Humanistic Values at Stake in Postcolonial
Era: A Study of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
Sahadev
Roy
State
Aided College Teacher
Department
of English
Dewanhat
Mahavidyalaya
Cooch
Behar, West Bengal, India
&
Ph.D.
Research Scholar
Department
of English
O.P.J.S.
University
Churu,
Rajasthan, India
Abstract:
Aravind Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger,
published in 2008 portrays the darkest side of the Indian society during the
post-colonial era. The novel reveals the struggle and misery of the downtrodden
people amidst various societal issues like corruption, poverty, unemployment,
discrimination in terms of wealth and caste, etc. After the end of colonialism
people acquired freedom from the colonial powers. But even in the post-colonial
era the lower strata of the society are exposed to all societal evils and they
are not treated equally. Their freedom still remains as a big question mark in
this modern era. They are dominated and handled like animals. The society’s
lack of humanism has paved way for the agony of the poor people. In his early
novel, Adiga has taken the challenge of highlighting corruption, the tapping
issue and other issues which make the country crippled. This paper aims to
bring out the erosion of humanistic values and depicts how the poor people are
corrupted and forced to commit crimes to survive this hard era.
Keywords: Post-colonial, Corruption, Colonialism,
Societal Evils, Humanism and Crime
Introduction
During the colonial era the colonizers exploited the
colonized people socially, politically and economically and treated them as subaltern.
After constant struggle the country obtained independence and the end of
colonialism has resulted in the creation of many socio economic groups. People
were segregated into upper and lower class based on the caste, community,
occupation and economic background. Even after the end of colonialism people
like the Zamindars, Landlords, Business men, Industrialists exploited the
working class for their wellbeing.
In the post-colonial era the poor people became poorer
and it also restricted them from becoming rich and it created a big difference
in the society. The poor and downtrodden people had no spokesperson to speak
for them. Hence they occupied a minimal place in the society. Even the
government and the system were hard on them. They lived an insecure and
oppressed life for many generations as servants, drivers and cleaners in the
houses of rich people even in the post-colonial era.
Adiga in The White Tiger highlights the pitiable
life led by the poor people and how they are ill-treated by the masters of the
house. The masters lacked humanism and the poor people were not given proper
food, wages, leave etc. They were treated like animals and also addressed as
half baked. “Class instinct is subjective and spontaneous. Class position is
objective and rational” (Althusser 13). In India people are discriminated based
on the class and the caste. In the village where the plot is set four rich
people named as the Buffalo, the Stork, the Wild Boar, the Raven exploited and
utilized the river, land, roads and other natural resources for their benefit.
They financed the poor people and turned them into slaves.
The White Tiger is a story about the class instinct and the
plight of the low class people. The protagonist of the novel is Balram Halwai,
a man of low caste who desires to be rich and chooses alternative ways to
achieve his wish. He follows all illegal ways like bribing, lying, robbing,
murdering etc to become a successful entrepreneur. Balram also thinks that
these evil ways are the gate ways to fulfill his dream. On achieving his
success he wanted to bring to limelight the journey which he underwent; hence
he writes a series of letters to the Chinese Premier Jiabao who is on a visit
to India to learn about Indian business and to make few Chinese entrepreneurs.
Balram narrates his success story to the Chinese premier through his letter
because he wanted Jiabao to know the plight of subaltern people in India and
how they lead a miserable life under the corrupt political leaders and the
system.
Balram represents the dark India filled with destitute,
beggars, cleaners, labourers, rickshaw pullers, etc. Ashok, Balram’s employer
represents the lighter side of India filled with noble men, aristocrats,
landlords, industrialists, rich merchants, ministers, political leaders etc.
the former one is the result of the corrupt system, poverty, unemployment,
imposed by the latter one. The lives of these subaltern people who come under
dark India is decided and destined by the people of light India. These
subaltern people are supposed to remain silent and they were muted by the
oppressors. They were not given identity to survive individually. Subaltern
people were made dependent on their masters for their livelihood. “…India is
two countries in one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean
brings Light to my country. Every place...near the ocean is well off. But [the
Ganges] river brings darkness to India—the black river” (TWT 14).
People of dark India were not allowed to speak for
themselves. They were made as voiceless victims. The oppressed remained silent
and if they raised their voice they were forced to accept the punishment given
by their masters. They were made to struggle for their day to day life. “…
there they went to the station and rushed into the train— packing the inside,
hanging from the railings, climbing onto the roofs—and went to Delhi, Calcutta
and Dhanbad to find work” (TWT 26). The rich landlords lived in palaces and
mansions in the city but the downtrodden people lived in the outskirts and they
had to travel a lot to find job in the city. The lives of the downtrodden and
the subaltern people were not considered important whereas the lives of high
class people are given utmost importance.
