With Kipling, don't confuse racism / colour discrimination in the US sense with political views on empire. Kipling is very definitely respectful of people of other colours and cultures, and writes a lot about them.
But he also thinks that rich powerful empires have a duty to go out there, stop wars, improve the drainage, educate people and prevent famine, by force if necessary (and, of course, get richer still in the process...)
This is something a lot of people find very hard to take from a British writer, in the same way that anti-semitism starts a lot of alarm bells when it comes from Germany. Even though 'White Man's Burden' is actually about US imperialism...
That's why Mowgli has to leave the jungle, it's his duty to Improve the World. I completely agree with you that it's sad, and I think by the end of his life when Kipling had lost his beloved son to WW1 and was having second thoughts about a lot of stuff, he might have written the story differently.
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But he also thinks that rich powerful empires have a duty to go out there, stop wars, improve the drainage, educate people and prevent famine, by force if necessary (and, of course, get richer still in the process...)
This is something a lot of people find very hard to take from a British writer, in the same way that anti-semitism starts a lot of alarm bells when it comes from Germany. Even though 'White Man's Burden' is actually about US imperialism...
That's why Mowgli has to leave the jungle, it's his duty to Improve the World. I completely agree with you that it's sad, and I think by the end of his life when Kipling had lost his beloved son to WW1 and was having second thoughts about a lot of stuff, he might have written the story differently.