The following is from the July 24 2008 edition of TLS. The writer as well as the original reviewer appear to be of Indian origin by the sound of their names. --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India QUOTE Letters to the Editor. Kipling Sahib Sir, – In his review of Charles Allen’s Kipling Sahib, Navtej Sarna (July 4) misses out the most distinctive features of Kipling’s persona and his novel Kim. Kipling, as a journalist, and his father, Lockwood, a modest curator-teacher, were on the very fringes of the rigidly hierarchical British society in India. The Kiplings, being neither Competition-Wallahs (Indian Civil Service) nor Box-Wallahs (planters and businessmen), were sahibs in a very equivocal sense. Also, Kipling displayed a rare sensitivity in his Indian fiction. Alone among British writers on India, he chose to write about the common run of Indian humanity. Kipling’s is the world of Kim the Anglo-Irish orphan, Gunga Din, the water -carrier, Mahbub Ali the horse dealer, Hurree Babu, the Bengali surveyor and, of course, the beloved lama – a far cry from the déraciné middle-class society of Forster’s Aziz, Hamidullah and Fielding. India’s philosopher-president, the late Dr Radhakrishnan, once remarked to Dr A. L. Rowse at All Souls College, “ . . . of all Western books about India, Kim was the best, its author really understood India”. Kipling’s “If” was also Gandhi’s favourite poem. Yet, sadly, an otherwise liberal and mature India, still hag-ridden by Kipling’s hackneyed “white man’s burden”, has yet to recognize Kipling’s genius as a writer and not the putative Bard of Imperialism. ANAND CHANDAVARKAR Washington, DC 20007. UNQUOTE