Kim Race Quotes

Take note that this is the second paragraphof the novel, and alreadyKipling is emphasizing that Kim is white underneath his deep suntan. Obviously, his whiteness is an important part not only of the novel's politics but also of its plot. However, even though Kim is racially a member of the elite in India, his social status is still low within that hierarchy. Kim is "a poor white of the very poorest," which means that his social status is at the bottom of the white elite.

Kipling also emphasizes Kim's Irishness at a time when being Irish in the British Empire would certainly have inspired a lot of racism and prejudice. So according to Kipling's imperialist ideas, Kim is an in-between figure: he is a Sahib, a white man (to use the language of the book), but he is also an outsider in the Sahib world. It's this position of being both inside the elite world of British India and outside of it that makes it possible for Kim to cross so many social boundaries.

There are all kinds of off-hand, brief references to "Oriental" and "Asiatic" characteristics in this book. Kipling is clearly writing for a late-nineteenth/early-twentieth-century British audience with definite, racist ideas about what it would mean to "lie like an Oriental."

Kipling's frequent use of these kinds of racial terms makes his novels hard to read today, since they often shake us out of our easy identification with the characters or the action of the book. But these terms also remind us that Kipling is writing about colonial India; it's a mark of how much things have improved that Kipling's racial terminology is so strikingly unacceptable by today's standards.

The Kulu woman's appeal is her rough, brash manners. Much of the time that we see her in the novel, she is sitting in a cart behind a curtain that is supposed to be protecting her modesty, but what kind of a modest woman can shout about "one-eyed and luckless son[s] of shame?" This is no bashful and blushing lady, to be hidden from the public eye; she makes a spectacle of herself through her voice even while she remains mostly hidden from sight.

Yet part of the implied humor of this scene is that the Kulu woman is not behaving at all like classy women of either Indian or British descent. She is certainly not acting according to the social norms of Victorian British women, with her pipe and her imaginative cursing. She is a deeply likable character, but the reason that she appears so notable in Kim is partly because of what she is not.

Here the Kulu woman is speaking approvingly of Anglo-Indians: men of British descent who nonetheless "know the land and the customs of the land." What the Kulu woman does not like are straight Englishmen: people who come to work in the Indian government who have learned Indian languages from books in English schools but who have no real feel for India.

The Kulu woman is not saying simply that the British government of India is a good thing, but that some British administrators are better than others. The ones who have grown up in India, with Indian nurses, are "the sort to oversee justice." What do you think of the distinction that the Kulu woman is making? What kind of administrators does Kipling want to see in India, and why?

This moment when Kim quotes this proverb to the lama is a strange one: Kim is talking about "a white man" as though he is not one himself. Kim's equal sense of distance from all races, which allows him to observe the habits and ideas of many different peoples, comes partly from his childhood background. Even though Kipling talks about race as something that gives a person status (see, for example, our section on "Foils: Kim and the Babu," under "Character Roles"), he also seems to think of whiteness as something Kim needs to learn how to perform in school, rather than as something that attaches to him by birth.

Kipling's understanding that each person's manners and customs are culturally determined and learned from other people seems kind of at odds with his totally hierarchical, rigid understanding of a "natural" racial order.

The Babu is not the only character who Kipling singles out by spelling his accent: here, we see Kipling trying to portray Father Victor's Irish accent. Father Victor is a good man—certainly more understanding of Kim's feelings than Reverend Bennett, the Anglican minister—but at the same time, like the Babu, Kipling seems to play on Father Victor for comedy. Father Victor is pretty clownish, with his frequent repetition of the weird exclamation, "Powers of Darkness!" (5.73).

How might Kipling's portrayal of Father Victor seem like an Irish stereotype? How do these stereotypes compare to other kinds of stereotypes in the book?

("Half-caste" means a person of mixed race in this context.) There is a deep contradiction in the way that Creighton encourages Kim not to become a horrible racist at St. Xavier's. He basically tells Kim that, since Kim can be completely confident in his own position as a white man ("thou art a Sahib and the son of a Sahib"), he doesn't need to hate black men the way that the more insecure, sometimes mixed-race students of St. Xavier's may do.

In other words, Creighton is saying that Kim doesn't need to be a racist for completely racist reasons: Since Kim is white, he doesn't need to prove anything by hating black people. Obviously, this is a twisted way of showing Creighton's supposed open-mindedness. However, Kipling's portrayal of Creighton in this scene is also complicated: Creighton does genuinely encourage Kim to learn more about local cultures, because "there is no sin so great as ignorance."

Kim's talent for disguise is one of the traits that convinces Mahbub Ali, Creighton, and, here, Lurgan to groom him for the Secret Service once he gets out of school. But since Kim knows that his greatest asset is his ability to blend into the crowd, he can't figure out how the Babu ("a hulking, obese" man) can possibly be a good spy. How would he ever blend in the way Kim can?

But while Kim's abilities to change his social status totally outpace the Babu's (and for more on the racial undercurrent of this difference, check out our section on "Foils: Kim and the Babu" under "Character Tools"), the Babu has his own talent for underestimation. Everyone assumes that the Babu is both straightforward and incompetent, and so he pulls off some great schemes against overconfident opponents.

Kim is only seventeen (much younger than the Babu) and also "subordinate to [the Babu] departmentally at present," as the Babu puts it so formally. Yet Kim basically tells the Babu to cut the crap and say outright what he is doing here seeking out Kim and the lama.

What gives Kim the authority to talk to the Babu this way? It comes from the first sentence in this passage: "I am a Sahib." Kim is actually pulling racial rank here, which he would never have done in the beginning of the novel. Kim's time at St. Xavier's appears to have taught him the advantages of being a Sahib in India, as opposed to his younger days.

We aren't the only ones who notice this change in Kim's racial identity over the course of the novel. The lama also points out that, at the start of their time together, he often couldn't tell—or didn't remember—Kim's ethnic identity as a white person. But near the end of their travels together, the lama reflects: "Now I look upon thee [Kim] often, and every time I remember that thou art a Sahib. It is strange" (15.13).

Do you notice a difference in the way that Kim behaves at the beginning of the book and at the end? Why does it matter that the lama no longer forgets that Kim is a Sahib?

The Babu feels completely assured in dealing with "black people," but he tells Kim that he "[does] not want to consort with [the Russian agents] without a witness." As an Indian man, the Babu implies that Europeans are beyond his power as a Secret Service agent. But as Kim points out after hearing the Babu's whole story of continuing to pretend to be a faithful guide for these guys even after they exchanged gunfire with Kim, "He makes them a mock at the risk of his life—I never would have gone down to them after the pistol shots—and then he says he is a fearful man … And he is a fearful man" (15.104).

The Babu is this bizarrely contradictory figure: he is cowardly and ridiculous and one of the bravest and cleverest men in the book. Kipling pokes fun at him for his over-serious manner, but he also acknowledges that the Babu has tons of amazing, daring adventures almost in spite of himself.