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Title Transcending the Raj: An Analysis of Rudyard Kipling's Kim in the saidian Orientalist Perspective

Author(s) Muhammad Safeer

Abstract That Rudyard Kipling is generally perceived as a hidebound imperialist and calibrated as a canonical construct is hardly contested. "With a view to relieving Kipling of the pro-Imperial parochialism broadcast through a finite set of ideas subscribing to the glory of Empire, this research focuses on a missing link in Kipling studies. That link, in my view, is related to the corrective influence of Kipling's writings on the British colonial apparatus, hitherto either misread or unacknowledged. Kipling's rectification of Empire, subtle and nuanced in its own right, has been glossed over. His realistic portrayal of India, its people and culture belies the myths constructed by 'metropolitan' Orientalists since the early colonial times. In his exploding the socio-cultural stereotypes about the East (particularly India) paddling in the West, Kipling transcends the Raj mantra It is true that he never seriously challenged the existence of Empire but the way it was conducting its business. In order to highlight Kipling's nonconformist position among the Orientalists at large, I take up Saidian Orientalist perspective and read Kim (with some other stories) vis-à-vis Said's theoretical assumptions in Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1993). However, `Orientalism' is not an unproblematic, singular or totalizing discourse, as Said has presumed it to be. Kim, written at the turn of the century (1901) and almost halfway through Kipling's life (1865-1936), is the only one of his longer works of fiction that can stand comparison with his extraordinary achievement in the short story form. Its magic has always gripped most of the Kipling readers and has, in fact, helped settle the complex Kipling question to a great extent. 'The central question involving this study is whether Kipling is a prototype Orientalist or the one who succeeds in transcending the Raj discourse built upon the nineteenth century racist notions of the white canonical writers like Lord Macaulay, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle and others.' However, Kipling's transcendence went unheeded in the normative readings of his oeuvre. This research project is an attempt to bridge that gap in Kipling studies and, by highlighting the metonomic relationship between orientalism, imperialism and postcolonialism, Kipling's contribution is placed in a new perspective

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2009-01-01

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