Kipling's Mumbai house to be turned into museum sans his name - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

The house where Rudyard Kipling was born in India will soon be turned into a museum but will have no mention of the author. The foundation, restoring the Dean's residence on the campus of Sir JJ Institute of Applied Art in Mumbai, has claimed that commemorating the author of 'The White Man's Burden' can spark political furore. "If we tried to convert it into a Kipling museum simply because Kipling was born there, that would ruffle quite a few feathers. In the political storm, you may find that the conservation effort would be set aside," the Telegraph quoted Mukund Gorashkar, who is in charge of the project for the JSW Foundation, as saying. Also, Sharad Keskar, Chairman of the Kipling Society, explained: "You have a fairly ignorant officialdom in India, who don't know much about Kipling apart from that he was an imperialist or part of the Raj. Officially he's still persona non grata. I think that is changing, but it's rather a slow change." Kipling was born in 1865 in the bungalow in Mumbai.