Stalky & Co.: Resituating the Empire and the Imperial Boy

Abstract

In The Contents and Discontents of Kipling’s Imperialism’, Benita Parry ascribes to Kipling an unflagging ‘lifelong devotion to dominant beliefs and values’ (52), asserting that ‘Kipling’s writings moved empire from the margins of English fiction to its centre without interrogating the official metropolitan culture’ (51). While Parry is able to make a quite compelling case by concentrating upon Kipling’s ‘Indian’ writings, her article makes no mention at all of Stalky & Co., which explores imperial issues within the context of the ‘home front’. As I observed in the preceding chapter, British imperial authority is a discreet, albeit crucial presence in the Mowgli stories of The Jungle Books. These tales render the imperial intervention Indologically and allegorically, thus eluding any direct and detailed examination of the motives, methods, and effects of British imperialism in India. It is as if imperial values are inscribed in nature, already there in advance of any particular imperialist force or faction. However, this naturalizing of imperialist drive and desire does not necessarily serve, in all cases, the ‘dominant beliefs and values’ of British imperial culture. Ideologies, one must recall, articulate themselves within an agonistic social and discursive context, each competing against others.