The Anglo-Indian Community of the 1880s in the early works of Rudyard Kipling

Nikitin Dmitrii PhD in History Leading Bibliographer, National Research Tomsk State University 634050, Russia, Tomskaya oblast', g. Tomsk, ul. Lenina, 36 nikitds33@gmail.com Other publications by this author

The transformation of India into a country colonially dependent on Great Britain in the XVIII – XIX centuries led to the influx of a large number of Europeans to South Asia, who formed a special stratum of the population of the colonies. Anglo-Indians – Britons who lived in India on a permanent basis – made up the administrative and administrative apparatus of the colonies, managed plantation farms, taught in educational institutions.  Being remote, but not cut off from the motherland, in the XIX century. it tried to preserve the way of life familiar to Great Britain, taking into account local, Indian peculiarities ^{[1, p. 153]}. These features were due to both specific climate conditions and the special position of Anglo-Indians in Indian society – as representatives of the people who conquered the country and radically changed its political, economic, socio-cultural appearance, they distanced themselves from the indigenous population of the country, representing a closed community.

The life of this closed community, however, was reflected in the Anglo-Indian literature, which began to develop simultaneously with the appearance of the community. The first works of Anglo-Indian literature date back to the last quarter of the XIX century. ^[2]. The main genre of Anglo-Indian literature should probably be considered memoirs – service in the East India Company and, later, the Indian Civil Service took many years, and returning to England, as a rule, was accompanied by writing an autobiography ^[3]. However, the heyday of Anglo-Indian literature, the emergence of widespread international interest in it is associated with the name of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1935).

Kipling's writing career began in the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette, in which during 1884-1887 he published many essays devoted both to the description of current events and sketches from Indian (Anglo-Indian) life. An interesting work of this period is the essay "Anglo-Indian Society" ^[4], in which the characteristic features of the community are shown on behalf of the traveler. The "tourist", who allegedly lived in India for several months, notes that before arriving in the country, he considered the Anglo-Indians "overbearing and arrogant," but "the first ideas turned out to be completely wrong." British residents of India are in closer contact with their Indian servants than is customary in England. In particular, the surprise of the "tourist" is caused by the fact that Anglo-Indians take into account caste differences and take them into account when interacting with indigenous people. In Indian conditions, where the varno-caste system was the fundamental foundation on which the life of a huge number of residents was built, respect for traditional religious beliefs was indeed an important condition for maintaining order in the country. Neglect of these traditions (even if emergency measures required it) often led to tragic accidents. Thus, in 1897, in the Bombay Presidency, the actions of the committee to combat the plague epidemic, which covered vast territories of the province, led to mass riots and the murder of the English commissioner ^{[5, p. 7]}, one of the reasons for which was the British ignoring the religious attitudes of local residents.

Another feature described by Kipling's "tourist" is the absence of "society in our understanding of the word" in India ^[4]. "Horse racing, dancing, balls and picnics" are shown as the privilege of a few army officers, since "every person performs one or another service" ^[4], which does not leave him free time. Probably, another reason should be considered the small number of Anglo-Indians and the relatively rare appearance of "new people". Therefore, the topic of small talk is extremely limited: "When two or three get together, older people invariably talk about their jobs, salaries or prospects; and young people, if they are in the army, talk about their horses. In a country where every Englishman has at least one horse, this is natural, but monotonous" ^[4].

The form of the essay – a description of the life of Anglo-Indian society through the eyes of a traveler – allowed Kipling to raise two related problems that will occupy a prominent place in the writer's work of the late 1880s - early 1890s. The first of them is "tourists" who arrived from England for a short time and broadcast their superficial judgments about life in India upon return. For the existence of the Anglo-Indian community at this time, the judgments of travelers become an additional irritant due to the fact that they paid great attention to the activities of Indian patriotic organizations (and especially the National Congress), which were experiencing an era of rapid prosperity in the last quarter of the XIX century. A similar approach is found, in particular, in the memoirs of the Protestant missionary G. Lunn ^[6] and in the Indian letters of the liberal parliamentarian W. S. Kane ^[7]. In turn, the Anglo-Indian community, for the most part, was strongly negative towards the national movement, since they saw it as a threat to their rights and privileges. A striking example was the struggle of Anglo-Indians against the adoption of the Ilbert Bill in 1883 on the restriction of racial discrimination in judicial proceedings ^[8], which showed the rejection by the community of the changes advocated by the leaders of the national movement. Therefore, the image of a "traveling parliamentarian" was very common in Anglo-Indian satirical literature. George Robert Abery-Mackay, author of the popular book "Twenty-One Days in India" at the turn of the 1870s– 1880s, wrote: "There is no more terrible game than this traveling member of Parliament of yours. This unfortunate creature ... will really decide to discuss Indian issues with you if strict precautions are not taken" ^{[9, p. 181]}. In his book, Abery-Mackay reflected the feelings of a significant part of Anglo-Indians towards travelers posing as experts in Indian affairs ^{[10, p. 60]}, and in Kipling's work this image was further developed – in the poem "Paget, C. P." (1886). It shows the prejudices and misconceptions of an "eloquent liar", a liberal member of parliament Paget, who came to India for three months to "study the East" ^{[11, p. 237]}. Paget considers the harsh climatic conditions of India a myth, believes that British employees here are "hoochers" who receive a "royal salary" ^{[11, pp. 237-238]}. However, a long stay in the country turns out to be an impossible task for Paget – unable to withstand the heat, mosquitoes, cholera epidemic, he escapes to England. Kipling, thus, ridicules "the idiots who have traveled the world that they do not give anything to the country" ^{[11, p. 239]}. In turn, Anglo-Indians serving away from the mother country manage a huge colony in difficult conditions, doing the work necessary for the empire. The poem also reflected the conservatism of the Anglo-Indian community – Kipling emphasizes that Paget represents British liberals who demanded reforms in India aimed at expanding self-government and increasing the representation of the indigenous population in government.

