Rewriting the Indian other

Abstract

Abstract This article reexamines the colonial representation of Indians in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Story of Muhammad Din” through a postcolonial resistant translation from English to Arabic. Set in India, Kipling’s short story depicts the buried Anglo-Indian conflict between the world perspectives of an adult Englishman and an Indian child. To this Indian child, Muhammad Din, existence is situated at the crossroads of an intense personal and national struggle for power, freedom, and independence. The dominant presence of the colonial law, which is embodied in the English doctor’s presumed authority and strict medical discourse in Kipling’s narrative, fashions a negative and inferior representation of Muhammad Din and his father Imam. Moreover, the impersonal style of narration, which is noted in the final scene of Muhammad’s death, enhances a colonial desire of the English to accentuate a rigorous sense of Englishness and national superiority that cannot be compromised. By offering a postcolonial translation of Kipling’s story in Arabic, however, Arab readers re-conceptualize or re-imagine othered Indians – here Muhammad Din – as central post-colonial agents who also function as vital sources of artistic or creative power that is necessary to deflate colonial authoritative agency in Kipling’s colonial text.