New Delhi, Dec. 2: India will have its first museum celebrating the writer Rudyard Kipling, decades after the country he loved consigned him to obscurity as a prophet of British imperialism.

A dilapidated bungalow on the grounds of an art school in Mumbai, where Kipling was born and lived until he was nearly six, is being restored to house a hoped-for collection of associated memorabilia.

The move may be the first sign of his rehabilitation by a people who inspired some of his most memorable poetry and prose. Long after gaining independence from Britain in 1947, Indians found it difficult to discuss Kipling — a proponent of the Empire, whose poems include The White Man’s Burden — without rancour.

The jingoistic and apparently racist tone of some of his works has kept him largely off the literature syllabus of schools and universities, and nowhere apart from the bungalow is a single monument, statue or plaque dedicated to his memory.

But now part of the 150-year-old, stone-and-wood bungalow on the campus of the J.J. School of Art, where he spent his happiest childhood days following his birth in 1865, is being devoted to the creator of Mowgli and the other characters of The Jungle Book. “It’s part of the process of India finally pardoning Kipling,” said Rukmini Bhaya Nair, professor of English at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.

Kipling’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, was the first principal of the school — now a leading university in India for art and architecture.

The bungalow where, according to his biographers, the young Kipling was loved and pampered by the Indians in his parents’ household, is set in an overgrown tropical garden in the heart of Mumbai. The only sign that he lived there is a bust at the entrance.

Inside the decaying building, dust, debris, cobwebs and piles of yellowing examination papers disfigure the once elegant rooms. Despite its location far from the tourist trail, Kipling lovers regularly arrive to pay homage at the house from which he was eventually sent back to England.

The Jindal Foundation, a charity, has donated funds for the restoration and Mumbai city authorities have given their approval. But because nothing of the Kipling household has survived, the museum is scouring the world for possible donors of photographs, letters, manuscripts and former possessions.

“Kipling left India as a child but he never forgot Mumbai. He called it the best city in the world and I am pleased to pay him this tribute,” said Sangeeta Jindal, the chairman of the foundation.

Despite official indifference to his work, Kipling’s popularity among educated Indian society has survived. An estimated 20,000 copies of his books sell each year. When the museum opens next year, it is certain to attract Indian admirers as well as visitors from overseas.