eJournals Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 39/2

Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik
0171-5410
2941-0762
Narr Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This essay analyses the representation of the Orient in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. It argues that despite the praise the novel has received for its realism, it in fact contains a large number of negative stereotypes about the Orient. These stereotypes not only serve to reinforce the idea of European superiority over the native population of India, but also reveal a key mechanism that has been used since the late eighteenth century to assert and maintain Western dominance, namely the subjection of the Orient to a form of temporal stasis. The repetition and sheer number of stereotypes in Kipling’s novel create the impression of a timeless and unchanging India, transforming its dynamic culture into an inscribed discourse, or in other words a text. The individual elements of this text can then be delineated and categorised, thereby rendering India as a clearly definable entity which can be understood and controlled in spite of its diversity. Potential sites of resistance within the novel, which can be located in the characters of Kim, the lama and Hurree Babu as well as its engagement with the Indian Mutiny of 1857, are neutralised through their absorption into this overarching discourse, which presents the Orient as a static homogeneous entity that is fundamentally inferior to its European counterpart.
2014
392 Kettemann

The Representation of the Orient in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim

2014
Nick Scott
The Representation of the Orient in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim Nick Scott This essay analyses the representation of the Orient in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. It argues that despite the praise the novel has received for its realism, it in fact contains a large number of negative stereotypes about the Orient. These stereotypes not only serve to reinforce the idea of European superiority over the native population of India, but also reveal a key mechanism that has been used since the late eighteenth century to assert and maintain Western dominance, namely the subjection of the Orient to a form of temporal stasis. The repetition and sheer number of stereotypes in Kipling’s novel create the impression of a timeless and unchanging India, transforming its dynamic culture into an inscribed discourse, or in other words a text. The individual elements of this text can then be delineated and categorised, thereby rendering India as a clearly definable entity which can be understood and controlled in spite of its diversity. Potential sites of resistance within the novel, which can be located in the characters of Kim, the lama and Hurree Babu as well as its engagement with the Indian Mutiny of 1857, are neutralised through their absorption into this overarching discourse, which presents the Orient as a static homogeneous entity that is fundamentally inferior to its European counterpart. In his seminal work Orientalism, Edward Said (2003: 3) argues that since the late eighteenth century, European culture has sought to “manage - and even produce - the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically and imaginatively”. This objective is reflected in popular Western discourse, which aims at “dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (Said, 2003: 3) through the internal consistency of its representation, and has aided the formation of a hegemonic view of Oriental culture based on Western simplifications and stereotypes. This is not to say that Western writers are always conscious of AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 39 (2014) · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Nick Scott 176 their deception; on the contrary, they are almost certainly unaware of the role they have played in the “dynamic exchange between individual authors and the large political concerns shaped by the three great empires - British, French, American - in whose intellectual and imaginative territory the writing was produced” (Said, 2003: 14-15). However, they are nevertheless responsible for a conception of the Orient as a static entity with permanent characteristics that can be defined and subsequently understood. They have contributed, albeit perhaps unwittingly, to the way in which the Orient has been “contained and represented” by the dominating framework of Western society (Said 2003: 40). In this essay I argue that Rudyard Kipling’s Kim is no exception in this regard, presenting the Orient as inherently inferior to the West. My reading of Kipling’s novel thus stands in contrast to the interpretations of a number of critics who have sought to redeem Kim from the charges of racism and imperialism that have been levelled against it by Said and others. These critics can generally be subdivided into two categories: earlier critics, who praised the novel for its apparent objectivity, and more recent critics, who have acknowledged a degree of racism within the novel but