<i>Plain Tales from the Hills</i> as Emergent Literature

When Rudyard Kipling made his literary debut in India in the late 1880’s, there had been semi-permanent British settlement in India for well over a hundred years. These Anglo-Indians had started to be aware of themselves as a community separate from the British in Britain, but their links with Britain were very strong. Most of them had been born British, and were likely to retire back to Britain when their term of office came to an end. Usually they were also prepared to make considerable sacrifices to send their children to Britain for an education which would prevent them from seeing India as their true home. On the other hand, many Anglo-Indians felt that the politicians and ruling class back in Britain looked down on them as poor cousins, whose views on Imperial politics were not worth having. In and of itself, this love-hate relationship with Britain was enough to ensure that the Anglo-Indian literary market was a complex one. There was actually a widespread feeling that the Anglo-Indian community had not produced literary talent proportionate to its size. Such dissatisfaction was voiced on several occasions between 1856 and 1861 in the pages of the Calcutta Review, where the main problem was diagnosed as writers’ reluctance to make use of local conditions and materials. In the words of one commentator, Anglo-Indian literature, “as far as the subjects treated of are concerned, [...] might as well have been written in London by one who had never crossed the Channel”. On the other hand, Anglo-Indian writers publishing in Britain had little hope of success if they dealt with daily life in India too exclusively. For readers in Britain, such materials could easily seem difficult and ultimately boring. Nor did it help that in