And which is more, you will be a person my offspring
Published by Ravikiran Rao February 23rd, 2004 in Art / LiteratureA female colleague has put up a copy of the poem If… by Rudyard Kipling in her cubicle. But she has changed the last line to “And which is more, you will be grown up my child”
Such violence to my favourite poem hit close to my heart, but I could see that she was facing a real dilemma. The poem resonated with her because she felt that it was addressing her. The values that the poem extolls are human values, not confined to men. When the poem ends with “And which is more you will be a MAN my son” I can understand if it jars her.
On the other hand, the mangled last line is ugly. The last line that I’ve used in the title is horrible. The ugliness is not just because it doesn’t rhyme or scan, as the original ending does. It is also ugly because “Man” is more direct and specific than “Person”. “Man” evokes an image in your mind. Try imagining a “person!”
Then there is one more problem.
“Man” evokes much more in your mind than a male human. We associate the word with certain qualities. A man is unfazed by troubles. He takes risks. He has honour, etc. Even if we do not think that women are devoid of these qualities, chances are we don’t associate “woman” with those qualities. I am talking of the word, not actual women. When a woman displays the qualities we associate with “Man”, we praise her by attributing manly qualities to her. We of course expect a “woman” to be delicate, emotional, sensitive, etc.
The reason we have such associations is cultural. We’ve spent so much of our lives reading books and watching films about bravery in men and delicacy in women that these word associations seem natural to us. Now what’s a Rudyard Kipling who sets out to write a poem on human fortitude to do? Most good writers perform their task by using metaphors that are already resonate in their readers minds. It is easier to use a rose as a symbol of love than a cactus, though I am sure that a clever writer can do it if he tries. Of course, once Kipling writes his poem, it becomes part of the corpus of cultural influences that future generations are subject to.
So I do see the feminists’ point when they complain about sexist language. I do not agree with those who claim that words like “chairman” and “he” are actually gender-neutral. I mean, many people claim that my use of “he” in the last sentence of the previous paragraph - “a clever writer can do it if he tries” is just a convention we have adopted to refer to unknown writers of both genders and does not reflect male bias. I don’t think so. If I ask you to imagine a writer, you will almost surely imagine a male writer, and such unconscious assumptions do matter.
So I see the feminists’ point, but that is precisely why I disregard their advice. When I write, I write keeping in mind the flow of my reader’s thoughts. To take a prosaic example, if I want to illustrate a concept in economics using the example of a boss and his secretary, I don’t want the reader to worry too much about the genders of the boss and the secretary. I know that the path of least resistance is if I make the boss male and the secretary female. Otherwise he will go “hmmm…” and to that extent his flow of thoughts will be broken.
In other words, even though I agree with the feminists’ arguments, I do not share their agenda. If you do, you should certainly go ahead and try to remove male bias in language by using gender-neutral words, assigning non-traditional professions to men and women or by using the ugly artifact of alternating the gender of the hypothetical person in every sentence.
If you manage to carry through your agenda perhaps a time will come when calling my reader “he” in one sentence and “she” in the next may seem commonplace and the way I use words will seem quaint and archaic. I am okay with that. Where usage of language is concerned, I’d rather be a conservative.
If you enjoy the white supremacist rudyard kipling’s poems, you should be enjoying hitler’s paintings too
As long as the message has some value in it for you, does it matter who the messenger is?…”If” is a poem which conveys something meaningful to me, that its author might have been a white supremacist is immaterial to the content of the poem and hence to the joy it brings to me…
Similarly, there is a lot to be learnt from Hitler, he had quite a few intelligent things to say…and even the Ramayan tells you that there was a lot to be learnt from Ravan, even if he did things that aren’t considered right…
dunno tsquared. I haven’t seen any of Hitler’s paintings. Are they good?
They’re not really extraordinary, but are decent to look at…most of them are of the kind you specifically find on postcards…
As an aside, would WW2 have happened had Hitler achieved success as a painter?…I strongly believe it would have, even though he might never have become one of its principal proponents.
I cannot separate the message from the messenger. These two are integral. There is no shortage of good messages from GOOD messengers. So, I choose messages from the right kind of messengers.
I find it interesting that there are people like Ravikiran here who can enjoy the message regardless of the nature of the messenger. So, they can admire paintings of person like hitler independent of the heinous nature of the person. I am not saying it is right or wrong. My observation is that most people cannot separate these two dimensions.
tsquared. I dont think Kipling was White supremist. Much less do I consider him white at all. I believe he was one of the earlier writers to display a marked affection to India and Indian concepts. Not just in the Jungle book but even the Just So Stories and other books.
Ravi - I absolutely agree. It is quite difficult changing perceptions and believes with writing. One might, if one tried real hard and for really llong a time. but how many of us have the patience and the drive to do so. We would ather exist this way than go out and change it.
