The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga

Literary Appreciation
Dilip Barad
Dept. of English
M.K. Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar – Gujarat
dilipbarad@gmail.com
www.dilipbarad.com
 Let us discuss . . .
• Creative writing vs/and
criticism!
• Tagore and Gandhi: The idea
of Nation
• Umashankar Joshi – The Idea
of Indian Literature
• E V Ramakrishnan –
Relocating …
• Nation & Narration: Homi K.
Bhabha
• Farrukh Dhondy – nation
and novel
• Subaltern Identity: Gramsci
and Spivak
• A.K. Singh – Alternativism
• Narrative structure - Memory
Novels
• Franz Kafka – on Literature
• Nietzsche’s “Ubermensch”
• Rereading texts: Politics of
awards/rewards/western
audience
• Self-Help Book
• Globalization
• Social Relevance
• Conclusion: The End of the
novel and the Poetic Justice
Tagore & Gandhi • Both Rabindranath Tagore
and Gandhi were against the
nation-state – Swaraj vs
Suraj
• For Tagore, the concept of
India was not territorial but
ideational i.e. India for him
was not a geographical
expression but an idea.
• His view of nationalism was
more about spreading a
homogenised universalism
than seeking political
freedom for India.
• Gandhi – ‘our struggle for
freedom is to bring peace in
the world’.
 Umashankar Joshi – ‘The Idea of Indian Literature’
• Umashankar Joshi – The Idea of Indian Literature –
“Indianness is rather an ongoing search for, a vision of, a
pattern of Indian literature and culture to which the
literature and culture in every part of the country is more
or less converging”.
• “… We shall always be viewing the composite identity of
Indian literature within the parameters of the composite
culture of India.”
• “…True Indianness transcends India and genuine
Indianisation is a synonym for humanization.”
• Indian ethos is one of synthesis rather than exclusiveness
… plea for swaraj in ideas.
• K. Satchidanandan – ‘Umashankar Joshi and the Idea of Indian Literature’ – Indian Literature 268)
Umashankar Joshi’s Idea of Indian Literature
• His recognition of the complexity of idea, the gaps
and silences in the earlier formulations, the inherent
plurality of Indian literature, the importance of
translation in the understanding and sustenance of
the idea and the need for a relative and comparative
approach rather
than an absolute and normative one.
• He recognized possibility of the idea being hijacked
by the right wing Hindu ideologues – idea means
upper caste Hindu community.

• He was careful to distinguish himself from these

dogmatists who refuse to recognize the multi-
religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nature of
the country and its literature that lends itself to a
plurality
of readings.
E. V. Ramakrishnan – relocate Indian literature

• We need to relocate Indian literature in the context

of caste gender, region, religion etc., where issues
of everyday struggles for subsistence in a living
society find their expression. . . The struggle against
hegemonic structures of power defines the nature
of lower-caste subjectivity. … Literature is shaped
by the material condition of society.”
• (From the Pedagogical to the Performative – Locating Indian Literature:
Texts, Traditions, Translations. Delhi 2011)
 Homi K. Bhabha: ‘Introduction:
Narrating the Nation’ (Nation
and Narration)
• Nation – the modern Janus: the uneven development of
capitalism inscribes both progression and regression,
political rationality and irrationality in the very genetic
code of the nation – it is by nature, ambivalent.
• Nation is narrated in ‘terror of the space or race of the
Other; the comfort of social belonging, the hidden
injuries of class, the customs of taste, the powers of
political affiliation; the sense of social order, the
sensibility of sexuality; the blindness of bureaucracy, the
strait insight of institutions; the quality of justice, the
commonsense of injustice; the langue of the law and the
parole of the people’.
Homi K. Bhabha: ‘Introduction: Narrating the
Nation’ (Nation and Narration)
• It is to explore the Janus-faced ambivalence of
language itself in the construction of the Janus-
faced discourse of the nation.
• Nation is an agency of ambivalent narration that
holds ‘culture’ at its most productive position, as a
force for ‘subordination, fracturing, diffusing,
reproducing as much as producing, creating, forcing
and guiding’.
Homi K. Bhabha: ‘Introduction: Narrating the
Nation’ (Nation and Narration)

