British poet Rudyard Kipling’s ballad “Gunga Din” (1890) is a story in verse about a British soldier who undergoes a life-changing epiphany while serving in British-occupied India. There, he witnesses the selfless courage of Gunga Din, the regiment’s long-suffering Hindu water-bearer.

The poem, rendered in a working-class Cockney dialect, catapulted Kipling, nearing 40, to the forefront of England’s literary establishment, making him the heir apparent to Romantic poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

After Kipling’s death in 1936, however, a new generation of readers winced at the poem’s racism. The speaker’s smug xenophobia and unexamined jingoism were now seen as representative of the Eurocentric imperialism that had justified Britain’s exploitation and colonization of both Asia and Africa. The speaker callously refers to Din in demeaning language, employing racial stereotypes without question, and using slurs like “blackfaced” “heathen.”

More recently, critics have also explored the moral dilemma at the poem’s emotional core. Kipling’s narrator learns from Din’s heroism. Din sacrifices his own life to save the speaker, a soldier from the nation that oppresses and subjugates Din’s people. The speaker wrestles with this conundrum, edging toward acknowledging the hollow pretense of British imperialist morality. In turn, the humble water-bearer teaches the British soldier that virtue transcends cultural and ethnic divisions.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism and ableism.

Poet Biography

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born December 30, 1865, in Bombay (now Mumbai), which was then and remains India’s largest city. His father, a minor British painter, served as curator at the Lahore Museum in Northern India (modern-day Pakistan), which housed a wealth of Hindu art that his son loved.

Intent on raising his son as a British man without Indian influence, his father sent Kipling to boarding schools in England for six unhappy years. Kipling, with his slight build, thick glasses, and foreign birth, endured constant bullying.

Returning to Lahore at 17, Kipling worked for seven years as a reporter, immersing himself in South Asia’s many cultures. He published light verse in local newspapers before turning to short stories, finding a receptive local audience for these sketches.

Kipling then headed to London, determined to introduce a British audience to stories of India. His 1892 poetry collection, Barrack-Room Ballads, which reprinted “Gunga Din,” established Kipling’s reputation.

Financially secure and now married, Kipling turned his gift for storytelling and psychologically complex characters to novels. After a brief stay in Vermont (where Kipling found Americans hostile), he returned to England and, over the next decade, published the works that secured him international fame: The Jungle Book (1894), The Seven Seas (1896), Captains Courageous (1897), and Kim (1901). As does “Gunga Din,” these novels explore the ways individual identity conflicts with culture.

In 1907, Kipling became the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize. In 1919, Kipling’s only son, Jack, died in World War I; his body was never recovered. For the next 20 years, Kipling lived in semi-retirement in South Africa, where he developed his controversial defense of British imperialism. Had the empire not collapsed, Kipling argued, World War I would never have happened.

Kipling died in London in 1936 at age 70 while being treated for a perforated ulcer. His cremains were interred in Westminster Abbey’s Poets Corner.

Poem Text

You may talk o’ gin and beer 

When you’re quartered safe out ’ere, 

An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it;

But when it comes to slaughter 

You will do your work on water, 

An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it. 

Now in Injia’s sunny clime, 

Where I used to spend my time

A-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen, 

Of all them blackfaced crew 

The finest man I knew 

Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din, 

      He was ‘Din! Din! Din! 

   ‘You limpin’ lump o’ brick-dust, Gunga Din! 

      ‘Hi! Slippy hitherao 

      ‘Water, get it! Panee lao, 

   ‘You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din.’ 

The uniform ’e wore 

Was nothin’ much before, 

An’ rather less than ’arf o’ that be’ind, 

For a piece o’ twisty rag  

An’ a goatskin water-bag 

Was all the field-equipment ’e could find. 

When the sweatin’ troop-train lay 

In a sidin’ through the day, 

Where the ’eat would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl, 

We shouted ‘Harry By!’ 

Till our throats were bricky-dry, 

Then we wopped ’im ’cause ’e couldn’t serve us all. 

      It was ‘Din! Din! Din! 

   ‘You ’eathen, where the mischief ’ave you been? 

      ‘You put some juldee in it 

      ‘Or I’ll marrow you this minute 

   ‘If you don’t fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!’ 

’E would dot an’ carry one 

Till the longest day was done; 

An’ ’e didn’t seem to know the use o’ fear. 

If we charged or broke or cut, 

You could bet your bloomin’ nut, 

’E’d be waitin’ fifty paces right flank rear. 

With ’is mussick on ’is back, 

’E would skip with our attack, 

An’ watch us till the bugles made 'Retire,’ 

An’ for all ’is dirty ’ide 

’E was white, clear white, inside

When ’e went to tend the wounded under fire! 

      It was ‘Din! Din! Din!’ 

   With the bullets kickin’ dust-spots on the green. 

      When the cartridges ran out, 

      You could hear the front-ranks shout, 

   ‘Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!’ 

I shan’t forgit the night 

When I dropped be’ind the fight 

With a bullet where my belt-plate should ’a’ been. 

