front of the unarmed native
crowd--seeming1y the leading actor of

the piece; but in reality I was only

an absurd puppet pushed to and fro

by the will of those yellow faces behind.
I perceived in this moment that when

the white man turns tyrant it is his

own freedom that he destroys. He be-
comes a sort of hollow, posing dummy,

the conventionalised figure of a

sahib. For it is the condition of his.
rule that he shall spend his life infi \
trying to impress the "natives," and.

so in every qrisis he has got to do w
what the "natives" expect of him. He
wears a mask, and the face crows to

fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant.
I had committed myself to doing it when
I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to
act like a sahib; he has got to appear
resolute, to know his own mind and do
definite things. To come all that way,
rifle in hand, with two thousand people
marching at my heels, and then to

trail feebly away, having done nothing---

l“Malcolm Muggeridge, "Burmese Days," Modern Review
(June 1950), P. 47.

185

no, that was impossible. The crowd. ‘
would laugh at me. And my whole life,
every white man's life in the East
waslone long struggle not to he laughed
at.

Later, in "Rudyard Kipling," he gives due credit to the
positive side of imperialism in the nineteenth century:

The nineteenth-century Anglo- Indians,

to name the least sympathetic of his
(Kipling' s) idols, were at any rate
people who did things. It may be that .
all they did was evil, but they changed
the face of the earth (it is instruc-
tive to look at a map of Asia and
compare the apilway system of India with
that of the surrounding countries),
whereas they could have achieved nothing,
could not have maintained themselves in
power for a single week, if the normal
Anglo—Indian outlook had been that of,
say, E. M. Forster.l6

Similarly in an earlier article on the same writer, in
the New English Weekly, 25 Jan. 1936, although expressing
a strong disapproval of Kipling for doing what Orwell
thought Kipling did, he very carefully distinguishes
the spirit of the imperialism in Kipling's writing
from its later, cruder versions:

What is much more distasteful in Kipling

than sentimental plots or vulgar tricks

of style, is the imperialsim to which he

chose to lend his genius. The most one 3

'say is that whne he made it the choice

was more forgivable than it would be now.

The imperialism of the 'eighties and
‘nineties was sentimental, ignorant and

15
In A Collection of Essays byfiGeorge Mg all (New York,
1954): P0 159-

16m” p. 127.

186

dangerous, but it was not entirely
despicable. The picture then called
up by the word "empire" was a picture
of overworked officials and frontier
skirmishes, not of Lord Beaverbrook
and Australian butter. It was still
pessible to be an imperialist and a
gentleman, and of Kipling's pefaonal
decency there can be no doubt.

Orwell's remarkable understanding of the different
phases of British imperialism shows itself again and

' again throughout his essays. He does not fail to see

I

the good in it.when it is there. In "A Lost World,"
Observer, 1 February, 1948, he notices the futility of
the enlightened altruism of some Anglo-Indian officers
in the face of a growing separationwbetween the rulers
and the ruled:

A generation earlier these views

-,ord Beveridg37 would have seemed
' easonable to macaulay; a genera-
tion later much of what Henry Beveridge
advocated was within sight of happen—
ing. But the period covered by his
career, 1858-93. was a bad period in
Indian-British relations. Among the
British, imperialist sentiment was

a bad period in Indian-British re-
lations. Among the British, imperia-
list sentiment was stiffening and an
arrogant attitude towards "natives"
was becoming obligatory. The greatest
single cause was probably the cutting
of the Suez Canal. As soon as the
journey from England became quick

and easy the number of Englishwomen
in India greatly increased, and for

l7Atkins, _p. 935., pp. 79-80.

187

the first time the Europeans were
able to form themselves into an
exclusive "all white" society.18

In "England Your England," he traces the forces

which created the situation in which he found himself

in Burma.

These forces have reduced the individual

almost to an unthinking cog in the vast machinery of

imperialism.

l8

Thirty years ago the Blimp class was
already losing its vitality. The
middle-class families celebrated by

by Kipling, the prolific lowbrow “
families whose sons officered the army
and navy and swarmed all over the
waste places of the earth from the
Yukon to the Irrawady, were dwindling
before 1916. The thing that had
killed them was the telegraph. In a
narrowing world, more and more governed
from Whitehall, there was every year
less room for individual initiative.
Men like Clive, Nelson, Nicholson,
Gordon would find no place for them-
selves in the modern British Empire.
By 1920 nearly every inch of the
colonial empire was in the grip of
Whitehall. Wellfmeaning, over-civilised
men, in dark suits and black felt,
hats, with neatly-rolled umbrellas
crooked over the left forearm, were
imposing their constipated view of
life in Malaya and Nigeria, Mombasa
and Mandalay. The one-time Empire-
builders were reduced to the status

of clerks, buried deeper and deeper
under mounds of paper and red tape.

In the early 'twenties, one could¢§
see, all over the Empire, the older
officials, who had known more spacious

Ibid., p. 80.

188

days, writhing impotently under

the changes that were happening.

From that time onwards it has been
next door to impossible to induce
young men of spirit to take any

part in imperial administration. And
what was true of the official world
was true also of the commercial.

The great monOpoly companies swallowed
up hosts of petty traders. Instead
of going out to trade adventurously
in the Indies one went to an office
stool in BOmbay or Singapore. And
life in Bombay or Singapore was '
actually duller and safer thn life

in London. Imperialist sentiment
remained strong in the middle

class, chiefly owing to family tradi-
tion, but the job of administering
the Empire had ceased to appeal.

Few able men went East of Suez ifl9
there was any way of avoiding it.

