Balram Halwai, the novel’s main protagonist, portrays himself as a modern renaissance man. He begins his narrative by detailing the rewards that have come with his success. He uses the chandelier in his office as an example of his success. He describes the chandelier as “having a personality of its own. It’s a huge thing, full of small diamond-shaped glass pieces, just like the ones they used to show in the films of the 1970s” (Adiga 5). To Balram, the chandelier is reminiscent of commodities of the western world. He bases his opulence on gaudy tangible items, like the items he sees in western media. This highlights how western values have seeped into other countries and cultures. As a result of this globalization, Balram wants to achieve more items that attribute to his status and success. …show more content…
In an article entitled, Exciting Tales of Exotic Dark India: Aravind Adiga 's The White Tiger, author Ana Cristina Mendes describes the many attributes of the poor proletariat class of India. Mendes shows how “dark India,”
In Nehru’s India, women were victims of a “passive revolution” that subtly advanced bourgeoisie men of higher castes under a guise of parliamentary democracy. Though women have presided over the Indian National Congress, served as a prime minister, and represent a large part of India’s la...
In the novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga the main character, is Balram, one of the children in the “darkness” of India. Adiga sheds a new light on the poor of India, by writing from the point of view of a man who was at one time in the “darkness” or the slums of India and came into the “light” or rich point of view in India. Balram’s job as a driver allows him to see both sides of the poverty line in India. He sees that the poor are used and thrown away, while the rich are well off and have no understanding of the problems the poor people must face. The servants are kept in a mental “Rooster Coop” by their masters. The government in India supposedly tries to help the poor, but if there is one thing Adiga proves in The White Tiger, it is that India’s government is corrupted. Despite the government promises in India designed to satisfy the poor, the extreme differences between the rich and the poor and the idea of the Rooster Coop cause the poor of India to remain in the slums.
In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo tells the stories and struggles of families living in a slum adjacent to the Sahar Airport in Mumbai, India. Boo details the ways in which the residents of this slum, Annawadi, attempt to escape their poverty, but fail to do so. Despite numerous initiatives sponsored by the Central Government of India to improve the lives of the many individuals living in Annawadi, these programs are ultimately unable to do so due to deep-rooted corruption in the city of Mumbai. Regardless of this, the residents of Annawadi seem to accept corruption as a fact of life, and do little to fight it. As illustrated over the course of Boo’s narrative, this results from the fact that many Annawadians recognize the ways in which the laws of their society allow for the unfair treatment of certain groups of people, especially the poor and religious minorities, and are also cognizant of the fact that they have no real power to change a system that
In order to understand why Whitty’s argument is effectively communicated it must be noted that this article was published in the politically progressive magazine, Mother Jones. The audience of Mother Jones mostly consists of young adults, mostly women, who want to be informed on the corruptness of the media, the government and the corporate world. In order to be fully effective in presenting her points, Whitty starts her article by creating a gloomy imagery through her story of the city of Calcutta and the hard lives which its citizens live. Through her use of words such as “broken down…. Smoky streets” to describe the scene at Calcutta, she is able to create this gloomy image. She ties this gloomy story to how the population of Calcutta is the reason for the harsh living environment and how immense its population density is when compared to cities like New York. Additionally, she discusses how the increase in population has caused harsh lives for individuals in the Himalayas, the rest of India and the rest of the world. Through these examples she ties the notion that the root causes of such hard lives are because of the “dwindling of resources and escalating pollution,” which are caused by the exponential growth of humankind. She goes on to
The setting for this novel was a constantly shifting one. Taking place during what seems to be the Late Industrial Revolution and the high of the British Empire, the era is portrayed amongst influential Englishmen, the value of the pound, the presence of steamers, railroads, ferries, and a European globe.