Adiga in his novel The White Tiger gives a realistic
picture of the modern India and how the downtrodden people suffer for their
survival. Balram, the protagonist of the novel is a school dropout. He is from
a low caste, poor economical background and the son of a rickshaw puller. His
family is crushed by poverty and because of that he was mocked by the fellow
students and also for discontinuing his studies. Deprived of all basic needs,
he wanted to become a successful entrepreneur. The protagonist Balram’s father
suffered extremely and he was addressed as ‘donkey’ by his master. So, he
thinks that his son should lead a respectable life in the society. “My
[Balram‘s father] whole life, I have been treated like a donkey. All I want is
that one son of mine - at least one - should live like a man” (TWT 30).
The pitiable state of the downtrodden people is not
understood by the high class people. But many reforms and schemes were
introduced by our government to support the economically backward people.
Government offers free education for the children of the subaltern group but
they were not allowed to pursue their studies by the upper class. For instance
Balram was stopped form school and forced to work in a village tea shop to
clear their family debts which they brought from the stork for his cousin’s
wedding. Hence, Balram’s desire for studies was cut down from his very early
age.
The White Tiger is a grim tale about poverty and oppression.
Corruption plays a major role in all the fields. Education, hospitals,
government offices, during the time of election etc. few issues of corruption
are highlighted by Adiga in his novel. Balram’s hatred for the upper class and
passion for becoming rich was sown deeply in his mind during his school days.
His school teacher stole the money, food and the uniforms allotted by the
children for the poor children. The reason which he states for his theft is
that he didn’t receive the salary cheque for few months. So, the corrupt school
teacher corrupted the students. “This corruption has entered even in the temple
of education. The teacher steals the money of the government scheme for
providing roti and dal to each student on the plea that he has not got his
salary for a long time. Even the people know it but don’t blame the teacher”
(Arora 87). This incident made Balram to think that for being rich and our own
upliftment one can commit any sort of crime.
Another incident where Balram faces utmost corruption is
when his father was admitted in the government hospital the doctors were
interested in doing private service and due to the lack of medical aid he died.
So, the corrupt medical system was responsible for the deaths of poor people.
This also paved way for the common people to get involved in immoral
activities. The corrupted people stand as an example for the corrupted country.
As a school dropout Balram worked in a tea shop and there
he learnt about the county’s socio political scenario from the people who
visited the shop and also through the newspapers. Balram utilized the time and
he learnt driving. He was employed as a chauffeur to a wealthy landlord. In the
interview he was enquired about his caste. Balram forges his caste as sweet
maker to get a chauffeur job in the city. Even though we tell that caste system
is vanished in India through this novel it is evident that even in developed
cities like New Delhi it is practiced.
The landlord’s son Ashok and his wife Pinky Madam took
Balram to New Delhi where he was exposed to the corrupted city life. Through
Balram we can see our India in a new perspective. The rotten practice of
corruption has made our country a place unfit to live. Juxtaposition of wealthy
and poor is pictured in the city of New Delhi. Balram was fascinated by the
rapid growth of the city. To satisfy his wife’s American dream Ashok takes her
to malls where people like Balram are not supposed to enter. The suburbs of New
Delhi were occupied by the American companies and rich people flocked there for
want of American trend and culture. This rapid growth of globalization was
fixed in Balram’s mind and it paved way for his immoral act of corrupting
others. In today’s capitalist society Balram finds a way to get liberated from
his lower caste identity and to become an entrepreneur. He chooses illegal ways
to attain success which remains as a social stigma.
Balram chooses to become rich and he uses Ashok as his
trump card. He plans to murder Ashok and to rob the money which he had to bribe
the ministers for obtaining the coal mines contract. He plans accordingly and
murders him by using a bottle and escapes with the money. For the sake of money
he goes even to the extent of murdering his master. “I’ll never say I made a
mistake … when I slit my master‘s throat...It was worthwhile to know, just for
a day, just for an hour, just for a minute, what it means not to be a servant!”
(TWT 276). Balram does not care about the consequences and he flees to
Bangalore and starts taxi services for the call centers and bribes the police
for Ashok’s murder and also for the accidents committed by his drivers. Balram
becomes hard hearted in achieving his goal. As a revenge for Ashok’s murder his
family murders everyone in Balram’s family.
Balram rationalizes this incident by telling that to
achieve the ladder of success few comprises can be made. He does not sympathize
for his ruthless act and he wanted to earn more money to get rid of the low
class stigma. “Since the marginalized have known only the language which has
been handed down to them by their exploiters, they should, as Fanon would have
probably suggested, use the language of violence at their disposal to give at
back and at the same time to continue to deconstruct it from within” (Singh,
Randhawa 33). Balram breaks out of the coop and frees himself. “Can a man break
out of the coop? What if one day, for instance, a driver took his employer‘s
money and ran...Only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed—hunted,
beaten...can break out of the coop” (TWT 176).