In a "Letter to an Indian," Tribune, 19 March, 1945,
he lays his finger on the basic problem of imperialism-s?
the difficulty of rising out of one's cultural condi-
tioning to establish a real contact with peOple of
another culture:

We are all nearer to the blimp
than we are to the Indian peasant,
but don't expect people to like being
told so. Opinions sentimentally held
are liable to be suddently reversed.
I know more than one intellectual who
has started out with a burning zeal to
free India and ended up by feeling
that there is a lot to be said for
General Dyer.2O

Then there is the necessity of keeping law and order

19In England Your England and Other Essays (London,
1955): PP. 215-17.

20Atkins, gp. cit., p. 83.

189
which does not leave any room for sentimentality. As

long as Orwell remained in imperial service, he per-
formed his duties quite efficiently. ChristOpher Hollis
describes Orwell as he saw him at this time:

In the side of him which he revealed
to me at that time there was no trace
of liberal Opinions. He was at pains
to be t e imperial policeman, explain-
ing the these theories of no punish—
ment and no.beating were all very wail
at public'Schools but that they did
not work with the Burmese+-—in fact
that ‘

Libbaty's a kind o'thing 21

Thet don't agree with niggers.

Even Dr. Veraswami's admiration for the blessings
of the British ra , carried as.it is to ludicrous
ludicrous lengths, has an element of seriousness which
commands one's respect. Dr. Veraswami is himself a
foreigner in Burma but there can be no doubt about his
sincerity when he is shocked by Flory's tirade against
British imperialism:

What monstrous misrepresentationsl...
Consider Burma in the days of Thibaw, u
with dirt and torture and ignorance,
and then look around you. Look merely
out of this veranda-u-lookzat that
hospital, and over to the right at
that school and that police station.
Look at the whole uprush of modern*
progress. (p. 58) * '

If Flory represents one aspect of Orwell’s~self,

Dr. Veraswami‘s enthusiastic suppOrt for the British

a

""' . . . 1 i u " ' ‘ ‘ ‘.
.... 9...; .. ...U a ‘2: \r '. I . , .- 1. .0 ' _J . ‘3 \". 4.4. I”. - LA— ‘1. ’-~'

Bloeergopmue(oh1cggo, “1956), 'p. 27.2. ~ . v 2,? -:.-,_1

190

rule is not completely divorced from his own soul—
searching on the issue. He is not entirely satirical
when he makes the doctor say:

You say you are here to trade? Of
course you are. Could the Burmese
trade for themselves?‘ Can they
machinery, ships, railways, roads?
They are helpless without you. (p. 57)

In his "Reflections on Gandhi," he hints at the
liberalism of the British regime which permitted Gandhi
to get his message across to the masses and their rulers:

At the same time there is reason to
think that Gandhi, who after all was
born in 1869, did not understand the
nature of totalitarianism and saw
everything in terms of his own struggle
against the British government. The
important point here is not so much
that the British treated him forbearingly
as that he was always able to command
publicity. As can be seen from the
phrase quoted above, he believed in
"arousing the world," which is only
possible if the world gets a chance
to hear what you are doing. It is
difficult to see how Gandhi's methods
could be applied in a country where
opponents of the regime disappear in
the middle of the night and are never
heard of again. Without a free press
and the right of assembly, it is
impossible not merely to appeal to
outside cpinion, but to bring a mass
movement into being, or even to make
your intentions known to your adver-
sary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia

at this moment?22

22A Collection of Essays by George Orwell, gp. cit.,
p. 184.

191
In Spite of the good that Orwell saw in imperialism

in his mature years, he continued to condem it as an
institution. Even when he was throwing all his weight
on the side of the Allies during the Second World War,
he did not lose sight of the hypocrisy imperialism led
to. In 9A3 I Please," Tribung, 20 Oct., 1944, he wrote:

But why should the British in India
have built up this superstition

about sunstroke? Because an endless
emphasis on the differences between
the "natives" and yourself is one

of the necessary props of imperialism.
You can only rule over a subject
race, eSpecially when you are in a
small minority, if you honestly
believe yourself to be racially
superior, and it helps towards this
if you can believe that the subject
race is biologically different.

There were quite considerable anato-
mical differences were supposed to
exist. But this nonsense about
Europeans being subject to sunstroke,
and Orientals not, was the most
cherished superstition of all. The
thin skull was the mark of racial ,
superiority, and the pith-helmet 25
was a sort of emblem of imperialism.‘

In his essay on Kipline he does not excuse him for
dedicating his art to imperialism:

Kipling sold out to the British
governing class, not financially but
emotionally, this warped his political
judgement, for the British ruling
class were not what he imagined, and
it led hi3 into abysses of folly and
snobbery. 4

23Atkins, pp. cit., p. 75.
24"Rudyard Kipling," J. Cite , pp. 158-59'

192

And, in his "Reflections on Gandhi," he incidentally re—
fers to the policy of expediency followed by the British
in India:

It was...apparent that the British

were making use of him. Strictly

Speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an

enemy, but since in every crisis he

would exert himself to prevent vio-

lence——which, from the British point

of view, meant preventing any effece

tive action whatever—~he could be re-

garded as our man. In private thgg

was sometimes cynically admitted.

On the rational plain, Orwell has a very well-bal-
anced view of the place of British imperialism in world
history. But his first reaction to it was emotional.
And at this level he exhibits a strongly ambivalent at-
titude towards it. The bitterness has already been des-
cribed. But the other side remains. Atkins does not
agree with Muggeridge's view of Orwell's enchantment with
certain aSpects of imperialism:

I don't think it is true to say that
he romanticized the Raj, but I do think
that he probably romanticized the part
he could play in humanizing the Raj.
But there is some truth in Muggeridge's observation
that a

tremendous struggle went on inside

25

2692. 933., p. 77.

