Political condition in India reflected on Rudyard Kipling’s Kim

ABSTRACT

Every literary work is created not only for enjoyment, but it can also be used to give information about the social, political and cultural condition of the society at the time when the work is created. One of the literay works which is able to show these is a nonfiction fiction which is written based on fact. This research analyzes a historical fiction entitled Kim which the story is set in India at the time of the British Raj in the Nineteenth century.

This research is aimed at knowing the political condition of Ind ia portrayed in the novel Kim and to know to what extent the political condition of India is portrayed in Kim reflects the real political condition of India in the nineteenth century.

The methodology which is used in this research is literary criticism which includes the analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of the literary work. The researcher uses Mimetic theory in analyzing and explaining the literary work.

The result of this research shows that the political condition of India in the novel Kim involves power and policy. The power that is found in the novel is in form of British domination over the Indian subcontinent and the British in India also makes and applies policy to control native Indian. The policies that is applied in India involve: education policy, religious policy and economic policy. The researcher also finds that there are nine similarities between both condition. The similarities are exactly the same to each other. Those similarities are 1.) British has colonized India since Ancient time, 2.) British controls the India by placing its officer in the governmental position, 3.) There is a mutiny in India an Saturday May 9, 1857, 4.) British recruites the native India as their subordinate, 5.) The secret service in India or The Great Game, 6.) The rivalry among the British, France and Russia, 7.) the education policy whereby all teaching must be done in English and based on English texts, 8.)The religious policy whereby the British abolish religious practices which is considered as inhumane, 9.) The economic policy whereby the British applies land revenue and doctrine of lapse to the Indian people.