“There are two Tonks in Kipling's India. One is a place in Rajasthan, some 190 miles south-south-west of New Delhi, but if one looks at its web-site, its history and general ambiance don't suggest the arms trade, or gun-making. The other Tonk lies in today's Pakistan (it is, according to the web site, sometimes spelt 'Tank'), and is near Dera Ismail Khan, which itself lies on the Indus River. It is close to the Tribal Lands, and very much within Kipling's area - it is much closer to Lahore than the other Tonk in Rajasthan. In the absence of any other information, I would hazard a guess that it was this Tonk/Tank which had a bazaar in which there was a multiplicity of small gun-smiths workshops, making jezails for the perpetually-warring tribesmen of the North-West mountain areas. Chimbu Singh is presumably a Sikh, from Bikane(e)r, which lies some distance south-east of Dear Ismail Khan/Tonk”.
[AW, email to the Editor, 4 January 2005].

“While AW's argument on Kipling's use of Tonk is persuasive, I must point out that the 'Glossary for English Readers' appended to the 6th edition of Departmental Ditties specifically states : 'Tonk, a state and city in Rajputana.' Kipling presumably approved, or may even have written the glossary, so I think that we can take it that this is the Tonk he meant” (RCA, email to Rudyard-Kipling@jiscmail.ac.uk, 4 January 2005)

“On inspection, the glossary must have been written by Thacker, Spink & Co., since the descriptions of places such as Tonk are taken directly from the index which accompanied their Reduced Survey Map of India, (1890)."[email to the Editor, 6 January 2005]. “In line with the other militant folk that Kipling mentions, who are all armed with weapons specific to their region or country, Chimbu Singh, the Rajput from Bikaneer, has a Rajput weapon in the jezail, or locally made musket, from Tonk. Tonk was then a small native state on the eastern edge of Rajputana, sandwiched between Bhopal to the south and Gwalior to the north. It was not an area that one would have immediately associated with a local arms industry and it may be that Kipling chose it more for the fact that Tonk fitted the line of verse than for factual accuracy” (RCA, email to the author, 5 January 2005).

“However, the DD glossary gives an alternative spelling (Khaibari) and identifies this as an Afghan tribe living in the neighbourhood of the Khyber Pass. In my extensive reading on the place and the period I had never come across such a tribe and it does not appear in Sir Olaf Caroe's definitive work Pathan, (Macmillan, London, 1958 & Revised Edition Oxford University Pess, Karachi, 1973). However, I did find a reference to it in Across the Border - Pathan and Biloch, by E.E. Oliver, (Chapman and Hall, London, 1890), where the writer pours scorn on the ideas of some English politicians who thought that all one had to do was to reach agreement with the 'Khaibaris' to settle the problems in the area, unaware that the country was inhabited by a considerable number of tribes, between whom was a great deal of mutual distrust, conflict of interests, downright hostility and blood feuds. So it would seem that 'Khybaree' was more than just a description of tribesmen who lived in the area, it had become a political buzz-word in England amongst those without real knowledge of the situation. I'll bet Kipling was smiling with his tongue in his cheek when he put that word in.” [RCA, email to the Editor, 6 January 2005].

“At first a small, urban-based organization dominated by Hindu lawyers, Congress began its existence in the 1880s, proclaiming an ‘unswerving loyalty’ to the British Crown and declaring that the continued affiliation of India to Great Britain was ‘absolutely essential’ to the interests of national development. In the early years it pressed for the admission of more Indians to the ICS and for greater Indian representation on the legislative councils ... But the initial British view that Congress was a loyal and harmless body slowly altered as its demands for representative institutions became stronger, and as officials gradually suspected it of becoming detrimental to Muslim interests ... When he [Kipling] was in India he insisted that the organization did not represent anybody except a small group of university-trained hybrids ...”
(David Gilmour, The Long Recessional. The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, New York, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2002, 64).