9p. cit., p. 178.

193

Orwell between one side of his
charactpr, a sort of Brushwood
Boy side, which made him admire
the insolencezand good looks of
Verrall, and a deep intellectual
disapprobation of everything
Verrall stood for.27

Orwell's fascination for some aspects of Verral' s

." N

‘ "‘ ' . .4 1- w
. 1: r**’ a“ rm~.~*. .; was». .swnua.

6':

character is obviously symptomatic of this streak in

him:

Again:

27

Up and down India, wherever he was
stationed, he left behind him a

trail of insulted people, neglected
duties andunpaid bills. Yet the
disgraces that ought to have fallen
on him never did, he bore a charmed
life, and it was not only the handle
to his name that served him. There
was something in his eye before which
duns, burra memsahibs and even colonels
quailed. (p. 175)

Spending, or rather owing, fabulous
sums on clothes, he yet lived almost
as ascetically as a monk. He excer-
cised himself ceaselessly and brutally,
rationed his drinks and his cigarettes,
slept on a camp bed (in silk pyjamas)
and bathed in cold water in the bitter-
est winter. Horsemanship and pysical
fitness were the only gods he knew.

The stamp of hooves on the maiden, the
strong, poised feeling of.his body,
wedded centaur-like to the saddle,

the polo-sticks springy in his hand---
these were his religion, the breath

of his life. (p. 175)

0p. cit., p. 46.

194

It is interesting here to mention what Orwell himself

looked like when he was at Eton:

Ruth Pitter, some years Orwell's sen-
ior, remembers meeting him (Orwell)...
a youth of seventeen on holiday at the
flat his family then had in Mall Cham-
bers, Notting Hill Gate. She recalls
a tall youth, with hair the colour of
hay and a brown tweed suit, standing
at a table by the window. He was
cleaning a sporting gun. There was
something arresting in the way he ---
looked up. His eyes were blue and
rather formidable, and an exact pair-
most people's eyes are not. His sight 28
was very keen, as I learned afterwards.

DeSpite his apparently military bearing, he could never

be Verrall's equal in physical fitness:

There was a curious lack of strength

in that tall, raw-boned frame.... The
Indian Police and possibly the O.T.C.
at Eton had set Orwell up for.life with
something in the nature of a military
bearing, but the vaulting of his shoul~
ders betrayed a poor chest, and he was
liable to bronchitis.

His partially for thegrand spectacle of imperialism

also stemmed from his love of England and anything Eng; k:

lish;

28
p.

Orwell, for all his critiCism of the
English, always remembered that they

.were his people, and for all his ac-

cusations against them of cruelty he
always remembered that they had in sea
them a strange streak of kindliness.
Years later in England, Your England,

Rayner Heppen Wall, Four Absentees (London, 1960),
22

195

at the time of the Second World
War, he was to proclaim this almost
with sentimentality. Even now in
Burmese Days, at his most bitter,
He does‘not for et it in his char-
acter of Flory. 9

 

g.‘

And his admiration for imperial servants with the
concomitant criticism of the'Left-wingers.originated,
at least partially, in his spiritual affinity with the
aristocracy and his poetic love for the Empire. To
the end

of his life he was scathing about the
hypocrisy of the vociferously anti-.-~
imperialist Left Wing, which hushed
up the fact that the fact that the
British workers' relatively high
standard of life was largely subsi-50
dized by the profits of the empire.

The recent prosperity of England has disproved
what Orwell said in The Road to Wigan Pier:

Under thecapitalist system, in order
that England may live in comparative
comfort, a hundred million Indians
must live on the verge of starvation---
an evil stateof affairs, but you
acquiesce in it every time you step
into a taxi or eat a plate of straw—
berries and cream. The alternative

is to throw the Empire overboard and.
reduce England to a cold and unimpor-
tant little island where we should

all have to work very hard and live
mainly 0n herrings and potatoes. That
is thegxery last thing any left-winger
wants.

29Ibid., p. 59.

30Richard Rees, George Orwell, Fugitive from the Camp of
Victory (London,'I9BI)T‘pT‘5I.

51

 

22. cit., pp. 191-92.

196
Anthony West says that Orwell suffered during his
stay at the school, which he calls 'Crossgates‘ in
"Such, Such Were the Joys," a psychic wound which con—
tinued to ache all his life long. The unhappiness of
his childhood, revealed in this way, has been corrobo-
rated by many of Orwell's friends and critics. He was;
physically uncomfortable moSt of the time; he was bul-
lied; he wasghumiliated by the snobbery of boys who
had more money than he had. Taking his cue from this
point, West comments that "the hurt child's feeling
that money is the measure of all things... is treated
as the final truth about the adult world in both Down
and Out in Pariswand London and Keep the Aspidistra
Flying."32 The spirit of the time is best described in
his own words from "Such, Such were the Joys":
There never was, I suppose in
the history of the world a time when
the sheer vulgar fatness of wealth,
without any kind of aristocratic
elegance to redeem it, was so obtru-
sive as in those years before 1914.
It was the age when crazy million-
aires in curly top hats and lavender
waistcoats gave champagne parties in
rococo houseboats on the Thames, the
age of diabolo and hobble skirts,

the age bf "knut" in his grey bowler;-
and cutaway coat, the age of The.» "

52"George Orwell," Pringiples and Persuasions (New work,
1957), pp.167;. Quoted 1n Richard . .oor has, 2223
Paradox of George OrweillgfidstfiLaésyette,,1961), p. 27.