argue that this is offset by the resistive potential of certain characters. I will now briefly outline the interpretations put forward by these two groups of critics before proceeding to demonstrate that they do not stand up to scrutiny and explaining why Kim should still be considered a representative example of Said’s theory of Orientalism. During the 1980s and 1990s, critics highlighted Kipling’s affectionate descriptions of India as “an enchantingly colourful, rather magical place with plenty of remarkable scenery along the Grand Trunk Road” (Bristow 1991: 196) as evidence of his appreciation of Indian culture. Others claimed that Kipling’s novel actively rejects racial stereotyping in its characterisation (McClure 1985). Indeed, there were even critics who went so far as to suggest that Kim represents as “positive, detailed and nonstereotypical portrait of the colonized that is unique in colonialist literature” (JanMohamed 1985: 78). More recently, there have been various attempts to repudiate the charges against Kipling’s novel by locating potential ‘sites of resistance’ within certain characters. Don Randall (2000), for example, interprets Kim’s occasional disappearances from St. Xavier’s to visit the lama or pursue his own schemes as evidence that he is not wholly bound to his British superiors. Others such as Matthew Fellion (2013: 905) see the lama as the main site of resistance within the novel because he stands outside of the Great Game and rejects conventional assumptions held by other characters based on notions such as caste. Still other critics argue that it is Hurree Babu who represents a challenge to the overarching Orientalist discourse of the novel. This reading of Kim is particularly popular among the Subaltern group, who have used Gayatri Spivak’s (1988) famous essay “Can the Subaltern Speak? ” as an interpretive framework to The Representation of the Orient in Rudyard Kipling’s 177 examine narrative silences within Kipling’s novel. They conclude that although Hurree Babu does not have a voice that can be heard, the subaltern “can and does act” when he saves Kim and his companions at the end of the story (Khair 2008: 12). I shall start with a refutation of the claims put forward by earlier critics that Kim represents a non-racist or non-stereotypical portrayal of the Orient. It is true that Kipling’s novel includes positive descriptions of certain aspects of India such as the Grand Trunk Road, which he describes as a “wonderful spectacle” (Kipling 2002: 51), but it must surely be acknowledged that it also contains a large number of negative Oriental stereotypes. For example, Orientals are frequently characterised as duplicitous, in contrast to “open-spoken English folk” (Kipling 2002: 126). This opposition is referred to several times: Orientals are explicitly associated with lying when we learn that Kim can “lie like an Oriental” (Kipling 2002: 23), while the people of India are “eternally made foolish” because “the English do eternally tell the truth” (Kipling 2002: 119). This duplicity also extends to the use of money, as shown when Kim pays for train tickets and keeps one anna per rupee for himself, which is described as the “immemorial commission of Asia” (Kipling 2002: 26). Indeed, even the Westernised Hurree Babu is used to appropriating and concealing other’s possessions about his person, as we discover when he hides the packet taken from the foreign agents: “he stowed the entire trove about his body, as only Orientals can” (Kipling 2002: 232). The contrast between the European and Oriental view of temporality is perhaps even more significant. We are frequently told, for instance, that Orientals have little or no regard for time: we learn that “all hours of the twenty-four are alike to Orientals” (Kipling 2002: 26), and even characters in the employ of the British secret service such as Mahbub Ali possess “an Oriental’s views of the value of time” (Kipling 2002: 22). Mahbub’s retainers, too, have not yet unloaded the two trucks containing animals when Kim arrives, which is attributed to the fact that they are “natives” (Kipling, 2002: 116), and when they break camp it is done “swiftly - as Orientals understand speed - with long explanations, with abuse and windy talk, carelessly, amid a hundred checks for things forgotten” (Kipling 2002: 121). These negative stereotypes about the Orient stand in direct opposition to the portrayal of Europeans, who are usually presented in an extremely positive light in Kipling’s novel. For example, we are told of the practiced efficiency with which the Maverick regiment sets up camp: Kim is very impressed by “the routine of a seasoned regiment pitching camp in thirty minutes”, and the end product resembles “an orderly town” (Kipling 2002: 71) as opposed to Mahbub’s “untidy camp” (Kipling 2002: 121). Similarly, Europeans are characterised by their bravery in contrast to the perceived cowardice of the local population. This bravery is explicitly attributed to their ethnic origin, as seen for example when Kim stirs at Kim Nick Scott 178 the mention of war: “where a native would have lain down, Kim’s white blood set