Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and ableism.

“Gunga Din” is a psychological case study of a character in conflict. Rather than pitting his speaker in a traditional conflict—with another character, a friend or a lover perhaps, with their God, or even with themselves—Kipling explores a character in conflict with his country’s grand perception of itself, its ideals, and its cultural mission.

The central drama of the poem isn’t the speaker’s near-death experience but the fact that the speaker is unable to deal with the implications of what he witnesses in India: how to understand the kindness, courage, and compassion of a supposedly “primitive” Indian man the speaker is theoretically supposed to “civilize.” This conflict reflects Kipling’s own nuanced attitude toward South Asia. Born in India and traumatized by his experiences in England as a child, Kipling became a journalist in Lahore, eager to immerse himself in Indian culture and to learn about its diverse peoples.

Kipling’s speaker, however, is a soldier. He is stationed more than 5,000 miles from home, in a hostile and inhospitable environment where daily he risks his life. A proud member of Her Majesty’s occupational army, the speaker opens the poem upholding its mission: the subjugation of the indigenous peoples who need to be rescued from their culture and religions via the oppressive gifts of British colonial government, rapid industrialization, and Christianity.