197

Merry Widow, Saki's novels, Peter Pan
and Where the Rainbow Ends, the a’e
when pe0ple talked about shoes and
cigs and ripping and topping and
heavenly, when they went for divvy
weekends at Brighton and had
scrumptious teas at the Troc. From
the whole decade before 1914, there
seems to breathe forth a smell of the
more vulgar, un—grown-up kinds of
luxury, a smell of brilliantine and
creme de menthe and soft-centered
chocolates-—-an atmosphere, as it
were, of eating everlasting straw—
berry ices on green lawns to the tune
of the Eton Boating Song. The extra-
ordinary thing was the way in which
everyone took it for granted that
this oozing, bulging wealth of the
English upper and upper-middle classes
would last forever, and was part of
the order of things. After 1918 it
was never quite the same again.
Snobbishness and expensive habits
came back, certainly, but they were ,.
self-conscious and on the defensive.
Before the war the worship of money
was entirely unreflecting and un-
troubled by any pang of conscience.
The goodness of money was as unmis-
takable as the goodness of health or
beauty, and a glittering car, a title
or a horde of servants was mixed up:
in peOplefs minds wigg the idea of
actual moral virtue.

 

Orwellis schoolmates, being the children of this

0

age measured everything by these values. Being poor
was the worst of sins. It was—impossiblerto hide one's

poverty from the sharp eyes of one's fellows. Attempts

Baln A Collection of Essays by George Orwell (New York,
1954), pp. 40-41.

 

198‘
to lie one's way into a group higher than one's actual
place were quickly detected and the culprit properly
punished. Even if one did not lie, life was not easy.
Gordon Comstock's plight at his school is similar to
Orwell's at Crossgates:

They soon found out his poverty, of course, and
gave him hell because of it. Probably the
greatest cruelty one can inflict on a child is
to send it to a school amond children richer
than itself. A child conscious of poverty
will suffer snobbish agonies such as a grown-up
person can scarcely even imagine.3

A sense of values directly based on strictly
financial considerations was not confined only to the
boys. It was strongly ingrained in and continuously
preached bythe headmaster and his wife, Bingo, as the
boys called her. Bingo was always rubbing into the
poorer boys a sense of their place in society. The
place was decided by your birth and there was nothing
you could do about it. It was like the sin of bed-wetting
over which Orwell had no control but for which he had to
suffer nevertheless:

I knew that bed-wetting was wicked and
outside my control. The second fact I
was personally aware of and the first

I did not question. It was possible,
therefore, to commit a sin without knowb
ing that you committed it, without want-
ing to commit it, and without being able
to avoid it. Bin.was not necessarily
something that you did; it might be some-
thing that happened to you. I do not
want to claim that this idea flashed into
my mind as a complete novelty at this

34“. George Orwell, Keep the aspidistra Flying (London,
1954).p.53_‘.

 

199

very moment, under the blows of Sim's cane:

I must have had glimpses of it even before

I left home, for my early childhood had not

been altogether happy. But at any rate

this was the great, abiding lesson of my

boyhood: that I was in a world where it

was not possible for me to be good. And

the double-beating was a turning-point,

forit brought home to me for the first time

. the harshness of the environment into which
. I had been flung. life was more terrible,

and I was more wicked, than I imagined.

At any rate, as I sat on the edge of a

chair 1n_81m3s (the headmaster's office)

with not even the self-possession to stand

up while he stormed at me, I had a conviction

of sin and folly and weakness, such as I do

not remember to have felt before.3
Orwell suggests that by the time he left Crossgates he
was burdened by a sense of guilt he must expiate
although he could not understand the nature of his offense.
The inevitability of his doom was reinforced by Sim and
his wife who kept repeatedly telling him what the utmost
extent of his achievement in life could be. "The
conviction that it was not possible for me to be a success
went deep enough to influence my actions till far into
adult life. Until I was about thirty I always planned
my life on the assumption not only that any major under-
taking Was bound to fail, but that I could only expect
to live a few years longer.“ But Orwell seems to be
over-simplifying the process of his development and exagg—
erating the respect for authority that his early experience
bred into him. He must have begun to rise out of it
much easier than he claims. Richard Rees, who sees some

35. 'Such, Such were the Joys,‘ op. cit., p.13.

200

validity in Orwell's explanation of his own development,
is also Justified in being a little suspicious of it:

Orwell,...although he was brough up among
boys of whom the majority, though by no

means all, were richer than himself, had no
logical reason for feeling any personal

class grievance; and yet, as appears very
clearly in the essay §uch, Such were thg Joys,
where he describes his preparatory school,

he had already acquired an outsize chip on
his shoulder. If we could psychoanalyse
him, should we find an explanation for it?
Surely not, because psycho-analysis never
gets beyond describing what happened; it

can sometimes reveal, but it can never
explain. ‘Why, in a given set of curcumstanoes,
little Eric Arthur Blair turned into the
writer Orwell and died of consumption at the
age of forty-seven instead of becoming a
juvenile delinquent, or aged valetudinarian,
or a hundred other things, will always remain
a mystery. But his extreme and morbid
bitterness on finding himself among boys
whose parents were in most cases paying
higher fees than his own -- an experience
which was accepted by thousands of other boys --
does seem to suggest a touch of perversity or
cussedness in him from the start. Orwell
himself acknowledged that the Proggthean mood
can have an evil mutinous aspect.

