The wolves who are soon to adopt Mowgli assert that the transgressing tiger has “no right” to be hunting in their territory, and, more importantly, that he has no right to be hunting man, who is taboo as prey according to Jungle Law. The idea that the tiger is the prototypic lawbreaker recurs throughout the Mowgli stories. In “How Fear Came,” a tale that echoes the biblical story of the expulsion from Eden, the elephant Hathi tells the jungle creation story, in which a tiger is responsible for the “fall” of the Jungle People because he breaks the rules established by a God-figure; he kills first a buck and then a man “for choice,” thus bringing “death” and a pervasive “fear” into the jungle simultaneously. The introduction of fear means that animals of different species no longer mix freely together but instead fear each other. Obedience to the Law is associated here with divine ordinance and might, it seems, retrieve a lost Eden. The moments in the Jungle Book stories when men and animals work together harmoniously (there are many) point to this mythical time before the fall. By overcoming Shere Khan, Mowgli symbolically fights the forces of disorder and discord in the jungle, in this way asserting the rule of Jungle Law.

Many of the creatures classified as antagonistic to the Law are implicitly associated with the masses in English and American society. This is particularly the case with the Bandar-log—the Monkey People—and the Red Dog. Both groups are despised by the Jungle People, and this attitude is seconded by the narrator. In “Kaa’s Hunting,” the child Mowgli learns that he must not play with the Bandar-log who are, as he discovers, “outcastes” (p. 35). Perhaps the most denigrated group in The Jungle Books, the Monkey People are designated people with “no Law” (p. 35). The Red Dog are represented in a similar way; like the Bandar-log, they gather in masses, are considered “lawless,” and run rampant over vast areas—that is, they do not have a particular place (like Shere Khan, who breaks the law by leaving his hunting grounds). These descriptions—such as that of the “savage horses,” who are characterized as a “mob”—evoke contemporaneous depictions of the masses in the popular press and in works by writers such as Henry James and H. G. Wells.

Notably, many of the nonwhite people who appear in the Mowgli tales are grouped together with lawless animals. From the beginning to the end of The Jungle Books, the idea that these men are not to be trusted is asserted by various venerated characters. Mowgli’s mentor Bagheera, the black panther who was raised in captivity and who knows “the ways of men,” cautions that “[Mowgli‘s] own tribe” is to be “feared ”(p. 33). The wolf Gray Brother likewise shares his wisdom about men, suggesting that men are dishonest and dishonorable: “Men are only men, Little Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond” (p. 62). The distaste Mowgli’s surrogate parents and teachers have for humans and their culture is perhaps most evident at the conclusion of The Second Jungle Book, when Mowgli receives final advice from these wise elders of the jungle. Bagheera warns Mowgli against “Jackal-Men” (p. 374), and Baloo compares the “Man-Pack” to Mowgli’s feline nemesis, Shere Khan: “When thy Pack would work thee ill, / Say: ’Shere Khan is yet to kill.‘ / When the knife is drawn to slay, / Keep the Law and go thy way” (p. 373). Baloo thus encourages Mowgli to uphold Jungle Law rather than human law.

Mowgli’s experiences after he enters the “Man-Pack” reveal these warnings to have been well justified. He himself rails against the Indian villagers: “They are idle, senseless, and cruel; they play with their mouths, and they do not kill the weaker for food, but for sport. When they are full-fed they would throw their own breed into the Red Flower” (p. 237).