Research Paper-English
'India Re-located' in Arvind Adiga's
The White Tiger
* Prakash Bhadury
August, 2012
* 232, Panchwati Enclave, Meerut.
A B S T R A C T
The White Tiger (2008) explores the protagonist Munna's journey between an 'India of Light' and an 'India of Darkness' while the country is rising as a modern global economy. Narrated through epistolary form, Munna highlights the "Great Socialist's fall of values , social and political corruption, oppression of lower classes against 'Gandhian' values and his striving to come out as an entrepreneur, though in an corrupt way. Here, the protagonist is the White Tiger, a rare creature that comes once in a generation as a surprise and change. Adiga, here, is in permanent argument with the world he has inherited and has attempted to relocate India in a political and economic context.
Introduction:
The White Tiger is an unflattering portrait of present day India as a society of servitude and rampant corruption. Poverty of rural Bihar, and the evil of the feudal landlords are shown mythically as an attempt to temper the society with the vision of justice against the brutal injustice at large in a vein of what writers like Balzac, or Dickens did in the 19th century
(Guardian). The story, a witty parable of India's changing society, was the author's writing back and striking at the false notion of a modern transformed India.
Unglamorous portrait of India was taken as an insult and indignity, but the author made it clear that "what I am trying to do -is not an attack on the country; it's about the greater process of selfexamination"(Guardian). India has canvassed much of its socio-economic progress to the world, but the dark side of the story is unfolded laying bare all the trappings of gimmick and falsity at the dawn of the
21st century in its actual