him on his feet” (Kipling 2002: 42). This practice of connecting positive characteristics with a European origin or white ethnicity occurs frequently throughout Kim, not only in passages by the narrator. The Indian characters in the novel, too, are complicit in this form of racial distinction, as for instance when Mahbub Ali reminds Kim, “Once a Sahib, always a Sahib” (Kipling 2002: 92). Rather than presenting a nonstereotypical view of India, then, I would argue that Kipling’s novel is in fact rife with negative stereotypes about the Orient which are contrasted with positive depictions of Europeans in order to imply “European superiority over Oriental backwardness” (Said 2003: 7). Such stereotypes are, of course, not unique to Kim. As Said (2003: 31- 32) notes, the word ‘Oriental’ had acquired a number of specific connotations by the beginning of the twentieth century, to the extent that “one could speak in Europe of an Oriental personality, an Oriental atmosphere, an Oriental tale, Oriental despotism, or an Oriental mode of production, and be understood”. What Kipling’s novel demonstrates, however, is not just that these stereotypes can be found in the literature of the period, but also one of the key methods by which Western superiority over the Orient was asserted and maintained. This method can be located in the different attitudes towards temporality held by Europeans and Orientals. In contrast to characters of European origin such as Kim, who is in a constant state of flux, the Oriental characters in Kipling’s novel are subjected to a form of allochronic representation which assigns them fixed characteristics based on conventional stereotypes. The Orient is portrayed in an ethnographic present that does not admit the possibility of change, but rather represents an inscribed discourse, or in other words a text. This notion of Oriental culture as a text which possesses permanent, definable characteristics is particularly apparent in the opening section of the novel. Teshoo Lama, a Tibetan Buddhist, visits the British-designed Lahore museum and is stunned by the array of Western Orientalist scholarship on display. The lama traces the life of the Buddha using the museum’s carvings, which are occasionally supplemented by the curator with books by French and German authors, and he is even able to show the lama a photograph of his own monastery. Although the lama is wellversed in the ways of Buddhism, he is clearly very impressed by the knowledge of the curator, whom he repeatedly refers to as “Fountain of Wisdom” (Kipling 2002: 11). The initial scenes of Kim thus present a clear “hierarchy of knowledge which privileges the British imperial archive and its Oriental scholarship (both textual and material) over the insufficient traditional knowledge of Tibet and China” (Towheed 2010: 12). The lama evidently has far greater practical experience of Buddhism than the curator, but this pales in comparison with the Western scholarship of the museum. Far from being a mysterious unknown, the Orient is represented as something which can be collected and catalogued, almost as if it were The Representation of the Orient in Rudyard Kipling’s 179 a British possession. This is precisely in accordance with the typical practice of Orientalism described by Said, which seeks to create an Orient “suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum” (Said 2003: 7). In contrast to this timeless, unchanging image of the Orient presented in Kipling’s novel, Kim himself is characterised by change. As a consequence of his familiarity with two different cultures, namely the India of his birth and the European culture inherited from his parents, he is able to move freely among different groups and change his identity almost at whim. It is this ability that makes him of such great value to the British imperial project, yet some critics have interpreted Kim’s liminal position within the novel as a potential site of resistance. Randall (2000: 12), for example, argues that his unauthorised absences from school and other clandestine activities such as becoming a Son of the Charm demonstrate a capacity in Kim “to resist, at least partially, the power that plays upon him”. Even if this capacity for resistance can be said to exist, however, it is never utilised in such a way that it represents a threat to the British interest in India. Indeed, in so far as they are aware of Kim’s misdemeanours, his superiors actually tend to be rather forgiving, and even view his actions in a positive light since they demonstrate Kim’s “resource and nerve” (Kipling 2002: 142) - two characteristics which are of vital importance within the context of the Great Game, indicative of the capacity to help preserve the British empire from external threats such as that of Russia. As a consequence, it is difficult to see how Kim can be interpreted as a site of resistance in anything more than mere potential. Instead, I would argue that the function of Kim’s character in the novel is akin to Said’s notion of the “median category” (Said 2003: 58) and thus very much a part of the process of controlling the Orient by encapsulating it