On Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads

Rudyard Kipling remains amongst the most elusive writers who have escaped easy labeling. One is tempted, more than 90 years after his death, to level charges of “colonial apologist”, “jingoist” and “culturally obtuse” and while it is foolish to claim that such inferences are impossible to draw from Kipling’s work it is at least as foolish to claim that such adjectives present a complete and incontestable portrait of the man.

In truth, Kipling’s sentiments in areas ranging from the military to the cultures of the many lands he set foot in are enigmatic and even contradictory. If nothing else, he demonstrated a fascination with the customs of India and South Africa, albeit through the lenses of a Western Imperialist.

Nowhere is the conflicting spectrum of Kipling’s work more evident that in his military poetry, the best of it published in the collection Barrack-Room Ballads in 1892 (though some of the included poems were written in 1890).

The collection owes its existence to his unquestioning love for Queen and country, but there is much here of is his admiration for the courage of the English soldier as well as his, sometimes reluctant sometimes potent, admiration for those of different shades and different faiths who fought against and with the Royal Army.

Take Gunga Din, the most famous poem in the collection. It is also the sole disdainful picture of the British soldier here. As the soldier narrates in the poem he is a loud drunkard who physically and verbally abuses his Indian water carrier. In return, the young man does little but offer more water to his commanding officer. Ultimately, when the fort is under siege, the Indian sacrifices his life for his commanding officer, shielding him from a bullet and taking a fatal one himself. He dies in battle but not before making sue his officer has enough water to make it through.

Unexpectedly, the most touching poem in the collection is Fuzzy-Wuzzy. It is necessary here to look past the obvious racist title and consider the purpose of the poem. While not an attack on the army it is a salute to its formidable opponent, the Hadendoa people of northeastern Africa who bravely fought the British cavalry during the conquest of Sudan in the 1880s and, though ultimately losing to the stronger army, held their own with courage and dignity. There is a poignancy to the poem that takes the reader off guard, but it comes by cumulatively. It starts almost as a if in jest, with colloquialisms typical of a barrack barroom and arrives at its point of humanity and dignity before the reader even sees it coming or where it is heading.

Tommy is a pure tribute to the English solider and the often dismissive attitude of civilians for the fighting men once the danger of war has passed. It is told satirically and even cantankerously, but Kipling makes it clear he is sincere.

It is an exercise in futility to define Kipling the man. He was a man with a worldview shaped by four continents, assorted cultures and changing times. Perhaps Kipling himself never quiet understood his own emotions. All he could do then was documented the world before him as best he understood it, and that may be the key to understanding Rudyard Kipling and his work.