But it seems to me to demonstrate a lack of imagination, or creative sympathy and of empathy. You cannot enjoy Kipling but claim you cannot take him when he looks like an imperialist. You cannot have Shakespeare, but not like it to look like antisemitism (The Merchant of Venice), or misogyny (The Taming of the Shrew). In a superb series of posts last week, reading group contributor Palfreyman made the case for facing up and taking this difference on the chin: I won’t defend such statements, beyond giving the obvious explanation that Kipling’s conception of race and caste are different to ours. That would have been a fatal blot on Kim’s character if Mahbub had not known that to others, for his own ends or Mahbub’s business, Kim could lie like an Oriental. My experience is that one can never fathom the Oriental mind.ĭynamite was milky and innocuous beside that report of C25 and even an Oriental, with an Oriental’s views of the value of time, could see that the sooner it was in the proper hands the better.
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