Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 5 November 1887.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, pp. 9–10).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: On the decline of the exchange value of the rupee, see also ‘Les Miserables’. ‘The Great Strike’ was reprinted in Kipling's India: Uncollected Sketches.

The remedy was simple – so simple that when all was over and the rupee stood at 21-2d. once more, every one wondered why it had been overlooked so long. Men had devasted [sic] the country with meetings to protest against the “present serious inconvenience arising out of the fall in silver” or the “semi-pauperised condition of the European population”; but no one paid any special attention to their words, and subscriptions in aid of the “Cause” could not, when the rupee stood at 11 ¾d., be very large. There was an impression abroad that “this state of things could not continue much longer”; but no one dreamed that it could ever be set right by juggling with the currency. All had passed from the argumentatively philosophical frame of mind to the irrationally determined – and this is the much more dangerous mood. They had decided that something must be done and that all the cheap production in the empire did not console them for having to drive in bamboo-carts and send their children to Hill-schools where they picked up curious accents and learned a great deal too much of life. At home, when the Masses wanted anything new – a day's ration or the stock of any tradesman's shop – they just assembled in their might and hammered at the Lions in Trafalgar Square or threw brickbats into the windows of the Times Office, and all their wants were immediately gratified. This hurt the feelings of the poor wretches in India, and they held a conference on their grievances. The Army, of course, stood aloof, but it grinned cheerfully, and said that it would be most happy to march against the mutineers. Some of the more anchylosed spirits at the conference said that the steps proposed would be absurd, but others held that a mere hint of the steps proposed would be enough to bring the Secretary of State to his bearings. There would be a stupendous novelty in the move.