The Only Book You Need to Understand Rural India:

The White Tiger  by Aravind Adiga







Aravind Adiga winner The Man Booker Prize 2008

Review: by Ignatius Chithelen, December 2009

Summary: With sharp, witty insights, this book shows what it must mean to be poor in India, like underfed chickens crowded into tiny cages, an image far removed from the India of high tech outsourcing firms and five star palace hotels. It is also a tightly woven, suspenseful tale of how a selfish laborer frees himself from his masters through crime and becomes an entrepreneur servicing

technology companies in Bangalore.   

Luckily I came across this book recently, after ignoring it earlier. Since its publication nearly two years ago, it had gotten good reviews and lots of publicity, especially after it won the 2008 Man Booker Prize, UK’s leading literary prize. 

I then wondered if it was yet another Indian writer impressing Western critics in the manner of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I had given up reading that 1981 Booker winner after a few chapters, put off by Rushdie’s too clever play on words and phrases and over complicated plot.

Rushdie though influenced Western critics, publishers and readers to appreciate the works of other Indian and South Asian writers who came after him. 

Then, after reading the first few pages of Adiga’s short story “The Elephant”, in The New Yorker, January 26, 2009, I was even less interested in The White Tiger. Quite apart from the weak narration, I wondered how was it possible for an uneducated coolie or laborer to rationally analyze the exploitation and humiliation he suffers every day. 

What about the indoctrination from religious beliefs, the burden of caste, blind acceptance of Karma and traditions like always respect one’s masters and a coolie remains a coolie because he is lazy and the fear of being sacked from a job and becoming a beggar, which have all combined to cripple the minds of India’s poor into accepting their condition, mostly silently and without much protest, for thousands of years? 

As with the main character in his short story, Adiga’s voice in The White Tiger is that of a laborer who thinks critically. So the same issue of authenticity arises in the book as well.

Yet I quickly ignored it, getting sucked into Tiger’s portrayal of the way things work or don’t work in much of India. 

We hear about the landlords, moneylenders and their thugs, who rule over his village, own much of the land and local businesses, rape any women they desire and decide who gets the votes in the elections. And they slaughter any villager and his entire family too, for opposing or harming them in any way. At election time politicians talk about liberating the poor and then go on to help those who pay them the most.

The policemen protect the wealthy and the politicians in return for bribes. Teachers and doctors, who don’t show up for work, sell supplies and do other work to earn money since their official salaries are pocketed by politicians and bureaucrats.  

The majority of Indians, Tiger or Adiga reminds us, live in acute poverty with daily humiliations - like underfed chickens suffocating in their own excrement and pecking at each other in tiny cages – in an India very different from the glass enclosed air-conditioned malls, five star hotels and lush park like campuses of technology outsourcing companies. 

Obviously the lives of the poor in India have been covered extensively by fiction writers and even celebrated in the 2008, eight Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire. Yet, while Adiga covers little that is unknown or unexpected, his portrayal of the characters is uniquely blunt and unsentimental. The narration is sprinkled with wry humor and ironic observations, which also soften the descriptions of even the most disturbing aspects of the lives of the poor. 

Also, the underlying tale itself is a tightly crafted suspense of how the scheming, self- centered Tiger breaks free from his masters physically and financially, through a violent crime. Ignoring the tiny news item about the slaughter of 17 members of a family in his village, Tiger turns into an entrepreneur, with his own chicken cages, providing transport services to technology firms in Bangalore. 

It is very likely that the events in the story, including the use of a broken Johnny Walker whiskey bottle as a weapon, are based on reports Adiga found in the Indian newspapers.

Yes, occasionally you read or hear about cases of extremely violent outbursts by a servant against his master. 

Adiga’s story is unlike that of most other Indian writers of English fiction. Born in India, Adiga grew up partly in Australia, studied at Columbia and Oxford Universities, and now lives in Mumbai. 

I am now glad that, after it got the Booker prize, The White Tiger was more widely read and better appreciated critically among India‘s English speaking population. Hopefully the novel will be translated into all the major Indian languages and thus reach a wider audience, including some children of those living in the chicken cages. 

Perhaps by reading such books they will understand their condition and figure out how to break free, though not through the path of crime.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

For Author's biography and other information visit: Aravind Adiga