RT Article
T1 Fantastic Borderlands and Masonic Meta-religion in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King”
JF Religion and the arts
VO 24
IS 3
SP 263
OP 289
A1 Kwong, Lucas
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1726277941
AB This article examines Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” through the lens of Freemasonry’s interreligious ideology. In British India, members of “The Craft” offered what scholar James Laine calls a meta-religion, a fraternity whose emphasis on interreligious tolerance masks power relations between colonizers and colonized. When he became a Freemason, Kipling’s lifelong fascination with India’s religious diversity translated into enthusiasm for the sect’s unifying aspirations. In this context, “The Man Who Would Be King” stands out for how sharply it contests that enthusiasm. The story’s Masonic protagonists determine to find glory and riches in Kafiristan, a borderland region known for its idiosyncratic polytheism. Initially offering an ideal staging ground for Masonic triumphalism, the region ultimately upends Freemasonry’s goal of unifying imperial subjects under a metareligious banner; Kipling’s deployment of the fantastic frames Kafiristan as a borderland, not only between Empire and wilderness, but also between incommensurable visions of reality.
K1 Rudyard Kipling
K1 “The Man Who Would Be King”
K1 Borderlands
K1 Empire
K1 late Victorian literature
K1 Postcolonial Studies
K1 Religious Studies
K1 the fantastic
DO 10.1163/15685292-02403002