All three of Kipling’s prominent native characters seem to symbolize India in itself, yet ironically, in varying manners. Wali Dad, calling himself a “Demnition Product” who “cannot make an end to sentences without quoting” British authors, and attempting to be “proud of his losing” religious beliefs represents present day India, split between a struggle to embrace either religio-traditional India and expel the British, or adopt Anglo-India and embrace modern secularism, i.e. caught between “the country of which he despaired, or the creed in which he had lost faith, or the life of the English which he could by no means understand” .Kipling establishes that Wali Dad was “suffering acutely from education of the English variety”, and it is precisely this element that prevents him from becoming a strong force in expelling the British. He stands in stark contrast to bellicose and passionate Khem Singh, and represents the modern impassive youth of Anglo-India who was thus incapable of stirring rebellion. Moreover, although an imperialist himself who deemed British rule as beneficent to India, Kipling emphasises that the characters like Wali Dad, who was symbolic of present day India of the time, were too caught up in either an excess of absence of religion (or rather, a religious fervor that was merely temporary), and angry dispositions; elements which prevented them from forming a significant part in the transformation of India, or a revival of its glorious, rich past.
Khem Singh, in turn, becomes a symbol of an India that is not too old nor too traditional, but one that cannot exist anymore, constituting the “other men who, though uneducated, see visions and dream dreams, and they, too, hope to administer the country in their own way--that is to say, with a garnish of Red Sauce.” Indeed, this is demonstrated through his return to the Fort, when he realizes that new India is unreceptive of his scheme of rebellion. It must be noted that Wali Dad is not depicted as incapable, rather, shown as unable to fit himself in the new sphere of culture that his education has bred, nor fit in with his religious lineage or its beliefs, leaving him to become an exile, accepted neither by the British nor the Mohammedans, and leaving his life to trivialities like becoming a permanent fixture in Laluns house reading books that were of no use to anybody. In contrast, Khem Singh, “a consistent man” unlike Wali Dad, becomes an exile of time; his generation is dead, the”glamour of his name had passed away”, and the new generations have a different conception of India,”many of them were dead and more were changed, and all knew something of the Wrath of the Government”, leaving him as an “interesting survival’ of an ideology that was now dead.
Lalun’s house is depicted as a one where endless people came to ‘smoke and to talk’, and we must notice Kiplings emphasis on the kind of people that arrived at her ‘electic’ salon; creations of both native and Anglo-India, of both religious and secular India. But most importantly, they provide her with information, making her a key figure in the revival of India’s former pomp and glory; indeed, it is this continuous talk which pesters Wali Dad which instead enables her to facilitate the escape of Khem Singh . Lalun’s profession itself forms a thorn in the side of the standards of morality of the west, but ironically, it is her who in fact becomes the ultimate “distinct proof of the ability of the East to manage its own affairs”, and not Khem Singh or Wali Dad. Indeed, Laluns beauty seems to' symbolize the ancient yet transcendent beauty of native Mughal India; it seemed to trouble “ the hearts of the British Government and caused them to lose their peace of mind”. She does not subscribe to the Anglicism of the “great idol called Pax Britannica”, and constantly reproaches Wali Dad for speaking in English.Interestingly, given the opening quote of the story from Joshua, we can draw a parallel between Lalun and the prostitute Rahab of Jericho on the city wall, who too was instrumental in helping her kinsman capture the city. Lalun too, with her overarching view on the city, from its decaying splendour with “ red tombs of dead Emperors” to the possibilities of the future “beyond the heat-haze a glint of the snow of the himalayas”, represents a force that will help India restore its former status as a great, capable ruler.
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