The White Tiger

(1)  How far do you agree with the India represented in the novel 'The White Tiger'?

  It seems like challenge to define India.  India has tremendous diversity and all good and bad things together.  ' India ' - what does it mean?  How and What you think about India? India means ..... The Land of Spirituality, The land of holiness and the land of peace.  India has been taught the world both tolerance and acceptance together.                                                                                                                                      
  It is said by  George Barnard Shaw that.....

"The  Indian  way of living life provides the vision of the natural , real way of living life. we veil ourselves  with unnatural mask . On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the creators  hand." - 

If we look at our past , it was glorious and fulfil with magnificent and much wisdom of the world. We have Upanishads and  Vedanta which still can lead people to live their life with morality. We had many great writers , Scientists , thinkers and philosophers  etc...we have much stronger and marvellous  heritage for which  we feel proud to be Indian.  Though country has the lack of much materialistic things , it is rich by heritage , culture and Vedic literature and so many other things also. we have enough myths to convey the message or morality to people. The past of India is mostly  about  Its  richness . No doubt the illegal or immoral things are also existed there but it was very less in comparison of today.  But After the effect of colonization, corruption spread widely and people accept it as regular mind set.

   " Mind is never problematic , Mindset is."

But it's all about Past , what is  the condition of India today?
I am not fully agree with  Adiga's the projection of India because it is half truth of India.  First of all , I would like to say that writer Arvind Adiga gives the glimpses of  dark India in his novel ' The White Tiger '. He gives the concept of New Morality  giving word 'Amoral' rather than 'immoral.'  It is the story of the bribery, corruption,  poverty, skulduggery,  toxic traffic jams , theft and murder. Adiga portraits two different countryside of same Country.  Balram Halwai has come from what Adiga calls the Darkness- the heart of rural India.  All things are described is true but it is only half necked truth.  what about other side? No doubts all things  and every institution and each professions  go under the jaw of evil  in the text  which like....... Education, Religion ,Democracy, Elections, Business, doctors , law system  politicians etc..  Though the narration of nation is quite true to India  with  Balram Halwai's perspective, we can't reliable on his  narration because writer uses the sentence from the starting of novel that.." It is the autobiography of half backed Indian."  Means the protagonist is not able to see things in totality so we can't accept his truth- half truth  as truth of the whole.

( 2 )  Do you believe that Balram's story is the archetype of all stories of 'rags to riches'?
   
Yes,  I agree that Balram's  journey  of getting success   is the archetype of all stories of 'rags to riches'. His Archetypes shows the pattern of behavior .Because within the text we found that all archetypes gradually broken and  character arises with 'New Morality'. First, he has to  become free from all so called morality and develop his own morality. We have another example of movie 'Slumdog Millionaire' which describes similar kind of story of success.  Everybody wants to success in their life by anyhow so it is the story of 'rags to riches'.

( 3 )   Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique, deconstructive criticism aims to show that any text inevitably undermines its own claims to have a determinate meaning, and licences the reader to produce his own meanings out of it by an activity of semantic 'freeplay' (Derrida, 1978, in Lodge, 1988, p. 108) Is it possible to do deconstructive reading of The White Tiger? How?



Yes, It  is possible to do deconstruction of the text ' The White Tiger'. Above sentence is the  indication of the deconstruction  of deconstructive process because Language itself is the source to blast the text. And that language is used within the text only. Each text has its own loose part and from that point reader can do deconstruction. Idea and thoughts which are used by writer himself in text must be criticized.

In ' The White Tiger ' we found sentence " This is the autobiography of half backed Indian."
From this point, we can do deconstruction of the whole text. Because He himself accepts that he can't see things in totality.  so, he is unable to give the accurate information and reader can't be  reliable on 'Half Truth'. And from this point of view everything can be subverted