akela

leader or leader of a group of cubs in the scouts

After Akela, the leader of the wolves – 'the great gray Lonely One' – in the two Jungle Books (1894, 1895) by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). The story of Mowgli, who grew up among the animals in the wilds of India, made Kipling world famous.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907.

Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941) founded the youth organization of the Scouts in 1907. Kipling and Baden-Powell had met in 1882 in Lahore, India - a young reporter and a rookie soldier - and became good friends.

They met again during the South African Boer War, the birthplace of Baden-Powell's Boy Scout movement. Afterwards, the two men became ideologically distant from each other.

Over the years, Baden-Powell saw his movement more as a means of bringing about international friendship between the youth of different countries.

For Kipling, scouting remained rather a way of raising the national resilience of British youth in favor of the British Empire. The death of his son John in the First World War would not change that either.

(see also baghera)