The truth seems to be that, although he did, to a
considerable extent, accept the inevitability of his social
and moral inferiority to his richer schoolmates, the seeds
of revolt against this tyranny were being laid at the same
time. While he was inclined to accept suffering to atone
for his supposedly innate evil, he also had the urge to
rebel in different ways. His feelings towards his social

superiors were mixed. He hated them for being superior

36. Op. cit., p.22

201

to him and yet disliked to be one of them. Or he was
moved to shatter the system that made for such distinct-
ions. His suicidal tendencies were easily channelized
into a dedication to the cause of Justice and the mission
to help the underdog. Eton intensified further the
complex of all these inclinations. He describes himself
at Eton, in The Road thNigan Pier:

Oh the one hand: It Made me cling tighter
than ever to my gentility; on the other hand it
filled me with resentment against the boys
whose parents were richer than mine and who
took care to let me know it. I despised
anyone who was not describable as a gentleman,
but also I hated the hoggishly rich, especially
those who had grown rich too recently. The
correct and elegant thing, I felt, was to be
of gentle birth but to have no money. This
is part of the credo of the lower-upper-middle
class. It has a romantic, Jacobite exile
feeling about it which is very comforting.37

It was with these attitudes almost built into him
that Orwell went to Burma. And it should be borne in mind
that his experience differed only in degree, not in kind,

from that of other Anglo-Indian boys of his generation.

In Burma, in spite of his sincere desire to help
Burmans, he could not establish meaningful contact with
them. One reason, of course, was the natural difficulty
in understanding people of another culture. But the
main cause of this failure lay in the racial and colonial

situation in Burma at that time. The untenability of

37. Op. cit., pp.169~70.

202
the concept of the “White Man’s Burden? was coming to the

surface and the ruthlessness of the confused bureacrats only
helped to complete the impasse between the whites and

the natives. Since their job was confined to keeping
law and order without any regard to the economic forces
operating in the country, they developed some undesirable
traits of character. It was natural for a sensitive
individual like Orwell to find their company intolerable.
Between them and the natives with whom he could not
associate and who responded to him as to any other
European, he was thrown upon himself. Utter loneliness
and the frustration of tenderness made life hell. No
wonder Orwell left Burma hating everything connected with
it except its birds. Perhaps for him they symbolized

freedom from this hell.

Brander says:

When he wrote 'I was conscious of an

immense weight of guilt which I had got to
expiate," he was using the language of
psychoanalysis to say that he had chosen

the wrong sort of work and that he left

Burma worn out and ill. When, years later,
he completed his novel, he wrote contemptuou—
sly. He exposes the shabby side of the
Empire; he expresses the futility of it

in terms of wasted English lives. 8

It is important to note that the main object of concern
is the Englishman rather than the native. When Orwell

attributed his resignation from imperial service to the

380 Op. Cit. p 77:;

20:.
basic injustice he saw in imperialism, he implied the
injustice done to the subject races. But the real
reasons for his decision were more personal and selfish
than altruistic. The strain on his mind was so heavy that
he was haunted by it for a long time after leaving Burma.
Telling about the genesis of Burmesegggyg, he says, in
The Road to Wigan Pier, that "the landscapes of Burma,
which, when I was among them so appalled me as to assume
the qualities of nightmare, afterwards stayed so hauntingly
in my mind that I was obliged to write a novel about
them to get rid of them.'39

In spite of their ominous aspect, these landscapes
had become part of his being. His nostalgia for them
was characterized by a lovehate feeling as Richard Rees
observes:

Perhaps the most deeply felt thing
in the book is the author's love-hate for
the country of Burma, and.some of the best
writing is in the descriptive passages.
For example: iSome doves in a bamboo
thicket kept up a dull droning noise,
curiously appropriate to the heat--a sleepy
sound, but with the sleiginess of chloroform
rather than a lullaby.'

Some other descriptions from Burmeseggyg are also
worth quoting. The most memorable among these is the
description of the Burmese sky:

There was something horrible in it--horrible

390 Op. Cit. 13.141.
40. Op. cit. p.30.

204

to think of that blue, blinding sky, stretching
on anion over Burma and India, over Siam, \
Cambodia, China, cloudless and interminable....
Hardly a living creature stirred, except

men, and the black columns of ants,

stimulated by the heat, which marched ribbon-
like across the path, and the tail-less

vulture which soared on the currents of the
air.(p.32)

And the following is a vivid picture of the rankness

with which plants grow in the tropics and of the speed with
which plants grow in the tropics and of the speed with
which things putrify: ‘"The creeping jasmine, with tiny
orange-hearted flowers, had overgrown everything. Among

the jasmine, large rat-holes led down into the graves.‘I

The most atrocious aspect is, of course, the weather:
"The heat throbbed down on one's head like a steady,

rhythmic thumping, like blows from an enormous holster."

About the Burmese people, Orwell writes in The Road
to Wigan Pier:

One did not feel towards the 'natives' as one
felt towards the 'lower classes' at home.,
The essential pointgwas that the 'natives,’
at any rate Burmese, were not felt to be
physically repulsive. One looked down on
them as 'natives,' but one was quite ready

to be physically intimate with them; and
this, I noticed, was the case even with white
men who had most vicious colour-prejudice.

Yet if one hates a particular period in one's life, one's
response to everything connected with it becomes charged
'with similar feelings. And provocation by the silly
41. 0p. cit., pp. 173-74

205

hysteria of many Burmese did not help to reduce it:

InYHOulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated
by large numbers of people-~the only time in
my life that I have been important enough for
this to happen to me. I was a sub-divisional
police officer of the town, and in an aimless,
petty kind of way anti-European feeling was
very bitter. No one had the guts to raise
a riot, but if a European woman went through
the bazaars alone somebody would probably
spit betel juice over her dress. As a
police officer I was an obvious target and
was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.
.When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the
football field and the refree (another Burman)
looked the other way, the crowd yelled with
hideous laughter. This happened more than
once. In the end the sneering yellow faces
of the yo men that met me everywhere, the
insults hoo ed after me when I was at a safe
distance, got badly on my nerves. The young
Buddhist priests were the worst of all.

