The gorgeous apparatus of the Raj might be blown away in a moment and the roles of master and servant reversed, as they are in the story called ‘The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes’, a literal-minded civil engineer who finds himself in the Village of the Dead, which turns out to be a Republic where he has to obey the rule of the Brahmins. ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, perhaps the most famous, certainly the most filmed of all Kipling’s stories, is a hideous parable of the rise and fall of British rule, where a couple of deadbeat rogues, Peachey Carnehan and Daniel Dravot, first terrorise the distant native kingdom of Kafiristan with the power of their guns and use Masonic ritual (to which Kipling was devoted) to inspire awe, then start building bridges and holding councils, before the inevitable mutiny and hideous bloody end.

Kipling was an imperialist, yes, but he was the most apprehensive and morally demanding imperialist who ever lived. And it would be a sad thing if the political correctness of today separated Kipling from his mass readership. How horrified he would be to think that he had become more admired by highbrows than the general public, for there was nothing he abominated more than the society of intellectuals and being forced to

Consort with long-haired things
In velvet collar-rolls,
Who talked about the aims of Art
And ‘theories’ and ‘goals’.

For Rudyard Kipling went beyond the art that conceals art to the art that conceals the artist. And he concealed himself too well for his own good.

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