Subject: RE: Gunga Din. Racist or just of its time?
From:
Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Feb 24 - 11:10 AM
The nature and reasons are irrelevant only to white European or EuroAmerican readers.
That doesn't make them irrelevant to someone of Indian descent who is likely to bring a different reading to the poem setting. And if a list of poems set in or to do with war was assembled for a class to study, this would fit in. Searching on British and war and India you end up with wide-ranging answers, because of the Indian soldiers who fought in other countries and continents. I thought I had a timely answer on one page, but the author was discussing the Boer War later in the Transvaal of Africa. So many colonial wars to sort out.
For many Indians, Gunga Din is a traitor. Not far down the page comes commentary from Arindam Banerjee:
I read Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" with the greatest pleasure. His insight into the true Indian character is most genuine and positive. Sadly, just as the British character has changed into some American, the Indian character has changed, similarly. As part of this change, jungles have been cut down to make more money. So that India Kipling wrote about is lost. Still, we do have his wonderful writing left, and so, even if he is abused today, it shows how relevant he was in his time.
As for Gunga Din, I am interested in him. He was a high caste Hindu loyally serving the British. Was he a traitor, or a person who knew that by serving a people with superior organisation and technology as well as possible, benefits would come to his own people in due course? I would like to believe the former, but I think that would go against the grain of most Indians.
Further down he gives a longer explanation:
Gunga Din is about the last name any self-respecting Muslim would take in the 19th century.
Gunga is the Goddess Ganga, the mother of Bhishma of the Mahabharata, brought down to Earth as a result of much prayer from the suffering Indian population, afflicted by the heat.
No Muslim has the name Ganga. It is pagan and idolatrous, and thus would be sacrilegious, especially in those times.
Din means day in Hindi, but Deen means poor and probably that is what Kipling had in mind. Just that Din sounds better on the drums than Deen. Deen is often used in Hindu naming, one of the most famous being Deen Dayal Upadhyay. Deen Dayal means being kind to the poor.
Gunga Din was a Hindu, 100%. After 1857 the Muslims in the British Army declined in numbers, for obvious reasons. Hindus got their chance, to succeed, as the Muslims had been responsible for the massacres of innocent men and women in Kanpur. Many Muslims were dispossessed. It took decades for them to make a comeback, till Sir Syed Ahmed Khan went to London and convinced the English that they were "brothers of the Book".
Ganga Din was most likely a Brahmin, for Brahmins were very poor so, Ganga Deen meaning Ganga the Poor was quite all right as a name for the poor Brahmin.
Gunga Din was a bhishti or water-carrier in function, but in practice no professional bhishti goes to the field of battle. He was a lowly functionary doing the job of a bhishti. An orderly, one of most low paid employees. Their jobs were to fetch and carry in general, but in GD's case his job was to supply water to the troops.
Not all the troops were British, and the non-British soldiers were high caste Hindus, of the martial type. They would not accept water from a low caste or a Muslim, but they would accept water from a Brahmin.
Kipling shows a very high regard for Brahmins, as evidenced in his story "The Miracle of Puran Bhagat". And why not, for the Brahmins supported the British Raj in the most ardent way, along with other high castes.
Like many discussion groups, this one has a lot of back and forth and descends into invective that isn't helpful. But it gives a view of Gunga Din from the other side.
Back to the object of thread title, racism is overt in other of Kipling's poems. Searching on his name with "war poems" and the results are more likely to show for WWI, but another poet rose to the surface in this search, an Indian viewing British warfare with Indian soldiers. This article is fascinating and links to The Gift Of India by Sarojini Naidu
Nine years after publishing Gunga Din, Kipling wrote The White Man's Burden. Read that and then read Gunga Din (pass one text over the other) and it seems fair to this critic that Kipling can be accused of racism, whether as a white savior (sympathetic) is another matter.
I've changed my mind a number of times through this thread and tracked down various points people have discussed. Links to outside scholarship helps for illustration.
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sj
