The White Tiger

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger has won the Man-Booker prize. It is
the fourth winner by an Indian writer, including Midnight’s Children,
by Salman Rushdie, The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy,
and Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai. As an historian of India, who
frequently teaches fiction, I picked it up to read on my flight to New
Delhi last week. Quickly I found that The White Tiger displays such a
mean-spirited voice and a brutal distortion of the lives of poor rural
Indians that it makes its celebration puzzling.
The White Tiger is the story of Balram Halwai, the son of a
village rickshawala, who through wiles and determination becomes
the driver to the hated village landlord. The book takes the form of a
series of letters from the narrator, now a self-described
entrepreneur in the bustling hi-tech city of Bangalore, to the Chinese
Premier, Wen Jiabao, describing “the real India” he will not see
during his upcoming official visit. We learn early on that Balram has
committed murder and robbery. But all of this is told with comical

fun poked not only at the excesses of the rich, but also at the
circumstances of poor people.
Described by the Man-Booker committee as a humorous take on “a
different aspect of India,” the novel sets itself up as a corrective to
one prevailing image of India’s economic success. Clearly this politics
was a Man-Booker consideration. As the committee says, “The book
gains from dealing with pressing social issues and significant global
developments with astonishing humour.” In fact, 80% of the world’s
software comes from India and so too do many of the world’s richest
entrepreneurs. (I’m reminded here of Thomas Friedman’s portrayals
in The World is Flat.) And yet there remain problems of economic
and social inequality.
The White Tiger chooses Bihar, the poor state in eastern
India—always maligned by reporters who rarely visit there to report
on it—as emblematic of poverty and savagery. The fact that none of
the characters are fully realized or sympathetic may be the sign of
satire, but if so, it also suggests (and many reviewers seem to agree)
that they stand for the real depravity of Biharis. Adiga’s labeling this
place as “Darkness” in contrast to Civilization (Bangalore) can’t
possibly escape a comparison to Joseph Conrad. And sure enough
Adiga’s description of village life follows from so many stereotypes
found in colonial literature.
Having lived in Bihar, I both recognize the landscapes he describes
and resent the cheap caricature he makes of it. One needn’t idealize
poverty to recognize the humanity in people from different regions,
cultures, backgrounds, and classes. The fact that Adiga was born in
Chennai, or lives in Mumbai, does not excuse the blank stereotyping
of Biharis. (By the way, there was a recent political agitation in
Mumbai to kick out Bihari migrant workers.) In the novel, we’re
supposed to laugh at the cruelty of the main character’s
grandmother or his own uncaring ambition. Even the critique of the
wealthy landlords and corrupt politicians is convoluted—elections
determined by a single man stamping ballots. As a student of India’s
democracy, I especially balked at this dismissal of the seriousness
with which Biharis in large number exercise their right to vote.
Both in India and abroad The White Tiger has received mixed
reviews. Akash Kapur in the New York Times writes about “an
absence of human complexity” in the novel. And Manjula
Padmanabhan in Outlook India, points to its “schoolboyish

sneering.” But others at The Independent and The New Yorker are
cheerfully “seduced.”
The White Tiger has none of the beautiful prose of The God of Small
Things or the brilliant social criticism of Midnight’s Children. And it
does not portray poor people in the complex and nuanced terms
that Rohinton Mistry does in A Fine Balance. Rather, the Man-
Booker committee chose to reward a weak novel that does little
more than depict corruption among the powerful and depravity
among the poor in the guise of a “post post-colonial” novel.