This essay explores the construction of colonial English national identity
in a text not always read in the context of its author's imperial project.
Since Kipling's The Jungle Book has been relegated to the category of child
ren's fiction and is today usually red in its Disneyfied version, its const
ructions of nation, race and class in colonial space, exposed through its n
arrations of local inhabitants (both animals and humans), have not attracte
d the attention that they deserve. I will argue that the stories' racialize
d and interrelated images of Indian children and animals contribute to an i
magining of Englishness as a site of power and racial superiority. While th
e stories appear to narrate an Indian space, the images and constructions o
f nation produced stem from an understanding of Englishness as a site of co
lonial authority. Thus its is argued that Kipling's colonial animals map a
racialized contrastive space where national identity is inseparable from ra
cial identity, leading Kipling finally to abandon the colonial animal in or
der to be able to represent proper Englishness. While Kipling constructs co
lonial animals as racialized Others by writing monkeys and snakes in his ju
ngle sketches, he also promotes 'truly English' identities in the nationali
st allegory of "The White Seal". Indeed, all animals are not equal but they
too are represented in racialized and nationed terms, which points to the
flexibility of the animal trope in colonial discourse.