Adiga’s prose is an authentic depiction of India’s urban
life where they have and have-nots contradict each other in terms of wealth and
power. The have-nots like the protagonist Balram are degraded by the haves.
Adiga compares these poor people with the condition of the chickens which are
kept in a pitiable condition in the cage. He also blames the people who do not
rebel for their rights like the chickens. They believe in perpetual servitude
and they are trapped in their cages by themselves. They do not want to get
liberated from the cage and served their masters whole heartedly. The rooster
coop analogy is a metaphor used by Balram to describe the poor people’s
oppression. “Rooster coop” (TWT 173). The chickens kept in the cage in the
market watch one another killed but they could not break out of the coop.
Likewise poor people in India see one another oppressed and tortured by the
wealthy landlords. Rarely people like Balram had a quest for freedom and
struggled hard to get relieved from the coop. Balram in spite of all the
obstacles breaks himself from the social disparity and murders his master and
becomes an entrepreneur. Adiga’s point of view is that discrimination between
the rich and poor should be avoided and universal brotherhood should be
established among people. Every individual should be treated with dignity and
respect.
Balram saw tomorrow where people of his caste wanted to
satisfy the needs of today. Adiga compares Balram to the white tiger because it
is a rare creature and it also possesses extra ordinary intelligence. Even
though the white tiger lives in a jungle it follows its own rules and stands apart
from other animals. Balram, from the lower class of the society has a quest for
freedom and do not wish to be a slave. Rarely people like Balram protest
against the system by fair or unfair means.
Freeman
and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman,
in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one
another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that
each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,
or in the common ruin of the contending classes. (Marx & Engels14)
Even though Balram was born the dark India he views life
in the lighter side of prosperity and liberation. He is willing to sacrifice
his family for achieving his freedom as proposed by his inner self. Balram was
totally against the new caste system. He remembers the olden days where
everyone had a place and he preferred those days. The system was like
everything was predetermined and people were happy. Now due to the laws framed by
the government the caste system was abolished but people find it complicated to
fit into the new social structure. This modified structure made the rich become
richer and benefitted leaving the poor to suffer more. Balram strongly believes
that the abolition of caste system will not do anything to improve the
inequality in the society. Krishna Singh opines about the condition of low
class people as:
Balram
is the strong voice of underclass in which marginal farmers, landless
labourers, jobless youths, poor, auto and taxi drivers, servants, prostitutes,
beggars and unprivileged figure. The underclass is the result of our polity,
bureaucratic set-up, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, caste and culture
conflict, superstitions, social taboos, dowry practice, economic disparity,
Zamindari system, corrupt education system, poor health services, police and
judicial working. These forces collectively operate to perpetuate the
underclass. This underclass constitutes Dark India. (89-112)
Among all the issues corruption is the primary and hot
button issue which is responsible for all the other problems. A corrupted
individual corrupts the whole society as well as the entire country. Every
professional and government people are involved in corruption. The election voting
system is also corrupted. People pay money for becoming ministers. After
winning they expect bribes for signing contracts for laying roads, coal mines,
etc. rich industrialists and business men pay bribes for getting their works to
be done. For instance Ashok’s family bribes the ministers for getting coal
mines contract. Adiga’s sharp focus on the tapping issue of corruption shows
that our country is in the hands of greedy and dirty minded people who are
selfish and concerned only about their welfare. “Adiga has shown that though
India is one of the fastest growing economics in the world but its progress is
not holistic. The condition of poor people is yet to transform completely. He
has attacked hardly on the political authorities and had tried to wake up the
spirits of the common people” (Rao A. S. 6).
To sum up, in the post-colonial era, humanistic values
are eroded and people of the middle and low class struggle to survive the hard
era whereas the people of the higher strata enjoy and lead a peaceful life.
Works Cited
Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger. Harper Collins Publishers. 2013.
Althusser, Louis. “Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays”: Ideology
and Ideological State Apparatuses, translated by Ben Brewster. Monthly Review Press, 1971.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Manifesto
of the Communist Party. Progress Publishers, 1969.
Rao, A.S. Perspectives on Aravind
Adiga’s The White Tiger.
Aadi Publications. 2011.
Singh, Khrishna. “Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger: The Voice of
Underclass-A Postcolonial Dialectics”. Journal of Literature, Culture and
Media Studies, vol. 1, no.
2 (July-Dec 2009). pp. 89-112.
Singh, Randhawa Harbir. Ed. Dalit Literature: Contents, Trends and
Concerns. Swarup Book Publishers. 2010.