London: Some of the rarest documents surrounding the life of Rudyard Kipling in India have now become public. The documents that were made available by the British Library include Kipling’s baptism record, grant of Probate for his widow, Caroline, reports on lectures given by Kipling on India, and anecdotes of Kipling’s life in India.
Since 1982, the library has been custodian of the 14km of archives of the East India Company and India Office comprising the records created or received in London initially to support commercial activities and later as part of the process of governing the British Empire in India.
These are a part of the 2.5 million India Office records that have now been made available online for the first time. These easily searchable records cover over 200 years, from 1698 to 1947, and chronicle the lives of Europeans here.
Recently, it was confirmed that Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’ that introduced Mowgli, Sher Khan and Bageera to the world may not have been purely from the India-born author’s imagination. In a handwritten letter by Kipling, he hints at having “stolen” some of the ideas from other works.
Source | Time of India | 3 February 2014
