I heard The Jungle Book and The Just So Stories as a sleepy-eyed child and, from time to time since, have come across snippets of Kipling’s writings, or the reminder of one, here and there. One hasty taxi ride across Lahore gave me a brief glance of Zam-Zammah; a dark-skinned child in red shorts, splashing in a stream, is Disney’s Mowgli; and a tiger-like cat is appropriately named Sher Khan.
Among the free downloads for Kindle, I found Kipling’s Kim, a book about which I had inevitably heard but, for whatever reason, never quite got around to reading. Two hours on buses and trains, the same again sat waiting around at Heathrow airport, and a nine hour flight from London to Bishkek provided an ideal opportunity to absorb myself in attempted murders and intrigue, spiritual quests and shape-changing in the heart of British India.
Before I talk about the Great Game, one of the book’s central themes, I want to touch upon the lesser game to which Kim gave his name. It has never occurred to me until yesterday that the Kim’s Game beloved of elderly relatives, scout masters and parents desperately trying to quieten children might have its origins in classic literature. Whilst staying in Shimla during his holiday from St. Xavier’s, the shop owner turned spy teaches Kim to observe the tiniest details of a tray of precious stones, and then of household things. Kim’s rival in Shimla, a 10-year old Hindu boy, has mastered the game to such an extent that he can make his mental list blindfolded, relying solely on his touch, and still recall in detail everything on the tray when it is then hidden beneath the cloth.
Although this seems quite literally to be child’s play, the shop keeper is in fact training his protégées early in the observational skills and ability to accurately recall information required for a future successful career in espionage. Kim is, as far as the senior spies are concerned, perfect material for one following in their footsteps on account of his fluency in vernacular languages and the ease with which he understands and can engage in local cultures. Indian bureaucrats who spoke, lived and dressed as per their western counterparts are often referred to as brown sahibs; in Kim’s case it is entirely the opposite: he is a white native who, as and when required, can even darken his skin to enable seamless integration with the local population.
Having spent the past three years physically traipsing what I’ve always assumed to be the core battlegrounds of the Great Game – Central Asia, Afghanistan, northern Pakistan and western China – I was fascinated to see in Kim that the game’s reach spread far further than I ever thought: not only are Kim and his acquaintances embroiled in events in Shimla and the Himalayan foothills, but also in Lahore, Delhi and Banaras and, on one occasion, well in to the south of India. Quite what interest the Russians had so many thousand miles further south from the warm water ports they desired I am unsure, but clearly their presence was felt.
The guises the spies, both Russian and British, take on throughout the novel are both intriguing and charming. Those easiest to spot are the cartographers, surveyors and anthropologists who range across the Subcontinent observing, scientifically measuring and recording everything in minute detail. It is telling that more than one of the characters longs for a fellowship at the Royal Society: the scientific methodology and rigorous information gathering, not the cultural content of what they are examining, is their real interest. It is their supposedly higher scientific or cultural purpose that gives these men the freedom to travel and collect information unchallenged by the population at large: in that respect they are little different from the numerous ‘cultural attaches’ employed by foreign embassies across Central Asia today.
Rather more subtle and, with the exception of Kim, an option really open only to native spies is to travel the roads as a wandering holy man, dispensing charms and spiritual advice in exchange for alms and lodging. The Russians are completely oblivious to the true identity of Kim when he is dressed in Tibetan garb and travelling in the company of his Lama; likewise, the Mahrattan is able to slip through the police’s grasp at Delhi railway station once Kim has transformed his appearance with ash and caste marks.
Disappearing amongst India’s vast ascetic community was certainly not a strategy pioneered by Great Game spies, but it appears to have served them well. For centuries and, indeed, to the present day, it is not uncommon to find convicts and other outcasts passing themselves off as mendicants. Not only will people not question the identity of holy man but, more often than not, they will feed and water him, give him money and somewhere to rest his head. To do otherwise would harm one’s karma, and the curses of a holy man are to be feared.
Kim is very much on the edge of the Great Game: although he is earmarked for future missions, he is throughout the course of the book only a messenger boy and a chance participant in events. The information he gathers is undoubtedly valuable but, particularly in the early stages, he is unaware of the game in which he plays, assuming innocently that the message about the white stallion must in fact relate to a woman. It makes me question how many of the Great Game’s players were spies by profession (or deliberately pursued a career that could be run in parallel with espionage) and how many people simply collected and passed on information as an when it was profitable to do so. I think probably that the majority of informants fell into the latter category.
Kim gives insight into various sides of Indian life in the 19th century, in this case all tied together by their connection with Kim himself. The fine and oft crossed lines between military and politics, religion and social authority are so blurred that Kim seems to breeze from one to the next effortlessly, to the point it seems they are but multiple facets of the same thing. No one of these things takes absolute precedence, save perhaps one’s personal quest, spiritual or otherwise, but even that can be temporarily laid to one side in pursuit of a little information, a silver coin, and a hearty good meal.
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