The White Tiger

The White Tiger offers a first-person narrative through letters to Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier in 2003-2013, written by Balram Halwai of Bangalore. These opening chapters define the trajectory of Balram, as he exemplifies India’s growth, its struggle between castes—that of Collectivism, Individualism, and the Search for Identity. Narrated over seven nights and two mornings, the novel depicts the challenges and promises of India’s emergent economy. Despite the country’s rampant corruption and inequality (as depicted by the novel), people like Balram can rise from their caste and part with tradition.

Balram addresses Corruption, Politics, and India, especially the Socioeconomic Inequality in India that defines those of the Darkness (largely rural areas). Like the River Ganga (Ganges), corruption flows throughout the country, threatening to wash away each person in it. Author Aravind Adiga implies that responsibility for this corruption lies with those in power—the landlords who live in the Darkness and the Light (urban areas, from Delhi to Bangalore), the Great Socialist who pushes the rich to exploit the poor he allegedly seeks to help, and the ministers who promise change but only take bribes.

Again, the ubiquity of this corruption becomes apparent when nature itself becomes a metaphor through the River Ganga, which Balram notes flows with waste and bodies. Balram describes it as a “river of Death, whose banks are full of rich, dark, sticky mud whose grip traps everything that is planted in it, suffocating and choking and stunting it” (12). Gesturing to the river as a burial place—as this is where his mother’s body was burned and buried—it also becomes a metaphorical trap. It seems to give life, supplying water and mud. But like the Great Socialist and the landlords who support him, the river ultimately steals life and traps people.

The landlords in the Darkness and the Light also function as an extension of nature, one cruel and devastating. Balram likens the four landlords who control Laxmangarh to four animals, whose method of feeding on the land and its people determine their animal counterpart. The Stork, Mr. Ashok’s father, “owned the river that flowed outside the village, and he took a cut of every catch of fish caught by every fisherman in the river, and a toll from every boatman who crossed the river to come to our village” (20-21). Along with the Buffalo, the Raven, and the Wild Boar, these landlords only stay in the village to feed; like the river, their presence seems natural, but their actions break down the people of the Darkness. Sustained by the Great Socialist, who masquerades as a champion of the poor and feeds on the landlords’ greed, these landlords demonstrate the ubiquity of corruption and its reach, far beyond the land touched by the River Ganga.

This corruption leads to more inequality, as the poor of India are forced to pay for bribes and unfair loans, whether to landlords, the Great Socialist, or the ministers who promise improvements. When Balram and his brother take their father, weakened by tuberculosis that should have been treatable, to the only public hospital in their region, they notice the lack of doctors and sanitation. This is due to government doctors bribing officials so they can “work in some private hospital for the rest of the week” (41). Corruption touches everyone, like the mud of the River Ganga, as doctors have no incentive to remain at a hospital where patients can’t pay. Separated by caste and income, the poor of the Darkness become isolated from the economic advances of India.

Burdened by corrupt elections in the Darkness, those in poverty have no recourse. Balram, like his brother and father, must leave school after the Stork forces repayment of a loan. This lack of education creates barriers between those in the Darkness and those who learn in the Light, a boundary made clear when Ashok and Pinky Madam question Balram after he becomes their driver. While Balram doesn’t detail his answers to Ashok’s questions, they strike Ashok as ridiculous enough to explain India’s lack of progress. Calling Balram “half-baked,” Ashok diminishes those who don’t complete their education. However, Balram claims this mantle with pride:

[…] thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you’ll find an odd museum of ideas…these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with. The story of my upbringing is the story of how a half-baked fellow is produced (8).

Having not completed a formal education, Balram isn’t constrained by conventions he never truly learned. More of an adventurer and businessman than the formally educated Ashok, Balram relishes his status because it allows him to occupy two worlds: “I am in the Light now, but I was born and raised in Darkness” (11).