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Summary
RAJIV GANDHI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LAW
PUNJAB

ENGLISH
THE WHITE TIGER
ARVIND ADIGA
Submitted
1
by: CHIRKANKSHIT BIHARI BULANI,
Roll no: 22138
Submitted To: DR. TANYA MANDER, Asst.
Professor of English, RGNUL
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The accomplishment of this project is owed to the constant support and guidance of people
whom I’d like to convey my sincerest gratitude. Dr. Tanya Mander, our English professor
who enabled me to complete this project, with her constant encouragement. Her valuable
help and guidance were instrumental in the project and resolving all the doubts encountered
during the making of this project.

The Library staff which aided me in my research for the project through the usage of the
online databases and journal collections available in the library.

Lastly, I would like to sincerely appreciate my parents and friends for their constant
encouragement and moral support to enable me to complete this project.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE……………………………………………………………………………………1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .................................................................................................................... 4

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................................................................................................................... 5

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 1

About the Author .............................................................................................................................. 1

Historical Background of the Book .................................................................................................. 2

PLOT AND CHARACTERS ............................................................................................................... 3

Summary of the Story ....................................................................................................................... 3

Character Sketch ................................................................................................................................... 4

Balram Halwai/ Munna / White Tiger/ Ashok Sharma .................................................................... 4

Mr Ashok .......................................................................................................................................... 5

Kusum ............................................................................................................................................... 5

SETTING, SYMBOLS AND THEMES .............................................................................................. 5

Setting ............................................................................................................................................... 5

Symbols................................................................................................................................................. 6

The White Tiger .................................................................................................................................... 6

The Rooster Coop ............................................................................................................................. 6

Themes .................................................................................................................................................. 8

The Self-Made Man .......................................................................................................................... 8

Morality and Indian Society.................................................................................................................. 8

CRITICSM ............................................................................................................................................ 9

CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 9

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................... 10
Primary sources ............................................................................................................................... 10

Secondary sources........................................................................................................................... 10
 INTRODUCTION

About the Author

Aravind Adiga was born in Madras (now Chennai) on 23 October 1974 to

Dr. K. Madhava Adiga and Usha Adiga from Mangalore. His paternal
grandfather was K. Suryanarayana Adiga, former chairman of Karnataka
Bank, and maternal great-grandfather, U. Rama Rao, was a popular medical
practitioner and Congress politician from Madras. Adiga grew up in
Mangalore and studied at Canara High School and later at St. Aloysius
College,Mangaluru, where he completed his SSLC in 1990.After
emigrating to Sydney with his family, Aravind studied at James Ruse
Agricultural High School. Helater studied English literature at Columbia
College of Columbia University, in New York City, under Simon Schama,
and graduated as salutatorian in 1997. He also studied at Magdalen College,
Oxford,where one of his tutors was Hermione Lee. Aravind Adiga began
his career as a financial journalist, interning at the Financial Times. With
pieces published in the Financial Times and Money, he covered the stock
market and investment. As a Times correspondent he interviewed US
President Donald Trump. His review of previous Booker Prize winner Peter
Carey's 1988 book, Oscar and Lucinda, appeared in The Second Circle, an
online literary review. Adiga was subsequently hired by Time, where he
remained a South Asia correspondent for three years before going
freelance. He wrote The White Tiger during this period. He now lives in
Mumbai,Maharashtra, India.Adiga's debut novel, The White Tiger, won the
2008 Booker Prize and has been adapted into a Netflix original movie The
White Tiger. He is the fourth Indian-born author to win the prize, after
Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai. V. S. Naipaul, another
winner, is ethnically Indian but was born on the Caribbean island of
Trinidad. (More recently, Geetanjali Shree won the prize for her novel
Tomb of Sand ).The novel studies the contrast between India's rise as a
modern global economy and the lead character,Balram, who comes from
crushing rural poverty. Adiga explained that just as the "criticism by writers
like Flaubert, Balzac and Dickens of the 19th century helped England and
France become better societies, "his writing aimed at trying to highlight the
brutal injustices of society". Shortly after he won the prize, it was alleged

