Book Review - The White Tiger: a Scathing Portrayal of India

Reviewed by Tim Neagle

Unexpected winner of the prestigious Man Booker award, The White Tiger paints a darkly humorous, often angry portrait of modern India.

The first novel of former Time magazine correspondent Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger tells the story of a poor village peasant who rises to be a wealthy entrepreneur. The 33-year-old Adiga has been harshly criticized in his native India for his bleak portrayal of the gap between rich and poor in that country. One can see why the wealthy of India would be unhappy; Adiga portrays them as unfeeling jerks, whose only concern for the poor is figuring out the best way to exploit them.

Our narrator and hero is Balram, and he has quite a story to tell. From his childhood in an impoverished village, he eventually lands a job with the region’s richest family as a driver. Balram is thrilled by his good fortune, but his elevation proves a mixed blessing. Adiga spends a lot of time on the relationship between India’s rich and their servants, and the employers don’t come off too well. Despite his job of driver, Balram is expected to gratify his employers’ every desire, from cooking meals to rubbing their feet. He is even expected to take the fall for a crime he did not commit, although circumstances eventually rescue him from that fate.

There is just one thing that darkens Balram’s rise from rags to riches: he is a murderer.
The killing takes place after Balram and his boss, Mr. Ashok and his American wife, Pinky Madam, move to Delhi. Mr. Ashok spends most of his time fighting with his wife and bribing India’s politicians. Ashok is an Indian who has been educated in America and has returned with his American wife. Neither of them fit in, and Mr. Ashok in particular is a pathetic character, torn between the India he grew up in and the United States that formed him. The strain proves too much for Pinky Madam, who leaves her husband to return to the United States.

Adiga paints Delhi as a circle of hell Dante forgot about. Pollution and poverty predominate. Class and caste differences are even more pronounced than in the countryside. Wherever Balram drives his bosses, he must wait outside the mall or restaurant or club; the poor are not allowed in these palaces of privilege. Balram hangs out with the other drivers and broods over his status.

Much is made of the passivity of India’s poor in the face of such exploitation. Balram’s anger grows throughout the book as he realizes what a third-class citizen he truly is. When an opportunity arises to enrich himself, he takes it (after some hesitation), even though it involves a huge crime. Once he decides to go through with it, there is no looking back and few regrets.

The White Tiger is an astonishingly good read, and Adiga is worthy of the Man Booker prize. Readers look forward to his future offerings with a kind of thrilled impatience.