The second problem described in the essay "Anglo-Indian Society", which directly affects the interests of the community, is the growth of Indian nationalism. Like many Anglo-Indians, Kipling believed that the political demands of the nascent Indian intelligentsia had no basis and were "rather meaningless" ^[4]. Kipling's "Tourist" writes that "educated natives" who require political education, but "before they become suitable for anything, they need to be taught to use their own hands and English mechanisms..." ^[4]. This point of view reflected the views that became widespread with the expansion of the territorial possessions of Great Britain in the XIX century. The transformation of Great Britain into a powerful empire gave rise to the idea of a special, "civilizing" mission of the British in the colonies. According to this mission, the main task of the colonialists was to "educate" the peoples of the colonies, to familiarize them with the advanced achievements of European science and technology. Therefore, the desire of dependent peoples to increase their role in governance was perceived by a significant part of the Anglo-Indian community as inappropriate precisely because the "natives" do not possess the necessary – from the point of view of a European – public service skills.

At the same time, a smaller, liberal-minded part of the Anglo-Indian community supported the patriotic aspirations of the Indian intelligentsia. So, in 1885, the colonial official G. Cotton published the book "New India", in which he argued that the class of "Bengali babus" (intelligentsia educated in Europe) "owns the minds" of the whole country, and therefore the colonial authorities should cooperate with them, involving them in the management of India ^{[12, p. 3-5]}. In December of the same year, retired Indian Civil Service official A. O. Hume initiated the creation of the Indian National Congress, which united the politically active patriotic part of Indian society. This aspect of the life of the Anglo-Indian community is also reflected in Kipling's work. Kipling, being a supporter of the "civilizing" theory, in a number of essays and poems ridiculed both Indian figures of the national movement and their British supporters. In 1888, as a correspondent of the Allahabad newspaper "Pionir", he attended a session of the Indian National Congress. Impressions of what he saw made up the essay "Congress Research" ^[13], published in the "Pionir" after the session. Kipling shows the Congress as a meeting of unknown delegates who speak English poorly, run by "second–rate Englishmen" ^{[13, p. 58]} - General Secretary A. O. Hume and session President J. Yul. In the "Education of Padgett, a member of Parliament" written after Kipling's departure from India, he repeated this idea: "In the case of congressional meetings, the only notable fact is that the priests of the altar are British, ... and that all this is a British invention, supported by the efforts of Messrs. Hume, Eardley Norton and Digby" ^[14]. Thus, Kipling shows that the support of the national movement in India is the initiative of individual Englishmen, and is not characteristic of the Anglo-Indian community as a whole, regardless of the political preferences of one or another of its representatives. According to Kipling, an Anglo-Indian is a "political orphan" who does not seek to "be adopted ... by party grandmothers" ^[14].

In the collection of short stories "In the Highlands of India" ("Plain Tales from the Hills", 1888) ^[15] Kipling does not consider political issues and refers to stories from the life of the Anglo-Indian community – their relationship within the community and with the indigenous population. A characteristic feature of these stories is the independent existence of two worlds – English and Indian – emphasizing the isolation of the Anglo-Indian community as one of its most important distinguishing features. Anglo-Indians interact with the local population, Indians serve in their homes, nannies raise children, but there are different values, goals and desires in the life of these worlds.

In Kipling's works of the mid-1880s – early 1890s, the Anglo-Indian community appears closed from the "uninitiated" worlds, which reacts sharply to external stimuli - travelers criticizing Anglo–Indians, but not familiar with Indian conditions and everyday life, Indians demanding the expansion of political freedoms, often to the detriment of the interests of the community. Kipling's essays of this period, therefore, reflect not only the life of the Anglo-Indian community, but also the political, cultural, and social changes that it inevitably faces, despite its desire to preserve the existing order of things.