1
 that Adiga had, the previous year, sacked the agent who secured his
contract with Atlantic Books at the 2007 London Book Fair. In April 2009,
it was announced that the novel would be adapted into a feature film.
Propelled mainly by the Booker Prize win, The White Tiger's Indian
hardcover edition sold more than 200,000 copies.The novel is described as
a first-person Bildungsroman and placed within the wider context of
contemporary Indian writing in English, as a novel about "the Darkness"
(which reminds us of Dickens's London) and a fascinating success story
about the overnight rise of one character from rags to riches, but also about
India’s development as a global market economy. Adiga's second book,
Between the Assassinations, was released in India in November 2008 and in
the US and UK in mid-2009. His third book, Last Man in Tower, was
published in the UK in 2011. His next novel, Selection Day, was published
on 8 September 2016.Amnesty published in 2020 speaks of the pathetic
condition of immigrants. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin
Award

Historical Background of the Book

The White Tiger is a novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was

published in 2008 and won the 40th Booker Prize the same year1. The novel
provides a darkly humorous perspective of India's class struggle in a
globalized world as told through a retrospective narration from Balram
Halwai, a village boy. The novel examines issues of the Hindu religion,
caste, loyalty, corruption and poverty in India.2

The novel has been well-received, making the New York Times
bestseller list in addition to winning the Booker Prize. Aravind Adiga, 33 at
the time, was the second youngest writer as well as the fourth debut writer
to win the prize. Adiga says his novel "attempt[s] to catch the voice of the
men you meet as you travel through India — the voice of the colossal
underclass."3 According to Adiga, the exigence for The White Tiger was to

1
"Amitav Ghosh, Aravind Adiga in Booker shortlist". Rediff.com.
2
Robins, Peter (9 August 2008). "Review: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga". The Telegraph.
3
Young, Victoria (15 October 2008). "Novel About India Wins Man Booker Prize"

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 4
capture the unspoken voice of people from "the Darkness" – the
impoverished areas of rural India, and he "wanted to do so without
sentimentality or portraying them as mirthless humorless weaklings as they
are usually.”

PLOT AND CHARACTERS

Summary of the Story

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The Book starts with the main protagonist, Balram Halwai narrating his life in
a letter, written in 7 consecutive nights, addressed to Chinese prime minister,
Wen Jiabao. The letter primarily explains how Balram, who escapes the deep
abyss of servitude, and in the end, becomes an entrepreneur and a free man.
Balram was raised with his grandfather, parents, brother, and extended relatives in
a small hamlet in the Gaya district, where he was born. He is a bright kid who must
drop out of school to help pay for his cousin's dowry, so he joins his brother in
Dhanbad to work at a tea store.
He picks up information on India's government and economy while working there
through the clients' talks. Balram decides to become a driver and considers himself
as a poor servant but an excellent listener. Balram finds work chauffeuring Ashok,
the son of one of Laxmangarh's landlords, after learning to drive. He
3
takes over as
the primary driver, switching from a compact to the heavy-luxury Honda City. On
a visit back to his village, he stops giving money to his family and insults his
grandma. Along with Ashok and his wife Pinky Madam, Balram relocates to New
2
Delhi. Balram is continually exposed to widespread corruption in Delhi, notably in
the government. The disparity between the rich and the poor in Delhi is
accentuated by their close proximity to one another. Pinky Madam borrows
Balram's car one night while intoxicated, hits something on the road, hits it, and
then drives off, leaving us to believe that she has killed a kid.
Balram is under pressure from Ashok's family to admit that he had been driving
alone.
For the sake of the family coal company,
3
Ashok starts to bribe more and more
government officials.As roosters in a market coop see themselves being butchered
one by one2 but are unable or unable to escape the cage, Balram thinks that
murdering Ashok will be the only way to escape India's Rooster Coop—metaphor
Balram's for the persecution of India's poor.Balram is also represented as being
imprisoned in the allusive Rooster Coop.

