Indian Politics and Anglo-Indian Novels

in the eighteenth century, the French were the chief rivals of the English in India; in the nineteenth century it was Russia who disturbed their political equanimity. 1 When Kipling wrote, ‘the Great Game’, played throughout the borders of India, was directed by a constant fear of Russian intrigues in Afghanistan and on the Northwestern Frontier of India. Internal politics gave little trouble to our rulers after the Mutiny, and by the end of the last century India, by common consent, had become the brightest jewel in the British Crown. The Indian National Congress had indeed been founded, but its activities attracted little attention. Kipling laughed at the Bengalis and their English, and ridiculed the idea of Indians being put in charge of the adniinistration of a district. In his dreams of the Empire, Kipling always saw India as a mere dependency. His stories do not introduce a single ‘agitator chap’ or contain a single allusion to the Congress. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who wrote in the nineteenth century, mentions secret societies of young men dedicated to the service of the Motherland. In his historical romances the activities of these societies are directed against the Moslem rulers of Bengal, and it is interesting to note that Bankim saw in the establishment of British rule in India the working of the mysterious hand of God for the emancipation of India from the Moslem yoke.