within a dominating Western framework. Said (2003: 59) describes how the Orient became perceived as a “complementary opposite” of the West throughout history because certain familiar types or tropes were used in order to make it understandable to the European experience. Particularly where aspects of Oriental culture were radically different and thus seen to represent a threat, as for example Islam during the early Middle Ages, a middle ground was necessary in order to mediate this intercultural encounter and render it less threatening to the Western observer. New concepts such as Islam were portrayed as false imitations of previously-known cultural elements, in this case Christianity, thereby averting or at least reducing the fear of the novel customs of the Orient. It is precisely this role, I believe, which is fulfilled by Kim’s character in Kipling’s novel. His ability to occupy a medial position between the coloniser and the colonised, which stems from his hybrid identity as a white European born and raised in India, allows him to present the reader with an apparently inside view of Oriental culture and society while Kim Nick Scott 180 simultaneously filtering it through the lens of familiar experience in order to render it unthreatening for a European audience. There are two factors which make Kim ideally disposed to occupy this important role. The first of these is his youth: the fact that Kim is still a boy means that he is able to escape the stigma that was commonly attached to characters in Western literature who became integrated into a foreign culture. This is the case, for example, in the works of one of Kipling’s contemporaries, Joseph Conrad, who presents Kurtz as irredeemably lost after he becomes a tribal leader in Congo in Heart of Darkness. The difference in Kipling’s novel, however, is that Kim does not give up his European identity in order to become part of another culture. Rather, he is simply yet to acquire this identity, which he will later develop during his education at St. Xavier’s. As a consequence, he is able to acquire the inside knowledge of Oriental culture that is essential for his role as a cultural mediator as well as his success in the Great Game without the risk of compromising his European selfhood. The second factor is Kim’s nationality which, despite the narrator’s initial claim when Kim sits astride the Zam-Zammah, we later learn is actually Irish. This has been discussed most extensively by Tim Watson (1999), who argues that an appreciation of the contradictory position of the Irish within the British Empire is essential for an understanding of Kim. Watson shows how Kipling not only draws upon the popular tradition of likening India and Ireland in his novel, but also appropriates certain methods that were used by Irish rebels and reverses their import. The Fenian movement, which infiltrated Irish regiments of the British army during the second half of the nineteenth century, is known to have used code numbers beginning with A, B and C to designate its commanders, captains and sergeants respectively. This model is also used in Kim to refer to agents of the Great Game: Mahbub Ali is C25, his statements are corroborated by agents known as R17 and M4, and the man Kim helps to disguise on the train is E23. Watson argues that this similarity is no mere coincidence; on the contrary, the appropriation of methods used by rebels into the practices of an organisation which directly serves the interests of the British Empire is a way of representing and containing the Irish rebellion. The two figures of the coloniser and the colonised are subsumed by a single, hybrid identity, which neutralises the potential threat of the colonised. A similar process, I believe, is present in the character of Kim. As Watson (1999: 110) suggests, it is specifically Kim’s Irishness which gives him the capacity “to be a ‘native’ without being Indian, and to be a ‘Sahib’ without being English”. His hybrid identity allows him to occupy a liminal area in between two cultures - European and Oriental - which at once permits the existence of certain rogue elements within his character and yet simultaneously provides the means that can be used to contain them. As a result of his status as a fellow outsider, Kim is able to move The Representation of the Orient in Rudyard Kipling’s 181 freely within Indian society in a way that a pukka sahib such as Colonel Creighton will never manage. At the same time, however, any potential threat to the British interest in India is effectively neutralised by the European part of his identity, which leads to Kim working for the British secret service. His rebellious tendencies manifest themselves in various harmless ways, as discussed above, and are even considered beneficial for his role in the Great Game. Far from being a site of resistance, then, Kim in fact represents an enabling figure for the establishment and maintenance of Western dominance through his position as Said’s median category, which is made possible by both his youth and his hybrid cultural identity. The interpretations of critics such as Randall, who see in Kim a potential