English writer and poet (1865–1936)
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, novelist and journalist, born in India. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first English language writer to receive it. He remains, over a century later, its youngest-ever recipient.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Birth Name:
Joseph Rudyard Kipling
Alternative Names:
R. Kipling
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Kipling
From Wikidata (CC0)
[W]e know nothing about their life which touches so intimately the White on the one hand and the Black on the other.... Wanted, therefore, a writer from among the Eurasians, who shall write so that men shall be pleased to read a story of Eurasian life; then outsiders will be interested in the People of India, and will admit that the race has possibilities.
"[16 October 18951: it is my fortune to have been born and to a large extent brought up among those whom white men call `heathen'; and while I recognise the paramount duty of every white man to follow the teachings of his creed and conscience as `a debtor to do the whole law,' it seems to me cruel that white men, whose governments are armed with the most murderous weapons known to science, should amaze and confound their fellow creatures with a doctrine of salvation imperfectly understood by themselves and a code of ethics foreign to the climate and instincts of those races whose most cherished customs they outrage and whose gods they insult."
[T]he proper way to handle 'em is not by looking on 'em `as excitable masses of barbarism' (I speak for the Punjab only) or the `down trodden millions of Ind groaning under the heel of an alien and unsympathetic despotism,' but as men with a language of their own which it is your business to understand; and proverbs which it is your business to quote (this is a land of proverbs) and byewords and allusions which it is your business to master; and feelings which it is your business to enter into and sympathise with.
the immeasurable gulf that lies between the races in all things, you would see how it comes to pass that the Englishman is prone to despise the natives-(I must use that misleading term for brevity's sake)-and how, except in the matter of trade, to have little or nothing in common with him. ... Now this is a wholly wrong attitude of mind but it's one that a Briton who washes, and don't take bribes, and who thinks of other things besides intrigue and seduction most naturally falls into. When he does, goodbye to his chances of attempting to understand the people of the land.