Quote: Kenneth @ 13th September 2016, 2:43 PMCannibals? Nastier terms were employed in the book.
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
I don't think we can judge attitudes and behaviours of over a century ago (when women hadn't yet got the vote, homosexuality was illegal, youths under 18 could still be hanged, corporal punishment was the norm and few people had travelled abroad and fewer still had any knowledge of different ethnicities) with what we deem acceptable today.
There is no evidence that the stories were racist, if that is what you are suggesting. Indeed, Hurree Jamset Ram Singh is always depicted as one of the least offensive and most popular characters. The worst that the stories can be accused of is stereotyping, which is not surprising given the aforementioned lack of personal experience of different cultures. Frank Richards (Charles Hamilton) himself never travelled further than France.
We are where we are. The books are of their time. If we expunged all books merely because they portrayed different views to those of today, we would be going down a very slippery path (see Nazi Germany). And, by the same token, no doubt many of today's ideals will be looked upon with aghast in 100 years' time.
