Who was Gunga Din?
Gunga Din (1892) is one of Rudyard Kipling’s most famous poems, perhaps best known for its often-quoted last line, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”[1] The poem is a rhyming narrative from the point of view of a British soldier, about a native water-bearer who saves the soldier’s life but dies himself. Like several other Kipling poems, it celebrates the virtues of a non-European while revealing the racism of a colonial infantryman who views such people as being of a “lower order”.
