Tacky, tacky, tacky. Last week, sci-fi novelist Bruce Sterling got snarky about India’s hurricane relief offer. I’ll be generous and speculate he was criticizing the U.S.’ tardy disaster response. But get this — he did so by quoting Rudyard Kipling’s colonialist landmark, ‘Gunga Din’ (via Amardeep):
Thank Goodness, Here Come the Brave and Generous Indians to Rescue Louisiana
Mood: incredulous
Now Playing: take up the white man’s burden, send forth the best ye breed…Where’s bloomin’ Rudyard Kipling when we need ‘im, eh?
… I was chokin’ mad with thirst,
An’ the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din.
… ‘E’ll be squattin’ on the coals
Givin’ drink to pore damned souls,
An’ I’ll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din!
Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Tho’ I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din! [Link]
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p>Incredulous is right. You thought Indra Nooyi was tone deaf? A middle finger reference is nothing compared to ‘Gunga Din.’ This is like praising Savion Glover’s dancing skills by comparing him approvingly to Little Black Sambo.
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p>It’s possible, I suppose, that Sterling is slyly calling hurricane relief the brown man’s burden. But that would be pretty oblique given the plain meaning of the ‘belted an’ flayed’ Indian servant saving a white man’s life. I don’t think this interpretation holds water, pardon the pun.
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p>Some bloggers are also criticizing a sarcastic Boing Boing title (‘Katrina: whew, here comes India to save us, at last!’), but Xeni, a huge Bollywood fan, issued a pretty straightforward clarification.
Here’s more reaction by Uma, Shashwati and Club810, and previous posts on India’s aid offer, Gunga Din, the white man’s burden and racist caricatures.
I don’t know Xeni, but I think it is possible to be pro-Bollywood and still have a haughty / condescending attitude toward’s India’s offer of aid at the same time. It’s a matter of subtlety.
You can like Bollywood b/c it is exotic, and cool, like something great that your younger sibling does, but that still doesn’t mean that you consider India as serious a country as the USA.
Given that India’s aid offer came long after similar offers by the Europeans, the question is: did she take offense at the European offers as well? If you look at her logic – the US should be able to take care of itself, and any failure to do so is a failure of government – it applies equally to NATO.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall her getting similar political mileage from the Europeans.
Now, this still might have been b/c of her audience. Perhaps her audience wouldn’t have gotten the point if she had remarked on European efforts, but they got it when she talked about Indian efforts.
Still, I don’t think that her response to the criticism was at all straightforward. Then again, I took little offense at her post in the first place, as opposed to Sterlings’
Many Americans – through no fault of their own – form ideas about India based on media that focuses primarily on the country’s assorted disasters. Famine in Calcutta, the Bhopal Disaster, etc. We were also treated to endless news stories praising Mother Theresa helping those poor helpless starving Indians, and barraged with very graphic “save-the-children” type junk-mail pleas to donate to feed more starving helpless Indian kids. So many Americans develop a picture of India based on the pictures our media feeds us – starving children, poor desperate hungry people everywhere, disasters, and maybe some saintly Christian like Mama T helping out.
I blame the US media, the suckiest in the Western World.
You know, I get the feeling that most Americans (i.e. white folk) consider knowing any Rudyard Kipling an acheivement along the lines of knowing William Blake or Henry James…they don’t see the insult in this… As I learned from my very own Gunga Din story.
At a high school service project (I was such a good girl back then!), I was part of a team replanting a community garden. As I ferried water back and forth for freshly planted zinnias, (no one thought to bring a bloody hose), the old geezer in charge of my section, a really sweet teacher, (second cousin to Methuselah I believe) found me to be such a cute and amusing sight he recited all of Gunga Din from memory to me on the spot.
I think he thought I’d be flattered that he knew “my culture.” Ech…I sort of smiled and squirmed, finished my watering and moved onto litter removal. I wish I’d had the balls to correct his cluelessness, but I didn’t.
Ha!
This is indeed amusing. I wish I could forward some emails to Bruce Sterling which I read in many Indian internet groups I belong to.(not in good taste either, bordering on supercilious and set to the tune of “how the mighty fall, with a thud”) He would be silenced soon enough. But silence is a more dignified response to such idiocy.(on both sides)
Talking of those emails, they were not nice! Not nice at all!! and I spent unnecessary time trying to explain how New Orleans was a real tragedy and different in many ways from Mumbai.
Lack of empathy, and arrogance, is distributed evenly across the world, and rests on strong pillars of lack of information.
