What Is Tikki Tavi's Childhood?

In November of 1893, India welcomed the children’s book Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling, a native-born Indian who lived his life as an English journalist and short story writer. Rikki Tikki Tavi is a brave mongoose who finds a new home with a family of colonists and must fight against the snakes in the garden who threaten his new way of life. Though the subtle references to imperial India and the ideologies of the time are often overlooked because of the genre as a children’s story, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is ripe with analytical potential beyond the triumph of good versus evil.

Within the first few pages, the English family in the bungalow takes a nearly drowned mongoose into their care. When it comes time for their son Teddy to be put to bed, his mother objects to the mongoose sleeping with him. His father assures her stating the mongoose serves as the first line of defense against a deadly cobra. This is where

He is the barrier between the white family and the wild unknowns of the Indian garden.

Further separation between the white colonists and the native Indian people, specifically their culture and religion, comes in when Kipling introduces the cobras Nag and Nagaina in a confrontation with Rikki Tikki. Nag describes himself as something to be feared because all cobras bear the mark of the Hindu God Brahm. Nag tells Rikki Tikki, “Look, and be afraid!” (Kipling), thus associating a main aspect of Hindu religion with fear. Even before Nag is introduced, Teddy’s mother is fearful of having a snake in their home and while this is initially common sense for a mother to not want a