I was chokin’ mad with thirst, 

An’ the man that spied me first 

Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din. 

’E lifted up my ’ead, 

An’ he plugged me where I bled, 

An’ ’e guv me ’arf-a-pint o’ water green.

It was crawlin’ and it stunk, 

But of all the drinks I’ve drunk, 

I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. 

      It was 'Din! Din! Din! 

   ‘’Ere’s a beggar with a bullet through ’is spleen; 

   ‘’E's chawin’ up the ground, 

      ‘An’ ’e’s kickin’ all around: 

   ‘For Gawd’s sake git the water, Gunga Din!’ 

’E carried me away 

To where a dooli lay, 

An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean. 

’E put me safe inside, 

An’ just before ’e died, 

'I ’ope you liked your drink,’ sez Gunga Din. 

So I’ll meet ’im later on 

At the place where ’e is gone— 

Where it’s always double drill and no canteen. 

’E’ll be squattin’ on the coals 

Givin’ drink to poor damned souls, 

An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din! 

      Yes, Din! Din! Din! 

   You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! 

   Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, 

      By the livin’ Gawd that made you, 

   You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din! 

Kipling, Rudyard. “Gunga Din.” 1890. The Kipling Society.

Summary

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and ableism.

Kipling’s poem is a frame narrative. A character serving in the British army in India relates the story of his near-death wounding while putting down one of many uprisings of indigenous peoples resisting British occupation.

As the poem opens, the narrator is recuperating from his injury in a hospital in the army installation at Aldershot, just southwest of London. He assures his mates that, safely removed from the front lines in India, they can talk over beer and gin. But in combat, infantry needs water, not alcohol: “When it comes to slaughter / You will do your work on water” (Lines 4-5). He jokes about the subcontinent’s blistering heat (“Injia’s sunny clime” [Line 7]), but he reminds his buddies that the forbidding tropical climate puts a special value on water. This need explains the importance of the regiment’s water-bearer, or “bhisti” (Line 12)—one of several locals who toted water just behind the front lines in large animal hide buckets, or “mussicks” (Line 41), which held six to eight gallons of water and weighed more than 50 pounds. The regiment relied on what the speaker terms the “blackfaced crew” (Line 10).

The speaker shares his recollection of his company’s bhisti, a Hindu man named Gunga Din (pronounced “GOON-gah DEAN”). He recounts how the company taunted and abused Din for his disability, badgering him to deliver the water despite his mobility challenges. Although ostensibly also a member of the regiment, Din wore only a “piece o’ twisty rag” (Line 21) as a uniform. Even though only Din could relieve the “heat that would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl” (Line 26), the regiment mocked, demeaned, and even “wopped” (Line 29) Din when he could not serve them all quickly enough.

The narrator recalls, however, that despite the bulky water bag, the oppressive heat, the mistreatment, the flying bullets, and his disabled leg, Din never complained, never shrank from his duties, and never knew “the use of fear” (Line 37). Din never abandoned his post, a scant 125 feet behind the fighting: “You could bet your bloomin’ nut / ‘E’d be waiting fifty paces right flank rear” (Lines 39-40). At peak moments of close-fighting, the soldiers relied on two things: the ammunition mules and Din.

After a brutal day of fighting in the heat, Din’s skin would be coated with black dirt. But that dirt could not conceal Din’s noble heart. He might be filthy from the battlefield, the narrator tells his chums, but Din was “white, clear white, inside” (Line 45)—that is, he had a virtuous heart.

The narrator then shares the story of his wounding. One night, he took a nasty gut shot just above his belt. Choking “mad” (Line 55) with thirst, he was relieved to see “good old grinnin’, gruntin Gunga Din” (Line 57). While Din staunched the blood oozing from the wound, he lifted the speaker’s head and gave him water. It was not fresh—after all, it had been carried about in the heat in a goat skin bag—but it was so life-saving that the speaker has never forgotten it: “of all the drinks I’ve drunk,” the man tells his buddies, “I’m gratefullest to [that] one from Gunga Din” (Lines 62-63).

Din, although not a medic, then carried the wounded narrator to a waiting stretcher (“drooli” [Line 70]) in the back lines to be transported to a field hospital. That was when Din himself was shot. Just before dying, Din whispered unironically to the narrator, “I ’ope you liked your drink” (Line 74).

The narrator now reflects on Din’s heroics. He is sure he will see Din in the afterlife. The speaker references a biblical parable from the New Testament Book of Luke: A hardhearted rich man in hell begs Abraham to let Lazarus, a virtuous poor man in heaven, dip just his finger in cool water to quench the rich man’s thirst. The narrator knows that Din would be similarly compassionate: “I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!” (Line 82).

The narrator closes by speaking directly to the dead water-bearer. He concedes that although, like the others in the regiment, he mistreated Din, beating him hard enough to peel his skin (“flayed” [Line 83]), he must acknowledge that Din is superior by dint of his courage and stoicism: “By the livin’ Gawd that made you / You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din” (Lines 84-85).