There were several thousands of them in the town
and none of them seemed to have anything to do
except stand on the street corners and jeer

at the Europeans.

This makes even Ellie's hatred of the native understandable.

Flory takes Elizabeth to a Ewe-dance. Orwell gives
a detailed picture of the Burman dancer's physical ugliness.
She does different numbers all devoid of any appeal to
the European taste. One of them Elizabeth finds simply
disgusting and Orwell agrees with her:

The music struck up, and the pwe-girl started
dancing again. Her face was powdered so thickly
that it gleamed in the lamplight like a chalk
mark with live eyes behind it. 'With that dead-

white oval face and those wooden gestures she was
gestures she was monstrous, like a demon. The

421 FShooting an.Elephant,‘ op. cit., piii

206'
music changed its tempo, and the girl began to
sing in a brassy voice. . . . .Still in that
strange bent posture the girl turned round and
danced with her buttocks protruded towards the
audience. Her loggyi gleamed like metal.
With hands and elbows still rotating she wagged
her posterior form side to side. Then--
astonishing feat, quite visible through the
longyi--she began to wriggle her two buttocks
independently in time with the music. (pfi92)
Orwell's satirical portrait of the corrupt and fat,
yet beautiful, Burmese magistrate is quite in place. U Po
Kyin's is one of the best portraits of Orwell's villains.
In delineating him, he achieved something very near
poetry. It is enough to say here that he is a villain
built on a grand scale. The nature of the colonial
administration produced such villains in plenty. They
were their own people's enemies worse than the British
officers could ever be. So far as it goes gagese Days
is faithful to reality. But the fact remains that it
could not go very far. Even the most sincere of writers
tended to respond to the total situation only in hate.
And hate does not lead one very far. It narrows one's
perspective. Burmese Days is at once a study and

reflection of such hatei

Chapter:VII

conclusion.

Tb recapitulate, Kipling's writing about India,
so far as it goes, exhibits a-surprising faithfulness to
the Indian situation as it was during his time. .His
honesty gives to his work an organic unity which carries
the reader's conviction. It is true that at times he
succumbs to the shallow Anglo-Indian belief that the
white man's rule as such is good for India and that the
India lying beyond the reach of the common.Anglo-Indian
experience is a weird, uncivilized worldfl But, on the
whole, he justifies the Anglo-Indian officers and soldiers
not merely‘because they are white but because they possess
those qualities of character which, according to him, make
them ideally suited for the task of creating a better
world order. It has to besdmitted that he is not fully
aware of the economic forces underlying British imperialism
but, since he is critical of the imperial organization
as he sees it and wants it to be transformed into a world
political order based on hierarchy and emphasizing
efficiency rather than the superiority of one race to
another, this ignorance does not detract from the quality
of his vision. In his treatment of the Indian scene he
seldom goes beyond the limits of his actual experience,
but when.he does so and makes use of his imagination, he

presents his material in the form of myth, thus avoiding
207

208

the possibility of giving a distorted view of reality. ,In
his early stories, he confines his writing to the life of
the Anglo-Indians. when he brings in Indian characters
he mostly deals with the deeper emotions which are common
to all mankind. lAdmittedly,.India, on.the whole, remains
for Kipling an abstraction and he, like most Anglo-
Indians, often experiences intense feelings of alienation
in Indiafi But his love of humanity enables him to over-
come these limitations'. In m; where he keeps the
action strictly within the bounds of his actual experience",
he succeeds, because of his genuine concern for mankind,
in being objective about the imperial relation between
Britain and India and notes, with deep concern, the
essential opposition.between the demands of love and friend- .
ship and work for a foreign governmentt

In spite of his liberal affiliations, lason, unlike
the conservative Kipling, is insensitive to this opposition
because he cannot rise above his cultural bias: He
professes sympathy with Indians but blames their troubles
on the Indian government, whereas those actually proceed
from the nature of the BritishpIndian relation, which he
upholds as beung wholesome and useful for Indiansfl As the
analysis of The Broken.§dad has shown, his real concern
is for the maintenance of the British rule than for the
suffering of Indians. Even in his criticism of the Indian
administration, he becomes ambivalent and virtually

justifies itL This creates a discord in the artistic

209
impact of his workfi

E.H§ Forster, in his ALPassage to India, is more
acutely aware than either Eason or Kipling of the sharp
division between the British and Indians’. But he does not
apply himself seriously to the task of exploring the real
cause of this division. .At first, he attributes it to
the Public School attitudes of the Anglo-Indians. In
doing so he is still endeavouring to find a solution of
the problem at a level within the reach of ordinary human
beings. But as the action progresses, it is found that
the Evil in the novel proceeds not from human but super-
natural sources and can be understood and opposed only
by the acquisition.of superhuman attributes like those of
Mrs. floors and Godbole. Reason and emotion are inadequate
to face it. A.further implication is that the Evil that
creates the muddle in India is peculiar only to that country.
In.EMrope it is possible for man to have a well-ordered
existence by the use of reason but in India nothing less
than the mystic trance of the Hindu can.make sense of
existence? ,This escape into mysticism stems from an irres-
ponsible indifference to the political solution and the
consequent failure to establish contact with the Indian
realityi The divorce from reality makes him ethically
oblivious to the fact that human problems in India are as
much amenable to human solutions as anywhere else in the

world. For the same reason his artistic vision.does not

210
remain organic and spontaneous but becomes contrived

and dishonest.

