On the trail of Kipling's Kim

Understand

One gets the feeling that to read Kim is to read the story of Kipling's life as he would have liked to live it. Of course, Kim was an orphan while Kipling was not; and Kim entered adolescence speaking fluent Urdu and with barely any English, while Kipling, who moved to Britain at the age of 5, was probably proficient in the Queen's language at Kim's age. Kipling returned to India as a teenager, spent time in Lahore with his father, and clearly loved the place. He may have, through Kim, reconstructed the childhood he would have had if he had never left for Britain. Kipling's portrayal of both Indian and British characters in the novel is a joy to read. Teshoo Lama's other worldliness and aversion to getting caught in Samsara, and the fatalism and the superstitious character of the average Indian, all reflect his deep understanding of the nation's psyche. The British people that are portrayed positively, like Creighton or Lurgan, are the ones who have immersed themselves in Indian society and can communicate with the natives in their languages, while the ones who can't – like the two clergymen that Kim encounters – are caricatured and made fun of. In particular, Creighton is an ethnologist, much like Kipling's father who was an expert in Buddhism, and indeed Creighton acts as a kind of father figure to the orphan Kim. The British Raj was much larger than modern India; it included what are now Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Much of the tale revolves around the "Great Game", a phrase the novel made famous although Kipling did not invent it. This was a fierce competition between the British and Russian Empires for influence, particularly in Central Asia but also as far afield as Korea and the Caucasus. This account is based on the Project Gutenberg text of Kim; they have tens of thousands of free books including the complete works of Kipling and most other 19th century classics. All quotes are from that version and are indicated by italics. The illustrations below and the banner above are by Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, from a 1905 edition of Kim; they are now all out of copyright and available on Wikimedia Commons. Peter Hopkirk is a well-kno

The story begins

The story opens with Kim atop the great gun in the bazaar at 1 Lahore, in today's Pakistan. Lahore was briefly the capital of the Mughal Empire in the 16th century and contains some fine architecture in the distinctive Islamic Mughal style. In the first half of the nineteenth century, it served as the capital of an independent Sikh Punjab Kingdom, then after two Anglo-Sikh wars in the 1860s it became the capital of the British Raj's Punjab Province. Today the Punjab is divided between India and Pakistan, and Lahore is the capital of Pakistan's Punjab Province. Kim's full name is Kimball O'Hara; he may look like just another bazaar brat and speak Urdu better than English, but he is the son of an Irish sergeant who left the army, stayed in India, took to drink and opium, and died as poor whites die in India. Kim's mother, an Irish maid in a colonel's house, died even earlier of cholera (a scourge in those days among both Indians and British) in a town Kipling called Ferozpore, then a major British military base. Today is it called Firozpur, is in India's Punjab Province near the border with Pakistan, and is still an important military base. Kim, in his early teens as the story opens, knows only that his father's estate at death consisted of three papers ... On no account was Kim to part with them, ...It would, he said, all come right some day ... The Colonel himself ... [and] Nine hundred first-class devils, whose God was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kim, if they had not forgotten O'Hara. Kim carries the papers in a pouch around his neck and considers them magical; he has little idea of their real significance. Kim and friends are hanging about in the bazaar, outside the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum (see Lahore#Museums), when an unusual person appears, a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes, had never seen. ... At his belt hung a long open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. On his head was a gigantic sort of tam-o'-shanter. The old man turns out to be a Tibetan lama, abbot of a monastery he calls Such-zen. It is not clear where this would be, or even whether it is real or fic

The journey East

The lama's goal is to reach Benares (now known as Varanasi), the holiest city of Hinduism, and use that as a base to visit sites related to the Buddha's life such as Lumbini (where he grew up), Bodh Gaya (where he reached enlightenment), and Kushinagar (where he died). Along the way, he will search for his river and Kim for his bull. Before setting out they must sleep, so Kim leads the lama to the Kashmir Serai: that huge open square over against the railway station, surrounded with arched cloisters, where the camel and horse caravans put up on their return from Central Asia. Kashmir is another former province of the Raj, located North of the Punjab. It too is now divided, with Jammu and Kashmir on the Indian side and Azad Kashmir in Pakistan. Neither national government accepts the current dividing line; each claims territory currently controlled by the other.

Kim has a friend at the serai, a big burly Afghan horse trader named Mahbub Ali. Mahbub is a Pathan, a Pushtu speaker; Pathan territory is on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province of the Raj, now Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Like the Scots, Sikhs and Gurkhas, the Pathans resisted the English or British quite fiercely at one time and later, after being defeated, provided some of the Empire's finest troops; the Pathan regiments were nearly all cavalry. Mahbub is a Moslem like nearly all Pathans, and a Hajji who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Seeing the lama's begging bowl, he responds with God's curse on all unbelievers! I do not give to a lousy Tibetan; but ask my Baltis over yonder behind the camels. They may value your blessings. Most of his crew are hillmen from Baltistan; Kipling describes them as nominally some sort of degraded Buddhist and they treat the lama with awed respect. We learn that Kim had had many dealings with Mahbub ... [who] knew the boy's value as a gossip. Sometimes he would tell Kim to watch a man who had nothing whatever to do with horses ... It was intrigue of some kind, Kim knew; but its worth lay in saying nothing whatever to anyone except Mahbub. This time, Mahbub entrusts Kim with a secret message for a British officer in Umba

Kim finds his red bull

As it turns out, though, Kim does not make it all the way to Saharunpore. One evening en route, Kim and the lama go for a walk before dinner and notice some soldiers, an advance guard going ahead of their regiment to mark the camp site. Then Kim pointed to the flag ... It was no more than an ordinary camp marking-flag; but the regiment ... had charged it with the regimental device, the Red Bull, which is the crest of the Mavericks—the great Red Bull on a background of Irish green. This is of course Kim's prophecy. A bit later, the whole regiment arrives and pitches camp. Kim and the lama go back to their own camp for dinner, then return to have a better look at the military camp. Kim leaves the lama concealed nearby and sneaks in for a better look. He is caught by the regiment's Church of England padre who finds Kim's documents — his father's military discharge and masonic membership plus Kim's birth certificate — and summons the regiment's Catholic chaplain to help him figure out why on Earth an apparent thief speaks English and has these documents. Kim calls the lama to join them and explains I have found the Bull, but God knows what comes next. .... Come to the fat priest's tent with this thin man and see the end. ... they cannot talk Hindi. They are only uncurried donkeys. The lama joins them and there is a discussion involving Kim and three religious men. Kim acts as trans