The White Tiger: An Age-old Agony and Anguish of the Subalterns

Abstract

Adiga has attempted to expose the age old agony and anguish of the subalterns and oppressed. Adiga tells a story of the underclass and its life: begging for food, sleeping under concrete flyovers, defecating on the roadside, shivering in the cold, and struggling in twenty first century, for its freedom. Balaram, the protagonist of the novel becomes a witness to the glitz as well as the unjust system around him and begins to question his position as a servant, his place in society. He desires for better life. He begins desiring the basic things of life which have so far been denied to him by circumstances, the system and his own passive acceptance of his condition. He is aware of the limitation of the given social structure and rebels.