3
 3
Balram comes to Bangalore where he pays the police to assist in the launch of his
own taxi company after murdering Ashok by stabbing him with a broken bottle and
taking the sizable bribe Ashok was carrying.
Balram, like Ashok, compensates the family whose kid was killed by one of his
cab drivers.
Balram argues that Ashok's family members very definitely murdered his own
family as retaliation for their relative's murders.
At the book's conclusion, Balram justifies
2
his acts and decides that his freedom is
worth Ashok and his family's life. And thus ends the letter to Jiabao, letting the
reader think of the dark humour of the tale, as well as the idea of life as a trap
introduced by the writer.

Character Sketch

Balram Halwai/ Munna / White Tiger/ Ashok Sharma

Balram is the main protagonist of the story, coming from a small village. He
has a blackish- brownish complexion, has a visibly small and weak built, and
oval face. He is quite intelligent, and exhibit a attitude for learning since his
childhood. He has a peculiarity for fainting at moments, specially when he is
having an emotional upheavel. He displays intelligence in his childhood
which earns him name “The White tiger”. He has shown special skills in
creating oppurtunities, and their effective utilization. He does have a human,
moral side to him, which he largely ignores till the end. He works hard, and
believes poor are in a rooster coop, where they will be subjected to eventual
death. He metaphorically escapes it by killing his master and stealing his
money to use his capital. In the end, he expresses his abstract notion that he

4
doesn’t have any guilt, and says that his freedom is worth the life of his
master and his family members. However, he takes a humanistic side in the
end, probably to differenciate himself from his previous masters. He
commits murder of one of his Master’s in the Novel.

Mr Ashok

He is the son of The Stork and Master of Balram. He has just returned from
The United States of America, and is kind, caring and pitiful in nature unlike
the rest of his family. He also has special disdain for India’s parliamentary
democracy, and he hates that to run their family business, he has to bribe
ministers and bow down to them. He is much compassionate to Balram, and
often treats him like a human, rather than his other family members who
mistreat him. He is the husband of Pinky, and he is handled by Balram after
she leaves him. Balram feels he is much more compassionate than required,
and that he cannot reciprocate it. He is killed by Balram in the Novel.

Kusum
Kusum is the grandmother of Balram, and lives with her family in a small village. She
seems to be the head of the family, as she is often seen taking the decisions. She seems to
be a greedy, manipulative woman, which is evident by her asking Balram to work on the
tea shop, later send all of his earnings home, and then marry so Balram has kids which
will then convert into extra labour. She runs the family very harshly according to her
traditional values, and threatens Balram twice by threatening that she shall inform about
him to his master.

SETTING, SYMBOLS AND THEMES

Setting

The action of The White tiger takes place in economically flourishing modern India, after
1991’s economic liberalization. The setting is set in the coal rich area of Dhanbad, after

5
which the story moves to Startup- rich city of Bangalore. The book highlights a time
period when economic inequality was on its rise, when exports were a beneficial business,
and youth who were not educated in English, struggled in various jobs, as call centres
proved to be of no help.

Symbols

The White Tiger

The White Tiger, after which the Novel is also named, is one of the most significant
symbols in the entire Novel. Identified after his Intelligence, Balram is named “The
White Tiger” His Characterization of him as an animal like this, is very important for
the plot to move forward, as such differeniation creates circumstances where he is able
to leave himself from the moral standards, and convinces him that his actions are
justified. His also feels that he is a tiger in rooster coop, or a cage, and he cannot live
there any longer. While his interaction with an animal, he faints, and then decides that
time is ripe for him to take action. This prompts him to write an apology letter to his
grandmother, asking for forgiveness in advance, also empowers him in his act of
murdering Mr Ashok.

