Although aimed at revealing what could be described as the ‘true India’, Indian writer Arvind Adigar’s 2008 Man Booker Prize winning novel, ‘The White Tiger’, is bound to be hugely popular among most perceptive South Asians on account of the strong likelihood of the latter relating easily to the thematic content of the novel, which smacks so much of this region’s harsh socio-political realities.

The novel’s ‘hero’ Balram Halwai, therefore, is arguably the generic image of the ‘up-and- coming’ South Asian ‘entrepreneur’, although there is no denying the distinctive Indianness of the novel. There is, for instance, the oppressive presence almost throughout the ‘hero’s’ life of the caste system and its implications for the enterprising ‘backward caste’ individual, which probably could be comprehended best by the Indian mind and the equally stifling family obligations of an individual; the full magnitude of which, perhaps, only those familiar with the Indian cultural milieu could feel and appreciate. Nevertheless, most South Asians would find the local political and social decay, portrayed so graphically and dramatically in the novel, exceedingly familiar and ‘true to life’. Therefore, essentially, ‘The White Tiger’ mirrors unsettlingly and with brutal frankness South Asia, in these restive globalization years and the rest of South Asians, no less than Indians, would find that the novel’s content resonates with things that are unpleasantly familiar although excruciatingly painful to recountenance.

Balram Halwai, the ‘low caste’ rustic, a representative of the proverbial ‘Other Half’ of the world or its powerless denizens, who makes it to the top almost of the wealth and income ladder, through a combination of wits, entrepreneurial capability and criminal force, extracts a degree of the reader’s empathy on account of the inhuman oppression and odds the ‘underdog’ in India usually faces but the reader would be making a grievous mistake by allowing himself to respond to the ‘hero’ with overwhelming sympathy. For, there is more than a hint at the end of the novel that Balram, besides being a prisoner of his conscience on account of the heinous murder he commits in New Delhi by brutally doing to death his employer and escaping with some of his money, is a veritable fugitive for the rest of his life. Although finally living in the lap of luxury, as a money-minting businessman in far away Bangalore, he has to cower with fear every time he sees a policeman.

Reflecting in princely comfort in his apartment Balram tells us at the end of the novel; ‘Getting caught – it’s always a possibility. There’s no end to things in India, as Mr. Ashok ( his murdered employer) used to say. You can give the police all the brown envelopes and red bags you want, and they might still screw you. A man in a uniform may one day point a finger at me and say, Time’s up, Munna( the ‘hero’s’ childhood pet name)’.

However, for the time being at least, Halwai has ‘bought’ his security and at last knows what it is to be even somewhat free of the heavy bondage of servanthood. In a culture where ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ he has ‘finally arrived’ and even if it is for a fleeting moment he tastes the heady wine of power. Given the degradation he has been subjected to most of his life, even this illusory sense of power is well worth having striven for. At the peak of his ‘success’, Halwai says: ‘…I’ll never say I made a mistake that night in Delhi when I slit my master’s throat…..I’ll say it was all worthwhile to know, just for a day, just for an hour, just for a minute, what it means not to be a servant.’

By making it by hook or by crook Balram gives the idea of entrepreneurship a fresh, intriguing twist. Entrepreneurship could be business acumen, resourcefulness and many things more, including the willingness to kill one’s way to the top. The unsettling truth at the heart of the novel is that the powerless in the Indian situation are driven to extreme acts, if they crave for what are considered the good things in life. However, the ultimate compelling power of the story derives from the reader’s realization that even though those who are more daring among the powerless – the almost unique ‘White Tigers’ – manage to break through their fetters, such relief is fleeting. In other words, for the powerless there is really no escape from their shackles. It is this truth that invests the novel with much of its value.

The world of ‘The White Tiger’, however, is an amoral one. Given the terrible iniquities landlords, masters, rulers and law enforcers freely perpetrate with boundless impunity, it is difficult to be harshly and rigorously condemnatory of the likes of Balram. For example, the powerful of Indian society all stand condemned for committing pillage, graft, murder and immorality. In fact it is these notables who are shown as ‘corrupting’ their servants. This is a world which is completely bereft of role models. Even Ashok, Halvai’s master, although initially liberal-minded, fresh after his education in the US, is shown as being eventually corrupted by his father and brother, both sleazy, ruthlessly acquisitive landlords.

What ’The White Tiger’ projects is a highly brutalized society where almost none could be seen as redeemable in a moral sense. Given the proportions of the moral, political and social decay which has overtaken most of South Asia since the explosive advent of economic globalization, the novel could be considered as accurately reflecting current conditions in South Asia.

The novel takes the form of a series of letters Balram writes to the Chinese President, who is about to visit India, on his ‘ascent’ to power, from his safe haven in Bangalore, the prime ICT growth centre of India and a veritable symbol of that vastly advancing country. This gives the narrator the opportunity to reveal all about what he thinks is the true state of his country. What he has to disclose to the Chinese President would amount to rubbishing what the official, syrupy brochures on India would be regaling him with, Balram promises.