Speechless….thy name is me.
Sumita
if he sought to put flair to his outburst through poetry… he’d best taken the fatalistic hindoo stance and quoted someone close to home EARTH, my likeness,
Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth,…
More thoughts from the man. note… this is from a thousand years back.
Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.
BTW – what’s wrong with the above passage. it’s an acknowledgement of the East’s magnanimity. The poem’s pretty insulting of Indians – but the excerpts listed above are not that badly put in this context.
I was given a set of Kipling books, when I was young by an Indian aunty. They were my first adult books. The set that I received was published in 1907 or thereabouts; and smelled the way all books should. I think over the years (summers mostly) I read, and quite often reread every story and poem, even the one novel (The Light That Failed) which is not worth reading, not by thirteen year olds anyway.
I think some Kipling stories are absolutely lovely and some brilliant. I don’t recall finding them patronizing or orientalizing (& etc), when I first read them. Later on I could spot it here and there, but their literary merit more than makes up for it. I think of Kipling as an “Indian”, and I think of him as one of the better Indian English writers.
I liked most of the “ditties” they are all so wonderfully declamatory. And Jungle Book is one of the best old-school children’s movies!
Nina,
One canÂ’t place all the blame on the media. Because you could then excuse so much racism by blaming it one the depictions of African-Americans in the media. Most Americans do have access to relevant information, especially the ones named above.
But, anyway, an American-born Asian (non-desi) friend of mine, perhaps because of all the outsourcing stories assumed India was far better off than it was.
It’s true, I shouldn’t have written “through no fault of their own.” The media doesn’t excuse behavior, but it does explain it. And yes, we should expect more from the bloggerati.
US news media is still the suckiest in the Western World, however. To be well-informed in the US takes considerably more work and dedication than in Europe, for example.
“And Jungle Book is one of the best old-school childrenÂ’s movies!”
The Jungle Book is absolutely lovely. I am a Rudyard Kipling fan inspite of his “white man burden” agenda. I had read Amardeep and Uma’s post a few days ago – they have a valid point.
I think Jungle Book as Disney movie was too simplistic (not at all good – but so are most of Disney animations except Fantasia and Bambi) and kills the beauty of the book. Therefore, I am a fan of Anime instead of Disney’s adaptions.
I dont care how good Rudyard Kipling is. His “Gunga Din” is racist. That makes him racist and a persona non grata( or whatever the apropriate thing is.)
Indians are usually clueless enough to praise people who think less of them.. like Churchill … and his quote about “Beastly people with beastly religion” (those who didnt follow the beastly religion were also beastly for him. Just a plain old racist)
Do Jews read Mein-Kampf because it may have good literary value??
Hey RC, can you educate me about what Churchill said and meant? Thanks.
I think a better comparison would be Leni Riefenstahl. She’s also a pretty complicated character, whose works have much aesthetic merit.
Or Wagner – there was a huge debate about whether Wagner should be performed in Israel …
Nina,
Riefenstahl-philia has some cache. It earns you a certain kind of cred with certain kind of people. No, I am not talking about just nazis.
Ezra Pound I guess would be the literary equivalent.
RC, Kipling’s characters are different than Kipling, the writer. I am not saying Kipling himself wasn’t racist, let’s make that another question.
One could argue that the character most negatively portrayed in the poem is the white soldier and not Gunga Din. I know that is not the full truth.
He isn’t that bad, you should give him a shot.
So confused. I thought the white man’s burden referred to the Irish Curse. And what’s Boing-Boing?
Nina P, may I respectfully disagree with you? I don’t find the European press anymore informative than the US press as a whole. I spend a lot of time on British political blogs and in my anecdotal experience the stuff they think they know. Have you read any of Have Your Say on the BBC website? Honestly. Some of the densest people on the planet.
Listening to BBC World in my office, I’m always amused at how superficially they cover US politics. It’s laughable if you know anything about the topic at hand. They have good stuff and bad stuff, all mixed up. I’d put them on par with NPR, quality wise. Have you every listened to Jeremy Paxman? He’s supposed to be so smart?
On my local, cheapie cable I get CNN, BBCWorld, Fox, C-SPAN (which is the best because it is undiluted), French, Italian, Mexican, Indian, Thai, etc, etc news (often in one hour chunks between the various speciatly ‘ethnic’ stations). I’d argue that overall we have a variety of information, which handles any shortcomings individual outlets may have. Yes, the individual media sucks and you know my ideas on journalism and the type who goes to j-school. Take some statistics, you dullards!