Unlike Forster, Thompson pays attention to the
political aspects of the problem in Indiai He believes
that India should eventually be liberated. But he wants
the struggle for independence to remain peaceful. The
English rule, he believes, is essentially helping India
progress. The cause of tension between thqunglo-Indians
and Indians, according to him, is lack of understanding’.
But he does not realize that, because the Anglo-Indians
do not belong in India and their stay is determined by
economic factors operating in England and in India, there
is little chance for the kind of understanding he advocates
to prevailt He himself shows little evidence of having
attained such understanding. Rationally, he professes
sympathy for Indians. But his deeper concern is over the
predicament of the Englishman in India. It seems that the
first is an excuse for his lamentation over the second.
This creates a contradiction in the impression left by his
workl The contradiction extends to his overall vision toot
On the one hand, he recommends action to help relieve the
suffering of mankind; on the other, he finds the Sadhu's
noneattachment quite commendable. The moods of nihilism
described in the novel are more powerful than those of
assertion. On the whole, because of his lack of experience,

his novels remain mere collections of discussions while

211
his characters are not convincing human.beings but mere

mouthpieces for conducting a discussion;

George Orwell's is a moving picture of how a sensitive
English man reacts to the situation created by imperialism.
For Flory, in.§urmese Dayg, existence in Burma becomes
intolerable. The philistinism of the.Anglo-Indians nau-
seates him but they are the only people he can associate
with, because, in his situation, communication with the
Burmese is impossible. Disgusted by this state of affairs,
he responds to the entire situation in hatefl He hates
not only the Anglo-Indians but everything about Burma.
Flory embodies George Orwell's own experience in Burma.
Desiring to do what was right, Orwell found himself caught
between the tyranny of imperialism, the coarseness of Anglo-
Indian officers and his failure to belong in Burmal The
solution was not made easier by the Burmese hatred for the
British. So whereas he felt disgusted with his own.com-
patriots, he also hated the guts of the Buddhist priests
for inciting political trouble. Even the Burmese landscape
became so deeply associated with these feelings of hatred
that it continued to haunt him even after he left Burma.
The novel was written in order to exercise this obsessionfi
Burmese Days depicts a deeply felt experience but it also
shows the necessary limitations of that experiencet

The work of these five writers constitutes only a

small fraction of the total literary output of the Anglo-

212
Indians in the form of fiction. But it illustrates the
basic problem of allvAnglo-Indian.writers, namely, the
difficulty to establish a close contact with the total
reality of the Indian scene and to be objective about it.
Ironically enough, the separation between the Anglo-Indian
-s and Indians reached a climax during the period when the
professed British policy was emphatically one of helping
the development of India and of fostering good will
between the English and the Indians. The works of fiction
studied here span this period very closely and reflect
the separation between the rulers and their subjects in
many ways.

The reason for the ultimate failure of the professed
British policy in India lay in the basically untenable
nature of the imperial relation between Britain and India.
So long as the East India Company was primarily a commer-
cial enterprise, the.Anglo-Indians could, to a certain:
extent, experience and view the Indian social reality
from the inside, because, as merchants, they came into
social contact with Indians and were'influenced by their
culture. But as the military and political strength of
the company increased and it emerged as a dominant politi-
cal power in the sub-continent, it could hold the terri-
tories under its sway by force. As a result, not only
did the Anglo-Indians} need to adjust themselves to
native customs decrease but their own culture,.automatica-

11y or through their deliberate efforts, began to

213‘
influence Indians. Gradually they found in their presumed
duty to westernize India a justification for their occu-
pation of the country. This mystique of the white wands
Burden, to use a phrase coined by Kipling, was fundamen-
tally, however, but a rationalization of Britain's
economic interest in India. The .Anglo-Indians took
it very seriously not so much because of altruistic
motives as to their own need to lessen the rigors of their
state of virtual exile in India by creating an environment
congenial to their way of life. The spread of western
ideas, instead of bringing the Anglo-Indians and Indians
closer, loosened forces which caused further estrangement
between them. Since they were in a privileged position
it was easy for the Anglo-Indians to believe in their
superiority to their subjects and to feel sacrimonious
about civilizing them. They assumed that the Indians
would become fit to rule themselves at some time but only
in the distant future. with the spread of democratic
ideas in India and the emergence" of new politico-econo-
mic forces there and in England,,the Indians had to be
granted some constitutional rights and representation
in the country's government. The Anglo-Indians resented
this change because it jolted them out of their superior—
ity to, and seclusion from, Indians and challanged their
autocratic authority. They continued to consider them-

selves the benign rulers of India but the actual relation

214
between them and Indians, with the beginning of the

twentieth century, became one of people in hostile camps.
Thus, throughout their occupation of India, the British in
India remained outsiders failing to participate in the
country's life except in their official capacity. For
want of social intercourse between the two races, modes
of communication between them did not develop. As a
result, when an English writer residing in India or
coming from England tried to treat India in literature:
he was frustrated by a lack of communication and found‘
it hard to participate in the social reality of India
or to view it without bias. He was, therefore, likely
to give a false picture of India according to his own
bias or the expectations of the English readers for whom
he wrote.