• The ambivalent, antagonistic perspective of nation

as narration will establish the cultural boundaries of
the nation so that they may be acknowledged as
‘containing’ thresholds of meaning that must be
crossed, erased and translated in the process of
cultural production.
• What kind of cultural space is the nation with its
transgressive boundaries and its interruptive’
interiority?
Farrukh Dhondy: The Nation and the Novel
(3 Nov, 2012 – ToI)
• How is South Asian writing in a universal human
context to be evaluated? Perhaps as all literature has
ever been? The European short story was born of the
parable and the fable.
• The novel in England, France, Russia and Germany
was, in an important way, born of a crisis of religious
faith.
F.D.: Nation & Novel
• when a culture ceases to live and assess itself by the
laws of Moses or Jesus, when Dorothea of
Middlemarch or Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary feel
what they feel and do what they do, they can call
upon no strictly biblical justification.
• It takes George Eliot, Tolstoy and Gustave Flaubert to
construct a form which captures those nuances of
feeling and brings an inclusive sympathy to the
possibilities of human and social behaviour. 
F.D.: Nation & Novel
• The novel in the European context was called upon to
supply in narrative the definition of 'love', 'faith',
'loyalty', 'generosity', 'compassion', 'priggishness',
'snobbery', 'war', 'peace' and every other abstract
noun in the dictionary.
• It took up where faith left off and did the opposite of
what heroic myths used to do. Some European
writing, the novels of Dostoevsky and the
philosophical works of Nietzsche took this crisis of
faith and the death of myth head on, asking and
explicitly answering questions.
F.D.: Nation & Novel
• And South Asia?
• Of which necessity was South Asian writing in
English born?
• The obvious answer is nationalism and the struggle
for Independence.
• The influence of the writing, though widely
translated, suffered from the limitation of being in
English.
F.D.
• At the same time as this contribution to nationalism
was formulated, a far more influential media was
coming into its own.
• Film became the lingua franca of India and it
exclusively dedicated itself to the various purposes
and themes of nationalism, asserting India's great
past (Raja Harishchandra), and following a Gandhian
agenda in attacking untouchability (Achhut Kanya)
and elevating the status of women (Razia Begum).
F.D.
• The cinematic definitions created and were bound
by myth. Modernity, the urbanisation of India, new
institutions, industrialisation, global imports,
rampant capitalism and corruption (whew!) were
changing India and though the myths persisted,
were modified and increasingly seen to be fantasy
or escapism.
F.D.
• The task then of the new cinema and of South
Asian writing was to distance oneself from the
myth and describe and dissect the personalities and
possibilities of existence that emerge.
 Subaltern Identity: Gramsci and Spivak
• The Subaltern identity is conceptually derived from the work on cultural
hegemony by the Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937).
• Master-slave narrative, history told from below, bottom-top narrative,
slave apes master. . . . . . subaltern is not just a classy word for
“oppressed”, for [the] Other, for somebody who’s not getting a piece of
the pie. . . . In post-colonial terms, everything that has limited or no access
to the cultural imperialism is subaltern — a space of difference. Now, who
would say that’s just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It’s
not subaltern. . . . Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the
least interesting and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a
discriminated-against minority on the university campus; they don't
need the word ‘subaltern’ . . . They should see what the mechanics of
the discrimination are. They’re within the hegemonic discourse, wanting
a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the
hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern.
• — Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers
Conference in South Africa 
 Terry Eagleton: Political
• Criticism
“There is no need to drag politics into literary
theory(text), it has been there from the beginning.”
• This should not surprise – for any body of theory
(text) concerned with human meaning, value,
language, feeling and experience will inevitably
engage with broader, deeper beliefs about the nature
of human individuals and societies, problems of
power and sexuality, interpretations of past history,
versions of the present and hopes for the future.
• Literary Theory: An Introduction
A.K. Singh – Alternative Vs /as Revolution
• Since the romantic self or human psyche remains
fascinated with the myth or romance of the
revolution, the ghost of revolution haunts us despite a
not so pleasant tryst with the history of revolution.”
• “Probably, humanity to a large extent is either fatigued
with revolutions or it is incapable of affording yet
another disenchantment with revolution and their
failures.”
• In such a situation, an alternative is an alternative to
‘revolution’.
• Critique as Alternative: End of Postmodernism and
Altermodern as new Modernity.
• (From Indian Literature – March-April 2012)
Cultural Studies
• Four Goals:
• First, Cultural Studies transcends the confines of
particular discipline such as literary criticism or
history.
• Second, Cultural Studies is politically engaged.
• Thirdly, Cultural Studies denies the separation of
“high’ and “low” or elite and popular culture.
• Finally, Cultural Studies analyzes not only the cultural
work, but also the means of production.
• A Hand book of Critical Approaches to Literature – Wilfred Guerin, Labor et all.
Narrative – Memory Novel: Dipesh Chakrabarty
• One needs to understand the relation between memory and
identity”, the “shared structure of a sentiment”, “the sense
of trauma and its contradictory relation to the question of
the past”.
• Trauma is memory.
• One of principal arguments seems to be that “the narrative
structure of the memory of trauma works on a principle
opposite to that of any historical narrative”.
• According to him, “a historical narrative leads up to the
event in question, explaining why it happened, and why it
happened when it did, and this is possible only when the
event is open to explanation. What cannot be explained
belongs to the marginalia of history.”
• ‘Memories of Displacement: The Poetry and Prejudice of Dwelling’ in Habitation of
Modernity, pp 116-17.
 In a November 1903 letter, found in the altogether enchanting
compendium Letters to Friends, Family and Editors (public library),
Kafka writes to his childhood friend, the art historian Oskar Pollak:

• Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own

castle.
• I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and
stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a
blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will
make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy
precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us
happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we
need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us
deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than
ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone,
like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside
us. That is my belief.
• Let us discuss . . .
 The White Tiger
• Title: Symbol of White tiger in Chinese myth
• Reading text:
• Blurb
• Pg. 6, 8, 10,12.
• You see, I am in light now, but I was born and raised in
Darkness . . . Please understand, Your Excellency, that
India is two countries in one: an India of Light, and an
India of Darkness. The Ocean brings light to my
country. .. But the river brings darkness to India – the
black river. (read pg. 15)
• Pg. 19: Inside, you will find an image of a saffron-
coloured creature, half man half monkey…
• Stories of rottenness and corruption are always the best stories, aren’t
they?
• Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
• “But this is your fate if you do your job well – with honesty, dedication, and
sincerity, the way Gandhi would have done it…. I did my job with near total
dishonesty, lack of dedication, and insincerity…:
• Read pg. 63, 64. about caste
• ‘The villages are so religious in the Darkness”
• Democracy! Pg. 96-102 “I am India’s most faithful voter, and I still have
not seen the inside of a voting booth’.
• Pg. 173:Indians invented everything . . . 174-175. Rooster coop.
• I was driver …. Master pg. 302… 304, 305
• 313, poor man kills rich man . . . I am woken – Buddha - 315
• Pg. 318:all the skin-whitening creams sold in the markets of India won’t
clean my hands again.
• Conclusion: pg. 319-320 – I will never say I made a mistake that night in
Delhi when I slit my master’s throat.
Narrative modeled on Self Help Book
Ideological Apparatus
• The capitalist project
• Be Positive > law of attraction > habits of . . .
• Hard work / smart work
• Be money minded > love job, not company
• Use and throw
• Earn and spend
• Dhirubhaism > Think Big > how big?
• Elephant’s cock?
• Detraditionalization, profit-minded,
• Micki McGee, Self-help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life (Oxford
2005)
• Mohsin hamid: How to get filthy rich in Rising Asia
• Chetan Bhagat: One Night @ The CC
(Index)
Globalization
• Under the mask of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Equality’. . .
• New shackles – and people found straining at the leash
• New economic circumstances: “And only two destinies:
eat—or get eaten up.”
• Moral code of conduct undergoes vital shift
• Threatens skeleton structure of Indian Society > the
damage Moguls or British cannot do > this phenomenon
is doing. . .
• “For surely any successful man must spill a
little blood on his way to the top”
 Globalization
• What sort of future projections discussed in The World is Flat seems to be supported in the
fictional narrative of The White Tiger?
•                                                         iii.       The White Tiger  is a novel which brings out the
effects of Globalisation at the cost of the personal. Elaborate.
•                                                         iv.      Globalization has had a huge impact on thinking across
the humanities, redefining the understanding of fields such as communication, culture,
politics, and literature. (Connell and Marsh). How far is this novel affected by Globalization?
• v. "Although technological revolution, transnational corporations, and global restructuring
of capitalism have made the world increasingly interdependent and interconnected,
radically altering our concepts of time, space, politics, and relations, this has in no way
changed the fundamental fact that the West still poses or imposes itself as the centre of the
world. The mythology of a world already decentered politically, culturally, economically, and
ideologically papers over the lived global power-relations between the developed West and
the underdeveloped Rest." (Shaoba Xie, Is the World Decentered? A Postcolonial
Perspective on Globalization.) 
• vi. Suman Gupta in Under Construction: “World Literature” in the Twenty-First
Century portrays many of globalization’s major topics and processes: intercultural relations,
intercultural conflict, transnationalism, population mobility, heterogenization,
homogenization, hybridity, the public-private interface, economic integration, and so on.
vii. Sanjaya Subramanium's observation on another post-modern paradox authorship. 
(Read full interview) Here in The White Tiger, how does this operate?
The Great Western Cultural
Conspiracy
• Religio-Cultural segregation
• Muslims or Hindus > people’s religious and cultural
identities are attacked > break the back-bone

• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World

Order - Samuel P. Huntington
• What do the English and American Writers
do? Do they praise their culture/society?
• Social Relevance
• The voice of the Great Socialist came on. He was being interviewed
by a radio reporter.
• "The election shows that the poor will not be ignored. The
Darkness will not be silent. There is no water in our taps, and what
do you people in Delhi give us? You give us cell phones. Can a man
drink a phone when he is thirsty? Women walk for miles every
morning to find a bucket of clean—"
• "Do you want to become prime minister of India?" "Don't ask me
such questions. I have no ambitions for myself. I am simply the
voice of the poor and the disenfranchised."
• "But surely, sir—" "Let me say one last word, if I may. All I have
ever wanted was an India where any boy in any village could
dream of becoming the prime minister.”
• "Any boy in any village can grow up to become the
prime minister of India. That is his message to little
children all over this land. . . Even a boy working and
self-educating at tea-stall, breaking coals and wiping
tables . .
• Working in a tea shop. Smashing coals. Wiping
tables. Bad news for me, you say? To break the law of
his land—to turn bad news into good news—is the
entrepreneur's prerogative.“
Nietzche’s “Ubermensch” In Literature
• Balram Halwai can be understood in the literary
tradition of the Nietzschean “ubermensch,” and as such,
it is useful to understand the nature of that trope.
• Nietzche’s concept of the “ubermensch,” usually
translated as “super-man” or “over-man,” is a central
concept of Nietzschean philosophy, most significantly
discussed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85).
Nietzche’s ubermensch is a man of superior potential
who has thrown off the shackles of the traditional
Christian “herd morality,” instead constructing his own
moral system. Having moved beyond the confines of
moral thought, the ubermensch furthers the interests
of humanity by pursuing the realization of his own
singular moral code, and hence acting as a model for
those who follow.
 Balram Halwai – the Ubermensch
• Balram’s actions in The White Tiger can be understood within
the framework of the Nietzchean ubermensch.
• Balram considers himself to be superior to his fellow men, an
extraordinary and rare “White Tiger” in the jungle of the
Darkness.
• He believes his fate to be separate from others of his
background, since he has awoken while they remain sleeping.
• Accordingly, he breaks free of the system of morality that
binds the other people of the Darkness to the Rooster Coop.
• He constructs his own system of morals, in which theft,
murder, and a deadly betrayal to his family become
acceptable and justifiable actions.
• Finally, he rationalizes his choices by believing that he will
serve as a model to those who follow. (Index)
 Conclusion

• The question of selection between ‘suraj’ or ‘swaraj’

– has become more acute now.
• Now the alternative is no more visible.
• Why letter to Chinese premiere?
• Is it an anguish for the failure of Nehruvian socialism?
• Is it an eye-opener for both China and India against neo-colonialism of
‘capitalism’?
• Is Balram’s rise an ‘x-ray’ image of super-neo-rich-indifferent-
middle-class and their morality?
• Is this what the ending of novel suggest?
• Why no regret? Why no poetic justice?
• Are we living Balram’s story in real world – the novel ended – life continues
thereafter . . .
• The Balrams – are rampant in our society: Global Capitalism, Corporate
Youth Icons, Corpo-friendly Political Icons!
 It may not be easy to agree with either of the given statements about this novel:

• Aravind Adiga is writing such novels for acceptance in West. The novels like
'The White Tiger' or films like 'Slumdog Millionaire' are given awards so that
it reaches to more people. Why? Let us see what Francis Gauteir has to say in
"Religion, Marxism and Slumdog": "We Westerners continue to suffer from a
superiority complex over the so called Third World in general and India in
particular. Sitting in front of our TV sets during prime time news with a hefty
steak on our table, we love to feel sorry for the misery of others, it secretly
flatters our ego, and makes us proud of our so-called achievements".
• Aravind Adiga kind of writers are necessary. They awaken us from our sleep.
They break the frozen snow of our 'sukoon'. And such writers are found in all
countries, cultures and languages. U.R. Anantmurty does same in Kannada
language. Not for awards from West, Dickens (England), Dostoevsky (Russia),
O'Neill, Tennesse Williams (both in America), Taslima Nasrin (Bangladesh) -
and innumerable film-makers have tried to clean the gutters of their socio-
cultural rottenness. Thus, Adiga cannot be discarded on the ground of
postcolonial process of decolonizing the mind - and thus stop to flatter the
egos of Westerners.
 Equally difficult it may be to say on the ending of the novel
• I believe . . .  that it would have been more satisfying if
the novel ended with poetic justice. The murderer,
immoral protagonist should have been given some
punishment for his manipulation of great thoughts to
justify his violent act. We have seen murderers in
literature (Macbeth, Hamlet, Oedipus etc),but there is
remorse at the end. Balram is remorseless. It does not
give edifying or ennobling effect on the readers.
• I believe . . .  that it is quite perfect ending. It may not
have poetic justice but it is true to life. We do not find
poetic justice happening every-time in real world. The
end is realistic. The reality it portrays it bitter pill to
swallow. But that is how the stories of rags to riches are,
in reality.
Thank You!
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