Imperialism Influenced Kipling's The Jungle Books

From Savagery to Loyalty: How Imperialism influenced The Jungle Books By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain held power to India by means of colonization. This continued until the mid-twentieth century until India gained independence from Britain. Imperialisms implied motive is to land on an empty space which would initially “inscribe their linguistic, cultural, and later, territorial claims” (Singh 1). Modern Culture has written novels based on Indian colonialism, like Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books. Kipling demonstrates in his novel how western colonization impacted Indian culture by the symbolism of animals. For Instance, In the story “Mowgli’s Brothers” by Kipling, Mowgli is discovered by wolves and taken to council rock, which is run by a court of animals: a wolf named Akela and a bear named baloo. Akela leads this government-like court and it symbolizes Indian leadership and integrity. Akela rules the court “til at last he is killed by the wolves and a new leader comes up-- to be killed in his turn” (Kipling 13). The monkeys in the story can also be attributed to the differences between “civilization and barbarism and modernity and tradition” (Singh 3), with the law abiding animals as cooperating Indians and the monkeys as barbaric members of the jungle. The
“Rikki Tikki Tavi” is a mongoose saved by a British family and is taken care of. Rikki developed a bond with the British family and attempted to keep them safe by any means necessary. This can be directed to loyalty of Indian tribes who accept that imperialism provides them with law and order and they want to respect those that impose the law to them. Rikki fights against two cobras: Nag and Nagaina, who are symbolic to Indians who do not approve of the british and want to reclaim their land. Because the cobras showed a nuisance to the British family, the loyal mongoose helped bring the family to