Rudyard Kipling's home in Mumbai

Rudyard Kipling’s birthplace is being converted into a museum. The timber and stone two-storey cottage was built before his birth in December 1865. It is located in the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art and Industry in Bombay/Mumbai and has always been used as the official residence of the school's principal. The cottage is a typical colonial building, with high ceilings and sloping roofs and is surrounded by a lush garden. The cottage has been lying vacant for almost a decade and some parts need urgent repairs.

Kipling's home museum, Mumbai

1865 was a significant year. Rudyard was born then but it was also the year his father, Lockwood Kipling, joined the Art School as principal. So this museum has been a possibility for a very long time. What took the Maharashtra state government so long to decide?

There are at least two problems associated with making this bungalow into a centre for honouring Kipling. Firstly, as History and Traditions of England blog noted, Kipling was only aged six when he left Mumbai. Although he often returned to other parts of India, especially Lahore, Simla and Allahabad, the Mumbai house cannot possibly represent his literary endeavours.

This is not an insurmountable problem. The Art School has a vast collection of paintings, dating from 1850, which will now be part of an art museum. Only one of the rooms will be called the Kipling Room and will be dedicated to Kipling material. In any case, Rudyard wasn’t the only Kipling to have made a huge contribution to Indian culture. Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard’s father, had a real involvement to Mumbai's architectural development. Lockwood’s architectural designs for the notable Victoria Terminus railway station building and the municipal headquarters opposite it were particularly important.

There is a more problematic issue to deal with: Rudyard’s colonialist reputation remains controversial for post-colonial writers in India and elsewhere. Orwell called Kipling as a "prophet of British imperialism", a man so devoted to duty, service and empire that his writing was bound to be full of prejudice, racism and an absolute belief in Britain’s military correctness. The White Man's Burden (1899) will suffice as an example:

Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

A Blog About History recognised the problems that the Mumbai museum faces. The municipal government officials with whom the Museum staff deal... refer to the building, not as the Kipling house, but the Dean’s house. Worse, they believe that Kipling is officially still persona non grata, a situation that is rather slow to change. But he was certainly a man of his time and he wrote better than any other writer about British empire-building. The new museum won’t whitewash Kipling’s pro-colonial stance but it will recognise his work as a product of his passionately-felt ideals. No English writer quite put India on the map as keenly as Rudyard Kipling.

Kipling, The Jungle Book
*
And it is not a problem for today’s children. The Penguin India Blog said the young students in her class adored the imaginative world that Kipling created and the fantastic pictures produced by the illustrators. Blog de Monica noted that The Jungle Book was still totally enjoyable for 21st century children. Even before reaching reading age, children have been able to understand the stories. breathedreamgo blog put Kim at the top of her list of loved books about India. She said she had been reading for 43 years and had never read a book that was so in the moment.

I believe the Maharashtra state government is hoping every child, young or old, who visits Mumbai will feel the same way.