The Rooster Coop

The rooster coop is a metaphorical expression by Balram, where he says that the Chicken
are trapped in a cage, seeing themselves getting Slaughtered one by one, however, are
unable to break out or rebel despite of it. He hints here at India’s poor, who see their
rights being taken away and are trapped in a cage by the rich and powerful, where they
are given a life of hard-work which yields no fruit for them, and eventual death. He also
argues that the poor themselves are responsible for this, as they have developed a culture
in perpetuity where they don’t allow their own to escape the rooster coop. He goes as far
as to say that its” guarded from inside” Balram also believes that the Traditional social

6
construct is responsible for fostering such a mentality, as it furthers the ideals of loyalty
and servitude, and servants who disobey their masters are punished severly, often by
punishing their family. Hence, their family becomes their weakness, In such a society
where the rules of the game are against the poor, Balram believes one must be willing to
give up on ideals and morals if one intends to escape the difficult life of the rooster coop.

7
 Themes

The Self-Made Man

The theme of “Self- made Man” is prevalent throughout the novel. Balram’s story of
being a social entrepreneur, qualifies as a self-made story. Balram shows skills of
making quick and well thought decisions, through which he imagines himself rising
through India’s social structure, from a son of Rickshaw puller, he comes a full-blown
entrepreneur in the heart of India’s startup homeland, Bangalore.

5
Morality and Indian Society

The White tiger argues that India has lost its Traditional social structure, and has outgrown a
conventional moral framework. Balram twists and turns the concept of Morality, and
redefines it according to his actions. He draws a distinction between darkness and light, and
how wealthy and powerful living in light do whatever they want, and convert their actions
into the justified morality. Meanwhile, people in darkness bend to morality of their family
members, rather than making choices that lead to a good life. Balram compromises his ethics
and morals by commiting a crime, because he believed that it becomes necessary for a man
in darkness to commit wrongs in order to escape the rooster coop. He applies different set of
morality to himself, and twists it to suit his advantage.

8
 CRITICSM

Although the book packs a compelling punch, yet at some point in the book,
you realise that your rags to riches story just turned into a hero- Anti hero
story. The dark- fueled caricature that we saw in the starting of the book,
slowly becomes the dark Anti- hero, who believes the wrong and violence to
be the answer. At one point, one may realise that Balram is just negatively
manipulating the reader, gratifying that the task he did deserves heroic
appreciation.

CONCLUSION

The Book “ The White tiger” is a book that gives the classics a run for their
money. A story set in rural India, and how it progresses to establish its
footholds in Urban- Bangalore, makes it a compelling read. Darkness of
realities of India’s economic inequality, shady truths about India’s growth
after 1991, and the business and tactical mind of the protagonist are enough
to keep you engaged for a significant time. The climax also leaves the reader
shocked, and provides ample things to ponder on. Morality, rich vs poor,
light vs darkness, business stealth vs slyness are characterstics that find their
place in the book. The book makes us debate our choices, and sometimes
dumbfounds us to such an extent that we heavily debate on our held beliefs.
It’s a noteworthy point, that the book challenges our belief on rich people’s
hegemony, and suggest an anarchial way out of it. We must figure out that
this is just a novel, and steps taken in the novel must be looked through the
moral lens of reality.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary sources

 Adiga, Arvind. 𝘛he White tiger 2009. Mumbai: Penguin Books, 2012

Secondary sources
 DAVIS, ALAN. “In the Dust Where My Heart Will Remain.” The Hudson Review, vol.
62, no. 1, 2009, pp. 168–75. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25650740. Accessed 2
Nov. 2022.
 Walther, Sundhya. “FABLES OF THE TIGER ECONOMY: SPECIES AND
SUBALTERNITY IN ARAVIND ADIGA’S THE WHITE TIGER.” Modern Fiction
Studies, vol. 60, no. 3, 2014, pp. 579–98. JSTOR,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26421746. Accessed 2 Nov. 2022.

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 Similarity Report ID: oid:28078:25952794

11% Overall Similarity

Top sources found in the following databases:
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Crossref database Crossref Posted Content database
11% Submitted Works database

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 Similarity Report ID: oid:28078:25952794

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Aravind Adiga was born in Madras (now Chennai) on 23 October 1974 toDr. K. Ma...
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Adiga's second book,Between the Assassinations, was released in India in Novem...

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The White Tiger is a novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It waspublished in 2008 ...
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