site of resistance, do not stand up to the scrutiny of close textual analysis combined with historical awareness of the period. The same might also be said to apply to other potential figures of resistance in the novel such as the lama, who is complicit in the British rule of India even if he is not an active part of it. Various critics have described the lama as a figure who is assumed to somehow stand outside of the Great Game, either because he is Tibetan as opposed to Indian or because his search is for religious transcendence rather than objects of material value. In a recent interpretation, for example, Matthew Fellion (2013: 905) argues that the lama “denies the existence of the categories that enable the kind of generalizing knowledge on which the Great Game depends”. As a result of his friendship with Kim, however, it should not be forgotten that the lama pays for the education which allows Kim to serve as an agent in the British secret service, and also provides him with the necessary cover through his role as the lama’s chela. As Karen Piper (2002: 53) points out, Kim’s friendship with the lama is, in reality, “nothing more than a means to absorb an object and thus own it”. He may initially appear to be outside the sphere of the Great Game, but in fact the lama unknowingly facilitates the activities of the British secret service in India, which are designed to preserve colonial rule and protect the British interest from external forces. Indeed, I would even go further than Piper in suggesting that the lama’s all-encompassing vision of “all Hind” (Kipling 2002: 239) at the end of the novel bears a striking resemblance to the ideal goal of Creighton’s colonial surveillance. For Kipling, it seems, political and religious pursuits are not separate activities with contradictory aims; on the contrary, in Kim they are shown to be mutually compatible, which lends greater authenticity to the British imperial project through the way that the lama’s search for spiritual salvation is effortlessly absorbed under the aegis of the Great Game. This “ideology of absorption”, to borrow Piper’s (2002: 53) term, is also found in other parts of Kim. One particularly notable example is the novel’s engagement with the Indian Mutiny of 1857, which is presented Kim Nick Scott 182 in a very subjective manner. The Mutiny was in fact a significant historical event, which served to reinforce the division between the British imperial rulers and their colonial subjects in India. The immediate catalyst was provided by the suspicion of Hindu and Muslim soldiers that their bullets were greased either with tallow derived from beef or lard derived from pork, which they objected to on religious grounds, although it is highly likely that the Indian rebellion was also symptomatic of an underlying resentment of white Christian rule in a country comprising numerous races and cultures. In Kim, however, this tension between the coloniser and colonised does not even register. Kipling provides the reader with what appears to be an Indian perspective on the Mutiny, yet the veteran soldier who Kim and the lama meet shortly after they leave Umballa does not acknowledge any dissatisfaction within the Indian ranks. On the contrary, in fact, he suggests that the Mutiny was simply the product of “a madness” (Kipling 2002: 47) that temporarily gripped the army. This statement is significant not only because it resembles the common British rationale for events at the time, but also and more importantly because it is presented from the perspective of an Indian character. In a similar way to Kim and the lama, a potential site of resistance is taken up and absorbed by Kipling’s novel: the threat of the Indian rebels is neutralised by the fact that the Mutiny is condemned by a member of the very group that originally perpetrated it. The final site of resistance that has been identified by critics can be found in the character of Hurree Babu. Much has been made of his status as a hybrid figure within the novel, combining characteristic Oriental traits with an enthusiasm for the positivism of Herbert Spencer and aspirations to join the Royal Society (see for example Knoepflmacher 2008). His heroics at the end of the novel, where he not only saves Kim and his companions but also the British Empire in India from foreign agents, have been singled out by critics as evidence of his agency. The Subaltern group in particular has interpreted this as a potential site of resistance within the novel, demonstrating a capacity for action that might be equated to a voice within the novel (Khair 2008). Despite his usefulness to the British enterprise within the context of the Great Game, however, I would argue that Hurree Babu is first and foremost a comic figure. He represents what Homi Bhabha (1984) famously described as a “mimic man”, a native who tries to become like his colonial masters by adopting their discourse. Invariably, this attempt is only partially successful and results in an amalgamation of Western and Oriental traits. Hurree Babu is clearly a very capable man, but his imperfect imitations of Western behaviour only serve