The British relation with India which led to the
separation between Indians and Anglo-Indians, was thus
one of the most important features of the Indian situation
under the British rule”. Just as the Anglo-Indians were
generally divorced from the Indian social scene, they were
not fully aware of the true nature of this relation&
It was not easy for them to realise that the British rule
in India created more problems than it solved. The
concept of Whiteinan‘s Burden figures largely in.Anglo-
Indian fiction as a subject of treatment. But its
deeper impact on the Anglo-Indian.writers is seen in the

215

way it shaped their experience, and their outlook on
India. They were prone to justify the role of their
compatriots in the Indian situation, to suggest for its
problems such solutions as rationalized the need for this
justification, to seek escape from the complexities of
situation by refusing to notice them, or simply to

recoil from them in disgust. These limitations constitut-
ed the true burden of the Anglo-Indian.writers. It is
necessary to bear these in mind for a proper understand-

ing of their vorkfi

A Selected Bibliography
All works whose place of publication is not indicatedi
were published in London.
1. History

Al-Carthill, (B.C.H. Calcroft-Kennedy). The Lost Dominiog”
1927. . _

Ali, Muhammad. Thoughts on the Present Discontent, Bombay,
1907. ‘ .

Baillie, Adrian, et a1. India from_a Back Bench, 1934

Bevan, Edwyn. Indian Nationalism: An.Independent Estimate,
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Birdwood, Lord. A Continent Experiments, 1945.

 

Bombay, Government of. Scurce Material for a History of the
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Brailsford, H.N. Democracy for Iggig, 1939.

Brailsford, H.N. Rebel India, 1931.

Brailsford, H.N. Subject India, 1943.

Bryant, G.F. gandhi and the Indianization of the Empire, 1924.
Chirol, Valentine. Igdian Unrest, 1910.

Chirol, valentine. India, 1926.

Cumming, John (ed. ). Political India, 1832-1932: A Co-
opgm mtive Survey of a Century, Oxford, 1932.

Edwardes, Michael. The Last Days of the British.Empir§, 1964.
Elwin, Verrier. Truth About India: Can We Get It?, 1932.
Griffiths, P.J. The British Impact on India, 1952.

India League. Condition of India: Be the Re art of the
Dalegation sent toggnd a ‘y the I is League in l , n.d.

Kincaid, Dennis. Britigh Socia1.1dfe in India: 1608-1231,
1938. '

 

Morrison, John. New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth
Centw j: A Study of Social, Heligious and Polltlcal

217
Developments, 1907.
Mosley, Leonard. The Last Days of the jritish flag, 1961.
Pannikar, K.M. A.Survey of Indian Histogy,.Bombay, 1954 ed.

Rawlinson, H.G. The British.Achievement in India: A
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Ronaldshay, Lord. The Heart of Ar avarta: A.Study of the
Psychology of_Tndian Unrest, 1925.

Thompson, Edward. .The Reconstruction of India, 1930.

 

A Letter from India, 1932.

 

Enlist India for Freedom, 1940.

 

‘Woodruff, Philip (Philip Mason). The Men who Ruled India:
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Zacharias, H.C.E. Renascentggndia: from Rammohan Roy to
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Journals and Newspapers

1. Quarterlies

W
W”.
Whack;
W:
W-

2. Monthlies

Contem orary Review.

gfiplre Review. ‘
crtni htlyTeview .

fiatlonal Review.

Nineteenthlaentugx

 

 

3. Weeklies

Economist.
Idstener. ‘
New Statesman.
Observer.

S ectator.
Sunda Tlmes.

218
4. Dailies
Daily Herald. ,
a _y e egraph. ‘
Manchester uardian.
e Times.

5. Miscellaneous

Odd issues of the following periodicals have also been
used:

Civil and Military Gazette (Lahore).
Geographical Magazine.
Labour Leader.

Political Science Quarterly.
United Empire.

II. ANGIE-INDIAN LITERATURE (GENERAL)

Edwardes, Michael. "The Articulate Hero: Philip Meadows
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Iyengar, K.R. Srinivasa. Tndo-Anglian Literature, 1943.
Tndian Contribution to English

 

Tdterature, 1945.

Malagagi,.Bahramji. The Indian.Muse inggngTT§§,.Bombay,
l 7 .

Oaten, Edward F. .A Sketch of.Anglo-Indian Literature, 1908.

"A Study in.Anglo-Indian.Melancholy" ,
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Sencourt, Robert. India in English Literature, 1925.

Sharp, Sir H. Lnglo-Indian Verse, 1937‘.
Singh, BhupaI. A Survey of Anglo-Indian.Fiction, 1934.

III. RUDYARD KIPLING

Beresford, c'.c“. schoolda‘y's with Kim,‘1936.
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219

Braddyé Nella} Rudyard Kipling, Son of Empire, New York,
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Brown, Hilton. Rudyard Kipling} A.New Appreciation, 1945.

Carrington, Charles EL Rudyard Kipling} His Life and
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Chevrillon, Andre; Rudyard Kipling, Paris, 1936.
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Falls, Fyril Bentham. Rudyard Kiplingj.A Critical Study,
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Heath-Stubbs, John. gheigarklingPlain; 1950, 186-87, 2012
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Longaker, Mark, and Edwin C. Bolles. Contem orar ' lis

"Monkshood, GkF.‘ (V.J. Clarke), and George Gamble (7),
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Rudyard Kipling} In.Attempt at Appreciation), 1899.

Farkgr,‘MSB. yhe Religion or‘an Ki 11 , New Yerk,
1 99}

 

Routh, Harold Victor} ggglish Literature and Ideas in the
Twentieth Century: Inguiry into esent Di f cult-
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Rutherford, Andrew (eat). Ki li 's Mind and Art:
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ess, l9 . .

Shanks, Edward. RMd ard Ki ling} A.Btudygin Literature

and Political égyeas, 19 .

Tomkins, J .M.S. She Art of :Rgdyard Kiplig , 1959.

"The Accuracy of Kipling“, Ldving Age, CCCXXV (4 July
1925), 71-72.

Adcock, Arthur St. John. 'Rudyard Kipling', Gods of
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IV. A.E.'. MON

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