Irfan Ahmad Thoker
Research Scholar
Lovely Professional University
Jalandhar, Punjab
India is called the largest democracy in the world and Indians are proud to be called so. It is a country where people have freedom to express and the right to elect their representatives. These elected representatives are supposed to work for the welfare of the public. It is believed that a political system without parties is ‘a ship without rudder’. The presence of parties is essential in a strong political system because in every democracy, the existence of parties, groups and associations represent diverse cross sections of the populace which is a must for proper and ideal functioning.
After a thorough analysis of democracy in India, it becomes clear that the political system is riddled with lack of accountability, entry of criminals into politics, the dominant influence of muscle power and money power, pervasive corruption, the pernicious influence of religion and caste, oppression of women, marginalized groups etc. The way elections are held, the quality of people elected, their performances make a democracy effective. In the current scenario the wide spread disillusion in our political system is quite evident. The poverty, unemployment, and illiteracy level indicate the inefficiency of our political system. There are politicians who have criminal records. Presently, out of 543 MPs, 120 or 22.1 per cent have criminal cases pending against them. Among the major parties, the BJP has 29, INC 24, SP 11, RJD 8 CPM 7, NCP 5 and CPI 2 MPs with criminal records. Of them 6 are in jail, charged with heinous crimes such as murder and kidnapping. The number of serious crimes is 333, with several MPs having multiple cases. If we look at violent crimes like murder, attempt to murder, robbery, dacoity, kidnapping, theft and extortion, rape, other violent crimes like assault using dangerous weapons or causing grievous hurt, the Samajwadi Party (SP) leads with 80 cases followed by BSP 43, BJP 17, INC 16, RJD 9, CPM 5, NCP 2 and CPI 1. Other crimes like cheating, fraud, forgery, giving false oaths to public officials and so on, have BSP 23, RJD 22, INC 21, BJP 11; SP 11and CPM 6 (Pawan).It is very sad for India to be ruled by criminals. It is a well known fact that these criminal politicians win elections by spending huge sum of their black money and force. Their existence in the parliament of the nation is more dangerous than a nuclear war. They are not ready to change their attitude. The poor are not satisfied with the poor performance of these politicians. Elections have failed to help the poor. Balram says, “The elections? All wrapped up. It’s a landslide. The minister said in this morning. Elections my friend, can be managed in India. It is not like in America” (p.213).
There is no certainty in the Indian political system. The elected members never bother about the real progress of the country. They are busy in befooling the poor by giving tall promises. They promise them of employment and other basic facilities. Sometimes they make show off their false benevolence by distributing few coins and sometimes they promise to aid the poor farmers in the name of subsidies. These present day politicians inaugurate many projects but very few of them actually materialize. It is easy for them to put a “foundation stone for a hospital” and win popularity among the masses. But this foundation stone waits for years to be converted into a real structure. They have been dragging people back to the darkness. They do not care much
about the welfare and the unity of the nation. While discussing national issues in the parliament, they use indecent language. They have turned it into a fish market where someone says “five hundred million rupees for that dam” and someone says “attack on Pakistan” (p.136).They waste a lot of time in futile discussions and quarrels. They blame each other of misusing the national wealth. There are a few people who work for the nation.
Balram, the protagonist in The White Tiger, sees that elections are rigged in India. He finds “the Great Socialist” very smart who handles the landlords cleverly. “The Great Socialist” knows how to blackmail and humiliate the land lords. Balram wonders to see Mahatma Gandhi’s statue at Delhi who is leading people toward the light. But, “the Great Socialist” instead of leading people to the light leads them back to the darkness.
O, Democracy!
Now Mr Premier, the little take –home pamphlet that you will be given by the prime minister will no doubt contain a very large section on the splendour of our democracy in India-the awe- inspiring spectacle of one billion people casting their votes to determine their own future, in full freedom of franchise, and so on and so forth (p.195).
He reproaches the system for its faults. There is no improvement in electricity, water supply, health services, education system, and police administration. Balram expresses the bitter truth:
I gather you yellow-skinned men, despite your triumphs in sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, still don’t have democracy. Some politician on the radio was saying that that’s why we Indians are going to defeat you: we may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy… (p.95-96).
It is very disappointing that the present rulers fail to come to the expectations of the masses. Instead of making “Shining India” they have divided it into two Indias: one India where a few manage to grab all opportunities and another India where a majority are reconciled to the pathetic condition of lost opportunities. The most disgusting feature of the Indian political system is its negligence shown towards the common masses. It is because of it that the tribals in India are exploited and deprived of the means of sustenance. The demands of the poor are never fulfilled. There are millions of disabled, orphans and victims of natural disasters who crave for love and respect. They are struggling for every loaf of bread. Participation in the democratic process comes last for these millions of people who lead a sub-human life. Here Adiga wants to say that despite the progress, the problems of the poor are becoming graver than before. He wants his country to have “sewage pipes”, “water supply” and all the basic necessities and amenities as only then democracy has a meaning for the poor.
