Published: Pioneer, 10 July 1888; Civil and Military Gazette, 13 July; The Week's News, 14 July; Pioneer Mail, 15 July 1888.

Attribution: In a letter of [28 June– July 1888] RK, then at Simla, says that he has ‘written a thing for the same rag [the Pioneer] called His Natural Destiny’ (Letters, i, 225). The piece is not in the Scrapbooks.

Text: Pioneer.

Notes: RK was evidently fascinated by Sir William Wilson Hunter, the subject of this sketch, whom he satirised – ‘dear delightful humbug’ – and yet admired (see ‘To the Address of W.W.H.’ in Poems, iii, 1885). He appears also in ‘The History of a Crilme’ and ‘New Year's Gifts’. Hunter had left India and returned to England in 1887. He then began a series of weekly letters on India in The Times in which he was free to criticise Indian affairs without reserve and to express sympathy with the aims of the Indian National Congress. In a letter written a few weeks before ‘His Natural Destiny’ RK wrote thus of Hunter:

Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, iv, 2066–9.

And the Indian Government missed the point after all, as it always does unless it be directed properly.

They cast H—r out into the wilderness and very naturally he cursed them by Book, Pen and Candle. “This,” said the Indian Government blowing its nose embarrassed-wise, “is very distressing. What more could we have done for him? We gave him a K.C.I.E. and our blessing, and said, “let us never see your face again, dear boy.”