Editing Gunga Din (section)

==Background==
{{Quote box |width=300px |align=right |salign=right
 |quote  =<poem>
        Though I've belted you and flayed you,
        By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!<ref>{{cite book |last=Kipling |first=Rudyard |author-link=Rudyard Kipling |title=Rudyard Kipling's Verse |date=1940 |publisher=Doubleday |location=Garden City, NY |edition=Definitive |oclc=225762741 |url=https://archive.org/details/rudyardkiplingsv0000kipl/page/404 |pages=404–406}}</ref></poem>
|source ="Gunga Din", lines 82–84<br/>
View the [[wikisource:Gunga Din|full poem]] on [[Wikisource]]}}

The poem is a rhyming narrative from the point of view of [[Army of India|a British soldier in India]]. Its eponymous character is an Indian water-carrier (a ''[[bhishti]]'') who, after the narrator is wounded in battle, saves his life, only to be shot and killed. In the final three lines, the soldier regrets the abuse that he dealt to Din and admits that Din is the better man. The poem was published as part of a set of martial poems called the ''[[Barrack-Room Ballads]]''.

In contrast to Kipling's later poem "[[The White Man's Burden]]", "Gunga Din" is named after the Indian and portrays him as a heroic character who is not afraid to face danger on the battlefield as he tends to wounded men. The white soldiers who order Din around and beat him for not bringing water to them fast enough are presented as being callous and shallow and ultimately inferior to him.

Although "Din" is frequently pronounced to rhyme with "pin", the rhymes within the poem make it clear that it should be pronounced {{IPAc-en|ˈ|d|iː|n}}, to rhyme with "green".

[[T. S. Eliot]] included the poem in his 1941 collection ''[[A Choice of Kipling's Verse]]''.