Balram satirizes the election procedure of India because he has seen that votes of the servants have been sold by their masters. He says; “there was an election coming up, and the teashop owner had already sold us. He had sold our finger prints-the inky finger prints which the illiterate
person makes on the ballot paper to indicate his vote” (p.97). Like the present criminal politicians of India the “Great Socialist” is also not a worthy person to be elected but every time he emerges successful. People knew about his dark deeds but still they cannot vote him out. He is the boss of the Darkness. He has kept all the landlords of the darkness under his thumb. Balram listens from the customers at the tea shop:
The Great Socialist started off a good man. He had come to clean things up, but the mud of Mother Ganga had sucked him in. Others said he was dirty from the start, but he had just fooled everyone and only now did we see him for what he was. Whatever the case was, no one seemed to vote him out of power. He had ruled the darkness winning election after election…
You see, a total of ninety-three criminal cases for murder, rape, grand larceny, gun smuggling, pimping and many other such minor offences-are pending against the Great Socialist and his ministers at the present moment. Not easy to get conviction when the judges are judging in Darkness, yet three convictions have been delivered and three of the ministers are currently in jail, but continue to be ministers. The Great Socialist is said to have embezzled one billion rupees from the Darkness, and transferred that money into a bank account in a small, beautiful country in Europe full of white people and black money (p.97-98).
One of the unique features of Indian political system is that of the freebies and sops promised. These promises or announcements greatly influence the voters and act as a disadvantage to other parties. For most of the politicians and political parties, the pockets or the marginalized sections of people are just vote banks whom they visit during election with tall promises and forget them till it is the time for the next poll. They are told that “Roads”, “Water”, and “Hospitals” are in their election manifesto but these things remain limited to only slogans. The poor keep on “waiting for Godot” who will fulfill these promises. It’s the way it always is, and nothing comes out of these rigged elections except false hopes for a better life. Adiga says, “Once India had been ruled by three foreigners: England, France and Portugal. Now their place was taken by three native born thugs: Betrayal, Burgling and Back Stabbing” (BTA.104). On the eve of the election Balram says;
Now that the date for the elections had been set, and declared on radio, election fever had started spreading again. These are the three main diseases of this country, sir, typhoid, cholera and election fever. This last one is the worst; it makes people talk and talk about things that they have no say in. like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh (p.98).
Despite this fact that there is poverty in India the elections show that the poor will not be ignored. But in reality they are only vote banks. They don’t have water in their taps but they are told tales about the fast growing technology. Technology is necessary but the water and food is the basic need. It is not possible that a man can “drink a phone when he is thirsty.” Even the big announcements seem lies when women have to “walk for miles every morning to find a bucket of clean” water (p.269). The present politicians may say that it is good for their health to walk such a distance every morning.
The poor people gather to hear these politicians because they hope that somebody may improve their condition. They do not have work so they hope some work may be given to them. When Balram drives his master and mistress to Gurgaon he finds “hordes” of the Great Socialist’s supporters “pouring in from the Darkness.” These supporters have turned fanatic as Balram says: “they drove where they wanted, did what they wanted, whistled at any women they felt like whistling at” (p.269).
The Indian politicians are well versed in tricks. They can go beyond any limit of hypocrisy. They change their faces as dresses. Outwardly they make people believe that they are working wholly and solely for the welfare of the public. But the fact is totally opposite to it. They are robbing the wealth of the nation to keep their future generations economically secure. Their faces seem filled with benevolence “but the same face can also say, with a little twitched of its features, that it has known the opposite of peace: and it can make this other fate yours too, if it so wishes” (p.104). Though the colonialists left India yet the presence is felt in every branch of the government. If we compare the colonizers with the present rulers it is obvious that the former were better in many ways. This aspect of the present political scenario is evident as Balram finds “the Black Fort” as a symbol of the colonizers which still exists in India. He sees “the long loopholes in” the walls of the Black Fort at Laxmangarh that turn into the “lines of burning pink at sunrise and burning gold at the sunset” (p.40). He compares the present rulers with monkeys who “ran wild along the walls, shrieking and attacking each other, as they were the spirits of the dead warriors reincarnated, refighting their final battles”(p.40). This is a common thing in the parliament discussions in contemporary India. They raise hue and cry over the faults of others but themselves they are worse than their opponents. Their indecent language is an indication that they belong to a tribe of monkeys who have been dwellers of the Jungle.
The worst thing is corruption which has increased marginally in India in the last two decades, “any issue can be settled with the government because ‘this is India, not America.” In India “there is always a way out” (p.121) for any criminal. It is not only Delhi where Ashok has to bribe the minister to evade the payment of taxes but this corruption is everywhere. Government postings are being decided at the ministerial level. More lucrative postings are even auctioned amongst the contenders. As the Muslim man sitting in the yard of the hospital where Balram and Kishan take their father says: “Now, each time this post falls vacant, the Great Socialist lets all the big doctors know that he’s having an open auction for that post.”(p.49) Balram’s father, a rickshaw puller, is suffering from TB which is mostly found among the poor rickshaw pullers and poor daily labors in India.