I often think you can say any tripe in an English accent and there will be a certain type of American who thinks it’s ‘smarter’ because of the way things are spoken. And no, I’m not talking about you Nina P, I’m talking about the ‘educated’ people I know here in Boston. Lord, if there is anything to turn you off blue state life, it’s a cocktail party with the MD-PhD set, in full-throated blue suit plumage, warbling tales of academe. Ugh.
MD,
I agree BBC can be “clueless” too in their reporting. However, their in-depth analysis seem to be better, the programs they spend quite a bit of time producing them. Same is the case for NPR.
The Economist (especially) and International Herald Tribune (which is mostly owned by New York Times) are more well researched. I have started reading openDemocracy and that is good too.
Usually, I give The Economist the highest rating.
My mantra: do not totally believe anyone totally and read varied sources.
Kush, I agree, and as I stated: the BBC and NPR are about on par with one another. Read a lot of different things and go for the data rich – I like the Economist too, mostly for those nerdy pie charts at the end.
MD, then you’d really like the stuff that the Economist produced for NPR’s “Marketplace” show. Well, except that they you might not like that they have to say, but hey, they’re judging W from conservative economic principles …
You’re comparing NPR is the best thing we have going but barely considered mainstream, with the BBC, which is totally mainstream. I agree NPR is pretty good, but it’s considered the pinnacle of news quality. The NYT is the best mainstream daily paper, but it often stinks, in my humble opinion (I know your mileage may vary).
Here’s an example of US newsmedia’s suckdom: When I lived in Geneva in 1999 (or was it 2000?), all the papers had articles on GMO crops and how their imports were being banned. When I returned to the US, my parents, who live in Urbana IL where I grew up, spoke wonderingly at the “bumper crop” of corn that year. “Such a huge crop the silos are overflowing at the railyards!” said Dad. “That’s because no one will import them because they’re genetically modified,” said I. “Nonsense,” sez my dear Papa, “we would have known. We read the papers (including the NYT!) you know!” I was vindicated a few weeks later when the US press finally started mentioning GM crops – months and months after it was old news in Europe.
Apologies from grammar-typos above. Also, I agree the Economist is a very good news source.
Sorry to comment 3x in a row, but I forgot to mention America’s Finest News Source – the only paper that makes me proud of American Journalism.
How come we go from hagiography to pathography with no pause in between.
On balance, I think Churchill should be considered one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. I do think he was wrong about India.
Unfortunately, most lives are complex that way. I think there is something in the modern psyche that cannot accept such complexities.
yeah, but Nina P, it works the other way too. We have stuff covered here that barely makes a splash in the European press. And, sorry, but NPR is mainstream. We are a big country – you will never have the kind of uniformity you have in small European countries; size matters. And I will never forget the conversations I have in Italy – the absolute garbage they tell me about America. Really, the average American and the average European are ignorant as hicks about most things. They just have different (small) data bases.
And Marketplace is conservative? LOL. I listen to Marketplace all the time and it is giggle-inducing. I suppose it’s that kind of magical thinking that has lead to Boston housing prices. Here’s a tip, geniuses: when supply, low, demand, high, then build more. I saw a place going for 900,000 dollars near the medical-industrial complex I work at. A group of baby boomers were perusing the place: I wanted to kick them. They will trade in surburban nirvana for this place and then pack the local city councils and squash development so their real estate prices stay high.
Really, Nina P and ennis, can’t we all agree on one thing? That baby boomers are horrible and deserve a good metaphorical kicking.
Ok, ignore me, guys. I’m cranky. Good G*d. What happens in two years when I turn forty? I am already the most cynical, grumpy, old-lady type there is. How much lower on the distrust of all mankind scale can I possibly go?
MD: I was referring to the Economist as conservative, and therefore its segments for Marketplace as being driven by free-market ideology as well.
Ahh, fair enough.
“Suburban Nirvana”? Wow. I’ve never met anybody who thought the Boston burbs were heaven before 🙂 Shrewsbury is perfect, eh? [Just pulling your leg. Personally, I can’t say that I’m fond of the Boston burbs, but I know that everybody has different tastes.]
More seriously, MD why not rail against suburban zoning as well? That takes much more residential space off the market, no? Why not let the market prevail there as well?
Make it a literal kicking and you have my vote.
