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Last month, it was a triumphal "homecoming" for V.S. Naipaul. He was flattered, pampered and felicitated as the second son of India, after Rabindranath Tagore, to win the Nobel Prize for literature. It is a commentary on our contemporary self-identity that no one cared to point out a glaring omission from the pantheon of Indian Nobel laureates: Rudyard Kipling, who won the prize for literature in 1907.

THE LONG RECESSIONAL: THE IMPERIAL LIFE OF RUDYARD KIPLING By David Gilmour John Murray Price: £15 Pages: 351

True, the Bombay-born Kipling was more than a creation of Anglo-India; he was lauded as the "Empire laureate", a man who lived in four continents and wrote about six; and a writer who, after Shakespeare, has contributed most to the popular phraseology of the English language. India's failure to stake claim to, at least, joint ownership of the author of Kim, Jungle Book and Gunga Din is a grotesque example of post-colonial denial.

Perhaps it was only to be expected. As David Gilmour's riveting biography setting out the political context of the writer makes clear, Kipling's love for the sights, sounds and smells of India was more than Indophilia; it was tempered by a larger commitment to the British Empire. In some phases of his life, Kipling was a recluse but at other times he was an unabashed activist, wielding his pen in anger against those out to undermine the imperial vision.

EMPIRE LAUREATE: Kipling with wife Carrie

Whether it was Lord Ripon's "Pedantry set on the throne", Bengali babus blessed with the "unreasoning petulance of small children, always morbidly afraid someone is laughing at them", and the "flanelled fools" who put cricket and games above true military expertise, Kipling was savagely scathing against his pet hates. The Germans were despicable "Huns", Lloyd George the "Welsh thief" and Irish Home Rulers traitors. "Before an Empire's eyes/The traitor claims his price/What need of further lies?/We are the sacrifice," he wrote in praise of the defiant Ulstermen who stood by Britain in Ireland.

However, against this stirring polemical ranting, there was another Kipling-the sensitive poet who could capture the national mood. His deeply moving Recessional, written at the conclusion of Queen Victoria's jubilee in 1898, may sound infuriatingly patronising-it has subsequently been dubbed racist in a politically correct world-but it encapsulated the mood of certitude and quiet determination of the high noon of empire: "If drunk with sight of power, we loose/Wild tongues that have not thee in awe,/Such boastings as the Gentiles use,/Or lesser breeds without the Law/Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet/ Lest we forget-lest we forget."

As did If, a poem inspired by the unlikely figure of Leander Starr Jameson whose adventurism triggered the Boer War in South Africa. The poem-even as late as the 1990s, it was voted Britain's most popular poem in a BBC poll-has become the leitmotif of decency, good sense and gentlemanly conduct, in fact everything the much-lampooned Victorian values sought to convey. Its quiet yet robust message has transcended national boundaries and the barriers of time. If has ensured Kipling a permanent place in literature's hall of fame.

Tragically, If-and not even the Disneyised Jungle Book-will help secure the political rehabilitation of Kipling in a world driven by post-imperial guilt and post-colonial angst. He will continue to be painted as the man who wrote condescendingly of the "white man's burden" and the "fuzzy-wuzzy". Kipling was undeniably a man who combined poetry and conviction with deep prejudice. Yet, as this work makes clear, he cannot be separated from his context. Kipling, Gilmour writes, "was the voice of Simla and the ICS, of Tommy Atkins in India and South Africa, of McAndrew and the naval engineers, of millions of individuals from New Zealand to New Brunswick who were part of the imperial experience". If his "good bad poetry"-George Orwell's evocative description-continues to inspire those separated by geography, race and culture, it is not merely because he had a way with word and verse. It is also because the values he stood for and the Empire he glorified, still evoke feeling and quiet appreciation.