to produce the comic effect of a “grimacing stereotype of the ontologically funny native, hopelessly trying to be like us” (Said 1987: 33). The Representation of the Orient in Rudyard Kipling’s 183 Indeed, a close examination of his presentation in Kipling’s novel together with other contemporary texts reveals that his character incorporates a number of the stereotypes that had begun to attach themselves to the word Babu in the late-nineteenth century. Initially it was used as a Hindu title of respect, but by the 1880s it had become a somewhat disparaging term as we can observe in intertexts such as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s The Poision Tree, where we frequently find the dismissive generic plural “Babus” (Chatterjee 1884). In a similar way, Kipling uses this plural in Kim to characterise an entire group, with Hurree Babu possessing several of its associated traits. He is described as a “fearful man” (Kipling 2002: 187), for example, which he himself attributes to the fact that he is Bengali, and the stilted form of his speech certainly appears to correspond with the stereotype of ‘babu English’, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “ornate and unidiomatic English regarded as characteristic of an Indian who has learned the language principally from books”. In light of the above analysis, I find it difficult to see how Kim can be seen as anything other than a demonstration of the practice described by Said as Orientalism. Kipling’s novel represents the Orient as a timeless, unchanging entity that is characterised by a set of permanent traits. The large number of negative stereotypes serves to subject India to a form of cultural stasis, transforming it from a dynamic country into a textual object which can be studied and subsequently controlled. This text is transmitted to the reader by means of a median category, represented by Kim, whose hybrid identity as a white European born and raised in India allows him to present an inside view of Oriental culture and society while filtering it through the lens of familiar experience. This hybrid identity has been seen by some critics as a site of resistance, but as I have shown its threat is effectively neutralised by an ideology of absorption that pervades the novel. Other potential sites of resistance such as the lama, references to the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and Hurree Babu are also negated in a similar way by absorbing them into the main discourse of the narrative. Consequently, I believe that the interpretations of various critics who have sought to redeem Kim from charges of racism and imperialism, either by praising the novel for its apparent objectivity or by identifying sites of resistance within certain characters and events, do not stand up to scrutiny. The novel continues to reiterate the contemporary notion of “European superiority over Oriental backwardness” that was first suggested by Edward Said (2003: 7) in his seminal work Orientalism, despite various claims to the contrary put forward by critics over the years. Kim Nick Scott 184 References Bhabha, Homi (1984). “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse”. October 28. 125-133. Bristow, Joseph (1991). Empire Boys: Adventures in a Man’s World. London: Unwin Hyman. Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra (1884). The Poison Tree: A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Fellion, Matthew (2013). “Knowing Kim, Knowing in Kim”. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 53. 897-912. JanMohamed, Abdul (1985). “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature”. Critical Inquiry 12. 58-87. Khair Tabish (2008). “Can the Subaltern Shout (and Smash? )”. World Literature Written in English 38. 7-16. Kipling, Rudyard (2002). Kim. New York: W. W. Norton. Knoepflmacher, U. C. (2008). “Kipling’s ‘Mixy’ Creatures”. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 48. 923-933. McClure, John (1985). “Problematic Presence: The Colonial Other in Kipling and Conrad”. In: David Dabydeen (Ed). The Black Presence in English Literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 154-67. Piper, Karen (2002). Cartographic Fictions: Maps, Race and Identity. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press Randall, Don (2000). Kipling’s Imperial Boy: Adolescence and Hybridity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Said, Edward (1987). “Introduction”. In: Edward Said (Ed.). Kim. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 7-46. Said, Edward (2003). Orientalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Spivak, Gayatri (1988). “Can the Subaltern Speak? ”. In: Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (Eds.). Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. London: Macmillan. Towheed, Shafquat (2010). “Kim and the master narrative: jatakas, the Ajaib- Gehr and filling in the gaps”. In: Shafquat Towheed (Ed.). A815: Reading Guide for Block 7. Milton Keynes: Open University. Watson, Tim (1999). “Indian and Irish Unrest in Kipling’s Kim”. Essays and Studies 52. 95-113. Nick Scott English Department University of Graz