Owing to India’s diversity, these identities are determined by caste, ancestry, socioeconomic class, religion, sexual orientation and geographic location, and play an important role in determining the social position of an individual (Anne, Callahan & Kang, 2011). Within this diversity, certain identities are privileged over others, due to social hierarchies and inequalities, whose roots are more than a thousand years old. These inequalities have marginalized groups and communities which is evident from their meagre participation in politics, access to health and education services and
Aravind Adiga in his psycho-social thriller, The White Tiger, explores issues that modern day India faces, ranging from social mobility to globalization, and morality to corruption. Adiga’s use of an epistolary novel allows his first person narrator to not only provide a commentary on the socio-political and geopolitical problems that India face, but also reflect on the effects of these problems on his own life. Adiga exploits the corruption in India and uses it as device to develop Balram’s character, as he journeys from “the darkness” to “the light”. It is true that Balram becomes increasingly corrupted, and at some points the reader may sympathise with him, however at other points, his actions cannot be justified. Growing up, Balram is tainted
Evidently, the descriptive nature of the two divergent environments mirrors the persistent social inequality and unequal distribution of India’s novel wealth. Boo’s prologue fundamentally gives an insight into the social injustice at hand responsible for Abdul’s elusion of the police. Abdul, his father and sister are accused of burning One Leg, a woman named by the Annawadians appropriate to her disability. Once Abdul’s father is arrested, Abdul aspires to escape the slum during the concealing darkness of nighttime. Much to his own dismay, Abdul falls asleep and is instructed to turn himself into the police to protect his ill father the following morning. The inhabitants of the slum represent a form of urban poverty, visibly hidden amid a facade of economic might and superiority. As one of the marginalized groups in Indian society, Annawadians are faced with economic obstacles on the pathway to social equality. Even in India’s moment economic resurgence, the layer of poverty is even further suppressed by the system; struggling to rise above and into the over-city. Yet, Boo describes the aspirations of the youth of Annawadi who seek to work as waiters in the surrounding hotels, acquire a college education or simply climb the
Aravind Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger published in 2008, and a winner of Booker Prize examines the issues of religion, caste, loyalty, corruption, urbanization and poverty in India. The novel besides receiving critical acclaim was also lambasted by some in India for giving in to western prejudices and playing up to their image of a poverty stricken, slum governed country. Some even went to the extent of calling it a western conspiracy to deny the country’s economic progress. It seems ...
4 # Stein, Burton (2001), a History of India, New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv, 432, p.222
From beginning to end, the novel, “The God of Small Things”, authored by Arundhati Roy, makes you very aware of a class system (caste) that separates people of India in many ways. This separation among each other is surprisingly so indoctrinated in everyone that many who are even disadvantaged by this way of thinking uphold its traditions, perhaps for fear of losing even more than they already have, or simply because they do not know any other way. What’s worse, people seen as the lowest of the low in a caste system are literally called “untouchable”, as described in Roy’s novel, allowing, according to Human Rights Watch:
Aravind Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger highlights his views of the injustice and poverty present in India’s class system. He does this through the perspective of Balram Halwai, a fictional village boy from Laxmangarh. In this epistolary novel, Balram narrates his life in the form of a seven-part letter addressed to Wen Jiabao, the premier of China. He describes how he escaped his caste, which was thought to be impossible, and became a successful entrepreneur after killing his own master. The inequality between rich and poor is an important motive of the story. This paper will go in depth into the representation of the poor, the motivation for it and the effects it has on the interpretation of the story.
The history of tribal oppression in India is an old one. “The Sanyasi Revolt”, “The Wahabi Movement”, and “The Naxalbari Rebellion”, are evidence of the tribal outcry that appropriately foregrounds their requirement for fundamental rights as citizens of the country. Even after sixty six years of independence, India’s rural poor and tribals are lamenting under the curbing effects of destitution, unemployment, undernourishment, illiteracy and human trafficking. For these people, the notions of liberty, equality and democracy have no meaning at all. Though the country is free from the bondage of foreign rule, their repression and prejudices still continue leaving them dependent on their new masters.
Nicholas B. Dirks. (2011). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton University Press
Dalit literature represents an influential, rising trend in the Indian literary scene. Dalit writing is a post-independence literary phenomenon. The emergence of Dalit literature has a great historical significance. It has served the purpose of awakening the consciousness of the downtrodden for forging their identities. The recent surge in Dalit literature in India is an attempt to being to the forefront the experiences of discrimination, violence and poverty of the Dalits. The emergence of low-caste literature has taken place alongside a broader growth of consciousness and activism, particularly in urban India. As an individual a dalit cannot forget his past. The humiliation tries to remember his past.