" (Kipling) This shows the cobra's association with the native religions of India. The cobras also have a conception of themselves as a people in danger of loosing their natural habitat and at war with those who would eradicate or tame them. When they find that Rikki-tikki is threatening their existence, and that the humans will willing shoot snakes, they make a plan to fight back. One might guess just from this set of characters where the central tension lies - for Rikki-tikki must fight nobly to save his friends and family, and on that level the reader respects him, yet at the same time one understands that by being "tamed" by the white man, as it were, Rikki's human models were eradicating their own native history and religion. (Thus only the snakes speak of faith or of family, but the mongoose is an orphan with no culture) on that first level, the plot is simple and universally understood by children. Rikki is saved as an infant; he grows to maturity and faces the dangers of the world as embodied by the snakes; he learns to face them in his home, and finally in their own domain as well. Finally, Rikki emerges as an adult. On the other level, the plot is hidden in symbols, but equally universal nonetheless in Kipling's era: the white men come, and as per "the White Man's Burden" they "serve [the] captives' need"(Kipling) and convert those who have lost their families and culture to their service; those with power and faith to resist for the sake of their children do so, but the strength of the white man's guns and his toothy converts inevitably put down their revolution and kill their young. In the end, only those who are faithful to the white man or two stupid to understand their risk (as the birds are), are left.

My thoughts on this piece are complicated. I read it once before as a child and truly loved it. I was so inspired by Rikki-tikki...

Years later, reading it again, I am still touched by the little creature's loyalty and bravery. At the same time, I am overwhelmingly drawn to the dignity and tragedy of the cobras. My heart nearly broke this time watching Nagaina mourn her mate and infants, as she cries with a true mother's submission: " 'Give me the egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my eggs, and I will go away and never come back,' she said, lowering her hood." (Kipling) at the same time I was angered by the thought of her race's entire extinction - the loss of the snake that was blessed by the Brahma... The loss of that dangerous motherhood: "Yes, you will go away, and you will never come back; for you will go to the rubbish-heap with Nag,"(Kipling) and those words that embody the way that men may mock grief and love and mothering: "Fight, widow!" In researching Kipling, I ran across his poem "The White Man's Burden." It infuriated me, and at the same time the line " fluttered folk and wild -- Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child..." reminded me of the story of the beautiful, brave creatures of the bungalow's garden. That Kipling must recommend reaping "The hate of those ye guard" and the eradication of their "egyptian dark" (which, as a biblical reference, refers to their religion), is hard to justify either in that poem or in the tale of Rikki-tikki's murders of the sacred cobras.
Bibliography

Kipling, Rudyard. "The White Man's Burden: The United States & the Philippine Islands, 1899." Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929). [archived at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/]

Wikipedia. "Rudyard Kipling" Wikipedia, the Free Encylcopedia. April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kipling#Kipling.27s_childhood