We may as well start today with addressing the elephant in the room. Rudyard Kipling was absolutely a believer that British colonialism was fundamentally a good thing. He doesn't write of it as a uniform good, but in many ways this is because he sees that humans are flawed. He isn't supporting colonialism out of a nationalistic notion of Empire, but rather, he sees it as an almost sacred duty of good European folks (though especially the English-speaking ones) to bring civilization and Christianity to other parts of the world, whether they already had perfectly good civilizations and religions or not.
We will not, however, be addressing any elephants in today's book, as despite their appearance on the cover of my copy, there are no elephants as significant parts of the narrative in any of Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills. Sorry, Hathi, I didn't read the book you're in quite yet.
Plain Tales was Kipling's first widely-published work, so what we see here is a very young writer (these stories are from when the author was between 19-23 years old), working as a journalist in British India, turning his pen to (generally comic) fiction in order to fill a few columns in the newspaper he worked for. This, then, indicates the initial audience as well; he was writing for English folks in and around Lahore.
Perhaps due to that audience, Kipling has a particular focus on English characters; few stories have "native" protagonists, and many have only white characters at all. There are recurring characters at times, references to earlier stories abound, and it's very clear that the readership were following along from episode to episode.
The subject matter varies widely. There are a number of short romantic comedies and tragedies alike, tales of pranks gone horribly wrong or spectacularly right, several stories told in a remarkable vernacular about the goings-on of a military regiment... In short, a cross-section of what life in and around Simla during the mid-1880s was like, at least if you were an Englishman. The mental imagery created in some of these tales is amazing, particularly in the case of the military regiment's offerings, one of which includes a ghost horse with a skeleton and a pair of timpanis on its back galloping toward a whole battalion. It makes sense in context.
Kipling's narrator is a sort of self-insertion, usually standing to one side of the stories and simply observing what happens through his journalist's eye; while several times he is drawn into the narrative, this is rarely done in a way that gives him any great agency within the story. Rather, this device is used to allow him to act as a sort of straight man for the other characters' foolishness (in one case, having to race on a horse in a dust storm to try and stop an unfortunate aftermath to a friend's proposal to the wrong sister; the obvious mistake having been to propose to someone you can't clearly see in a dust storm).
It's hard at times to tell if some of the things Kipling says about India and its people are actually his views or if they are intended as satire. He clearly feels strongly for the country and its culture, but at the same time, he has an outsider's view, and especially feels that Western culture has some degree of primacy that should be brought in to sort of... improve on what's already there.
It's worth noting that the text that Penguin has used, at least in the edition I have (which is not identical to the one currently in print), is from the third compiled printing of these stories, which was partially adjusted by Kipling due to its nature as a book intended for the "Home" market, back in the British Isles. This has required some adjusting of text here and there, largely to make things that would have been obvious to his readers in Lahore more clear for readers in London. The endnotes provided do a good job of making it clear where this has happened, however, and much of the content that one looks at slightly askance now was there all along. It's not a surprise that this is coming from the same author who would, ten years later, write "The White Man's Burden".
It's worth noting that the text that Penguin has used, at least in the edition I have (which is not identical to the one currently in print), is from the third compiled printing of these stories, which was partially adjusted by Kipling due to its nature as a book intended for the "Home" market, back in the British Isles. This has required some adjusting of text here and there, largely to make things that would have been obvious to his readers in Lahore more clear for readers in London. The endnotes provided do a good job of making it clear where this has happened, however, and much of the content that one looks at slightly askance now was there all along. It's not a surprise that this is coming from the same author who would, ten years later, write "The White Man's Burden".
One last thing that I really have to wonder about, and do want to bring up, is the way of referring to race here. For some reason, the Indian peoples are referred to as "blacks" if their race is mentioned at all, as if they're the same as Africans. I really don't know for sure what to make of that; in a couple of places it's been described as looking similar to a "Spanish complexion", perhaps indicating that any darker complexion would be considered 'black' in this case. This would line up with one of the knights in the Arthurian legends, Morien, a half-Moorish knight described as "black of face and limb", despite by all indications being someone who would have something akin to a middle-eastern or, indeed, Indian complexion. This is one of those places where being American may be to my detriment in this case, as my specific cultural background gives a likewise-specific idea of what 'black' means that may not line up with literature that comes from a British background, particularly that from other centuries.
It's ultimately impossible to separate Kipling from the colonial views and mindset, in any case. He's a product of his time and culture, and his writings show that. While the racism on display isn't as hateful as, say, that of H.P. Lovecraft, it's still a clear through-line of sorts in the stories where Indian people appear. This isn't to say that the English get away without some solid jabs, but the overall form of Kipling's work still celebrates imperialism. It's simply impossible to escape from that in many of his works, and this early fiction puts it front and center.
It's ultimately impossible to separate Kipling from the colonial views and mindset, in any case. He's a product of his time and culture, and his writings show that. While the racism on display isn't as hateful as, say, that of H.P. Lovecraft, it's still a clear through-line of sorts in the stories where Indian people appear. This isn't to say that the English get away without some solid jabs, but the overall form of Kipling's work still celebrates imperialism. It's simply impossible to escape from that in many of his works, and this early fiction puts it front and center.
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