Is it time to forgive Rudyard Kipling?
The racialized notion of the “White Man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase.
The author of The Jungle Book also wrote a lot of jingoistic trash, but judging him by the standards of our time, not his, serves him poorly and obscures his true genius.
During his lifetime, Rudyard Kipling seemed like a man who could do no wrong. Like his contemporary Mark Twain, he possessed the enviable ability to appeal to both children and adults. Critics loved him, too, and so did his fellow writers. Henry James said, “Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known.” In 1907, at the age of 41, he won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Kipling, though, made one big mistake. He was an unabashed fan of colonialism, and that enthusiasm put him on the wrong side of history and tarnished his reputation beyond repair. Today he is known as the man who coined the phrase “the white man’s burden,” and that, sadly, is all most people know of him.
He is back in the news now only because a movie made from his stories in The Jungle Book is posting such huge profits that Disney has already announced plans for a sequel. And yet, even here, inspired by a movie and a book that has nothing to do with colonialism or the superiority of Anglo-Saxon civilization, Kipling has again suffered the sort of ritual beating usually reserved for disgraced dictators and unapologetic eugenecists.
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