The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay. He wrote The Jungle Book (1894) and was awarded 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature. Since he lived during the Indian freedom struggle, his stories deal with cotemporary India, or rather The Jungle Book is a kind of allegory of British rule in India. As far as, I have observed, Mowgli – just stay and think whether the writer means to say ‘Angli’ – represents the English people living in India and all the animals of the jungle represent the people of India who develop a natural love for the former. Kipling tried to give the readers an idea about how the wolves, the then Indian elites, bring up the small child, Mowgli, and also treat him as their own son. The wolves love Mowgli so much that they do not want him to leave the Jungle i.e. the territory of India. Bagheera, who is the symbol of the leaders in the Congress, loves Mowgli, too. He cannot bear any animal to harm him. Now that Shere Khan (the group of freedom fighters: Shere for Hindu fighters and Khan for Muslim fighters) is determined to kill Mowgli, he persuades Mowgli to leave the Jungle and go back to his native country. While he was leading him to a town (Europe), Baloo, denoting the then industrialists or the exploiters, happen to meet Mowgli on the way. He entices him into staying in the jungle and enjoying the fortune he can make with the help of his innovative techniques. Baloo and Mowgli became great buddies, but as Baloo comes to know that Shere Khan will certainly kill Mowgli, he starts treating Mowgli with indifference so that he take a dislike to him and could be convinced to depart. The fire which Shere Khan calls the flowers of blood stands for the advanced arms possessed by the English people. Mowgli brings a burning torch to do away with Shere Khan but when he sees that it has caused the jungle to burn, he throws it away and takes out Shere Khan with a conventional trick. He helps elephants rescue their young and then uses their might in extinguishing the fire. This way he shows that he can set fire to the jungle and also extinguish it and that all the animals in the jungle love him except for arrogant Shere Khan who has been presented as the antagonist. The book is silent about Mowgli’s leaving the jungle because the writer as a British citizen died in 1936 long before India gained independence in 1947.