Thus Spake Rudyard Kipling...

[mcgillianaire]

"The responsibility for governing India has been placed by the inscrutable decree of providence upon the shoulders of the British race."

Comments

[smilingbuddha.livejournal.com]

He was a dick.

"Or walk with Kings- nor lose the common touch..."

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

Hehehe. Kipling is revered in the literary world but the quote is ample proof of how he and the majority of those running the British Empire at the time justified their imperialism. Interestingly though, despite the sadness of the quote he is also the author of my favorite poem, IF. I've known the poem for ages but when I came across this quote a few years ago, I wasn't quite sure what I thought of the bugger. Unfortunately my love for the poem denies me the privelege to think anything too harsh of him. I was thinking Kipling's modern-day avataar minus the flair for English, Dubya, might easily have said something like-

"The responsibility for governing Iraq has been placed by the inscrutable decree of providence upon the shoulders of the Bush race."

Re: "Or walk with Kings- nor lose the common touch..."

[smilingbuddha.livejournal.com]

you should post the poem :)

[hockey-girl.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't it be "Thus SpOke Rudyard Kipling..."?

Remnants of the British Raj...

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=spake (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=spake)

Re: Remnants of the British Raj...

[hockey-girl.livejournal.com]

Oh. Sorry. Thanks for educating me. :)

Re: Remnants of the British Raj...

[pappubahry.livejournal.com]

Did you miss out on Shakespeare? You poor thing...

Re: Remnants of the British Raj...

[hockey-girl.livejournal.com]

*feels ashamed about having to quote Skye Sweetnam here, but...* "I don't need to read Billy Shakespeare!"

[vingt.livejournal.com]

He was also a racist and a chauvinist, but that didn't stop him from being an amazing writer. I'm willing to overlook the Ethiopian's saying "Oh, plain black's best for a nigger." in How the Leopard Got his Spots for the beauty of the rest of the story.

[vingt.livejournal.com]

I correct myself - an amazing writer of fiction. I'm not sure in what context this article (http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/AmericanNotes/americanpolitics.html) was meant to be taken, but if it is just a social commentary told from his own perspective, it's a poor one.

OK, so he makes fun of rich white Americans:
"I went almost directly afterward to a saloon where gentlemen interested in ward politics nightly congregate. They were not pretty persons. Some of them were bloated, and they all swore cheerfully till the heavy gold watch-chains on their fat stomachs rose and fell again; but they talked over their liquor as men who had power and unquestioned access to places of trust and profit."

And this is almost certainly mostly tongue-in-cheek:
"Sweet and comely are the maidens of Devonshire; delicate and of gracious seeming those who live in the pleasant places of London; fascinating for all their demureness the damsels of France, clinging closely to their mothers, with large eyes wondering at the wicked world; excellent in her own place and to those who understand her is the Anglo-Indian “spin” in her second season; but the girls of America are above and beyond them all. They are clever, they can talk—yea, it is said that they think. Certainly they have an appearance of so doing which is delightfully deceptive."

But one notices that he doesn't see fit to mention Indian girls - they must be Anglo-Indian. And then... I don't even know where to begin quoting the anti-black paragraphs in the article. This is the first, and by no means most offensive, of them:
"Now, let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter, and through him the negro in service generally. He has been made a citizen with a vote, consequently both political parties play with him. But that is neither here nor there. He will commit in one meal every betise that a senllion fresh from the plow-tail is capable of, and he will continue to repeat those faults. He is as complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending, bungle-fisted fool as any mem-sahib in the East ever took into her establishment. But he is according to law a free and independent citizen—consequently above reproof or criticism. He, and he alone, in this insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman doesn’t count). "


I think I'm going to need to read a biography such as this one: http://www.booksunderreview.com/Arts/Literature/Authors/K/Kipling,_Rudyard/

Paraphrasing Lincoln

[pappubahry.livejournal.com]

I can't be bothered digging up the original quote, but ish:

Obviously if blacks and whites are to live together, one race has to be the superior of the other. I, like anyone else, would prefer that to be the white race.