MD,
you might try associating with other people. we have a working class here in boston, and immigrants, and musicians, and rednecks (known here as “massholes”), and people of color, and many many other wondrous specimens of humanity. if you don’t leave harvard square/the medical area, well that’s on you. enough with the ragging on boston already.
peace
Angie, You are kidding about educating yourself about what Churchill meant, right?? There was a huge debate chain here sometime back on Churchill.
I dont think I am going to waste any of my energy trying to convince other Desis, that Churchill was the reason India was not getting independance, that he called Gandhi a “half naked fakir who are seen a lot in east” .. there is just so much. Because, so many Desis think, like an earlier commentor put .. “Churchill was the great leader of 20th century” ..
I can understand a person of European ethnicity to admire Churchill. Hey, he got them lots of loot from a lot of places. I would love him too If I got some of it. But its amazing that Desis think he was great. What can one say to people who admire their ancestors’ oppressor.
Oh, lighten up siddhartha, I get out of the Harvard-Longwood area plenty and I’m only half-joking anyway. This is a comment section of a blog, how serious do you think I really am? But thanks for educating me about the fact that there are people of color, or the working class or massholes in Boston. Wow. How else would I have known that – except for the Boston natives and massholes who are my closest friends here.
One of the reasons this place drives me insane is precisely because of my association with people of color and the working class: you know who complains more than me about this place? The secretaries, transcriptionists, techs, etc I work (and socialize) with. Most of them take, like, five buses to work and work about five jobs. They really suffer and they don’t hesitate to tell me about it. If it’s tough for me, what’s it like for them?
But your point is well taken – it’s useless ragging here about it. I’ll e-mail my selectman and go to the next town meeting – I think that’s the proper place to rag. Better housing (zoning for suburban areas too, ennis 🙂 ) is what these people need. Oh, and I live in a building with subsidized housing. My neighbor is a person of color who has real problems affording things around here, like even food at the local Stop and Shop (which was going to be closed down because of rats. I am not making this up. I wish I was). My anger is really for her and the other people I know beyond the cocktail set.
As somebody who lives in the red state, I’ve got to say that elites on this side of the line are no more sufferable and no less full of themselves. Just as conceited but not quite as clever as those in MA, actually.
MD,
we can agree on that. but we’ve switched topics from the social and cultural behavior of elites, to economics. on the topic of elites, i can only say amen to ennis: elites are annoying wherever they are. but hey, power is as power does. and i do believe that wherever you go in this country where people are taught that they are so important, and where humility is a lost value, you will find pompous and insular conversations.
now if we get back to the economic question, we’re onto something else. you may have seen the recent report that boston is THE most expensive metro area to live in. believe me, as a freelancer, i know something about this too. the key bottleneck is housing. we have a supply shortage. i think from reading this thread that you and i agree on this. but the million-dollar condo yuppies that you deride aren’t really the problem. you can find them in any major city. the big problem is the lack of middle-income housing — there is no shortage of luxury or ghetto dwellings, but a dire shortage in between. part of this is that there’s not much land left. but part of it is that “boston” is actually so many separate cities when in another metro area the big city would have annexed all the others. (examples: houston, philadelphia, los angeles). all the more disincentive to elaborating a regional growth and development strategy. each tub on its own bottom. and there’s not much that any set of suburban selectmen are going to want to do about that.
peace
Coming in late to add, with a laugh, that tThe ultimate irony here is that BRUCE is also a big Bollywood fan. Betcha didn’t know that… but it’s true.
Not ironic at all. As I pointed out in comment one, you can be a Bollywood fan and still have a supercilious attitude towards India. It’s like the old remark about “I like him fine as my co-worker but I wouldn’t want him to date my sister.”
The question remains – why did neither Bruce nor Xeni pipe up when the Europeans started to donate?
CSF has some clarifications. Some of the guys might want to read it.
http://desimediabitch.blogspot.com/2005/09/gunga-din-debate-defending-bruce-xeni.html http://desimediabitch.blogspot.com/
PS: On this issue, I am just passing the information. However, I do agree that is just a kindagarden poem written 100 years ago – just keep that in prespective.
Which was turned into a movie for adults, in brownface.
Never read that debate, as I didn’t frequent this site as much as I do now. I just wanted a quick, lazy version of what he said to offend India. All I’ve ever heard or read about him was how great he was. I’m trying to google it right now….. Someone link me to that post, please.
Angie, here’s Winston light.
Thanks. That was a depressing link, but I needed to be enlightened. There’s so much to learn.
ho ho