At the most one can always include both genders when one writes - Like I try always. but it is pretty difficult
Ravages:
In February 1899, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem called “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In it, he urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations.
An extract from the poem:
“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.”
The rest I leave to your judgement.
Ravages and Vipul,
White man’s burden and all that. Yet he is not white supremacist? If this is not white supremacism, then white supremacism has no meaning. Educated indians like Tagore found the white supremacist views of kipling are obnoxious — the notion that non whites need whites to become civilized. Race or color of the skin has nothing to do with any superior quality.
Check this news article on how kipling treated indians.
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IE420031023081358&Page=4&Title=Features+-+People+%26+Lifestyle&Topic=0&
Do you think before British rule indians were a bunch of barbarians in need to be civilized?
I repeat, contrary to what you may read in books like “Bell Curve” race or color of the skin does not make one superior.
Tsquared:
In your zeal to both espouse your cause as well as condemn me at the same time, you either hardly paid any attention to what my comment actually was, or simply assumed that I am stupid.
Of course I believe Kipling was a white supremacist, but I want to let Ravages arrive at that conclusion through his own thought, with the background material on Kipling that I used to arrive there. Hence the extract from the poem.
Other than stupidity, can you think of a reason for including that extract if I didn’t think Kipling was a white supremacist?
I stand corected. But I never, not for one instant, thought Indians were barbarians.
The nice thing about having more than one reader for your blog is that they do a lot of your work for you.
Yes, Kipling was a racist. He believed that his people were superior to Indians, *probably* for cultural reasons rather than because of skin colour or race, though I am not sure. He *probably* believed that the ideals described in If… were uniquely held by members of his race. But that doesn’t detract from the value of the ideals described in the poem.
Ravages - To say “I stand corrected” needs some courage… My appreciations…
Thanks Swami
For the sake of argument, I would like to forward an alternative view.
If we were to observe the political wranglings and motivations of the wranglers in pre-British India, we would be struck by the great influence of say the ideas of Chanakya or for that matter Machiavelli on the way things were done. Though British motivations were no less “selfish”, their arrival and in their wake the arrival of the ideas of liberalism and the dignity of men, seems to have exercised a tremendous influence on the way that people we now think of as great Indians viewed the world.
I contend that India like the rest of the world was a savage land, with a few exceptions, where military leaders had established strong positions. The India we so dearly love and cherish today would never have materialised but for the “selfish” and dastardly actions of such notorious charachters as Robert Clive and Lord Dalhousie.
Would a free and united India have been possible, without these bad(British) messengers? What would have been here if there had been no British India to precede the Union of India? To answer these and other pressingly inane questions we’ll meet same post, some other time…
Kipling was definately a white supremacist. But by that logic, nobody should admire marvels like St.Peters in Rome and the Sistine chapel because they were built/painted with the idea of one religion being supirior to another.
At that point Racism was highly prevelant. Americans haven’t started villainizing Benjamin Franklin just because he kept slaves have they. The times were different and so were peoples attitude. Art has to be appreciated for its own content not for its background histroy.
Kipling was definately a white supremacist. But by that logic, nobody should admire marvels like St.Peters in Rome and the Sistine chapel because they were built/painted with the idea of one religion being supirior to another.
At that point Racism was highly prevelant. Americans haven’t started villainizing Benjamin Franklin just because he kept slaves have they. The times were different and so were people’s attitude. Art has to be appreciated for its own content not for its background history.
When India got independence, we were over 600 princely states. Sardar Patel brought them all together to form 23 states.
Think about that: 600+ states!
The “united” India isn’t that old a phenomenon. Throughout our history, we have been fighting amongst each other.
Ah, for the lovely genderlessness of pronouns in Indian languages - nee, avar, voh, yeh.
Huh?
Pronouns may be genderless, but verbs do have sex right?
Interesting to note that Neil Armstrong’s famous words on the moon “One Small step for Man, one giant leap for Mankind” is actually grammatically incorrect thought it sounds very impressive. If he meant (as I assume that he meant) that it was one small step for “A MAN” but a giant leap for MANKIND which is actually the same as MAN. What he meat to say I beleive was
“One Small step for a Man, one giant leap for Mankind”
Very insightful piece, Ravikiran. It is a pity the subsequent discussions were hijacked by the issue of Kipling’s racism.
On the issue of gender, I notice that of late most technical journals originating in the States - IEEE Spectrum included - have dropped ‘he’ as a generic reference altogether; they use ’she’ instead. Another example of the political-correctness fever that has undermined the bigger issues in liberal politics.
And, incidentally, Kipling’s racism doesn’t detract from the fact that the Jungle Book, for instance, is still a great literary work.