Balram gives a glimpse of a typical rural school which he calls “a paradise in a paradise.” He emerges as a half-baked entrepreneur because of this school. He learns from this school that any child can become a prime minister of this nation. He sees the rotten system through his teacher and the school inspector. The teacher of his school appears as a monster when he steals the funds of the school and puts the free uniform on sale in the neighbouring village. This faulty system that prevails in the rural India exposes the falsity of the slogan of universalization of education in contemporary India. The school inspector steals Balram’s scholarship which is again a dig on the education system in India. The condition of the schools where lizards can dwell and the walls are decayed depicts the buildings of rural schools. He finds his teacher sleeping while he is frightened by the lizard. He learns that there is another way to get what you can’t get by honesty. Though the school inspector gives him the name of the white tiger a “creature that comes along only once in a generation” (p.35) yet his education at school remains incomplete. After leaving his school he becomes “the coal breaker” (p.36) that comes along only once in a generation. It is due to the loan that Balram’s family takes from the landlord for the marriage of their daughter that Balram is taken out of the school. It throws light on the evil of dowry and the poverty that forces Balram to leave his schooling early and join his brother, Kishan at the “village tea shop.” From here Balram’s real education of the world around him starts. He takes the inspiration from the “bus conductor” Vijay and learns about the dirty politics of India. It is here that he comes to know about the “human spider” and “thin stick like rickshaw pullers” (p.27). He finds these
people as Conrad describes the savages of Africa in his novel Heart of Darkness: “They were dying slowly-it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now-nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest”(p.32). Balram observes that the rickshaw pullers who are like “moribund shapes”, physically thin waiting for the passengers to let them carry their burden. These rickshaw pullers and other labourers belong to the 72 per cent rural population of India. But Balram is more sensitive than his hero Vijay about whom he dreams. The conversation of the customers at the tea shop helps him to find out a way that will lead him to a successful life. The bondage of poverty is not for a tiger that has learnt the ways of breaking its manacles. The death of his father awakens him from the slumber. He realizes that in the prevailing corrupt system he will face the same situation that his father and other villagers have been facing for a long time. There is no hope in the darkness for him. The life in the darkness will only leave him to decay in the filthy water of the Ganga. He says, “Everywhere this river flows, that is the Darkness” (p.5).
Abandoning village life opens a new world for Balram. After learning driving he becomes chauffeur to the American returned son, Ashok, of his village landlord. He drives his master and his mistress to Delhi, Gurgaon and Dhanbad. These trips allow him to see closely the life of the rich people. It also provides him an opportunity to see the condition of the poor dwelling in slums, along the roadsides, under the bridges and flyovers. The wretched condition of the servants, rickshaw pullers and labourers makes him compare their condition to the rooster held in the “Rooster Coop”. The big air conditioned apartments of the rich make him conscious about the tastes of the rich.
One day he drives his master and his mistress to Laxmangrah where he finds the roads bumpy and rough. This is the first time for him to go up “the Black Fort”. Earlier he has made attempts to climb up “the Black Fort” but this is the first time for him to complete his trip: “I swam through the pond, walked up the hill, went into the door way, and entered the Black Fort for the first time” (p.41). Now Balram has entered the tribe of monkeys. He has started to frame his plan, perhaps the plan his father had envisaged. He prepares for the flight that James Joyce’s hero Stephen Dedalus experiences in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
“…a hawk like man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve and had been following through the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of the artist forging anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being?…His heart trembled in an ecstasy of fear and his soul was in flight” (p.154).
Balram’s expedition to the Black Fort is symbolic for his transformation. He changes his attitude like his model hero Vijay. Though he works like a faithful servant yet his soul has been corrupted like the present day politicians of India. He takes the blame of the accident that Pinky Madam has done but his intriguing mind is in continuous progress on his plan. As he experiences more, he becomes more ambitious. His visits to malls and prostitution centers instill in him a desire to hasten his plan of dethroning his master. Then Pinky Madam leaves Ashok which clears the track for the execution of Balram’s plan. Now onwards, he has to play the wife substitute for Ashok which shows the duties of servants in India. Like a true servant he has to oversee his master’s every need as he turns to heavy drinking. Left to control his master, Balram begins, to awaken from his reverie in The Rooster Coop. Balram sees Ashok’s corrupt practices and gambling with money to buy politicians. It teaches him to steal and kill. So the key he was
searching for years to open the door is now in his hand. While his master is busy in collecting money from banks and stuffing that into the red bag Balram ponders over it as:
Go on, just look at the red back, Balram that is not stealing, is it? I shook my head.
And even if you were to steal it, Balram, it wouldn’t be stealing. How so? I looked at the creature in the mirror.
See-Mr Ashok is giving money to all these politicians in Delhi so that they!” will excuse him from the tax he has to pay. And who owns that tax, in the end? Who but the ordinary people of this country-you? (p.244).
Balram’s plan of becoming a rich man is supported by the reason that his master has collected a huge sum that is sufficient for a man to start a business anywhere. So he starts to cherish the favor of his luck: “I touched the magnetic stickers of the goddess Kali for luck…” (p.281). The intrigue of murder is now going to take the real form. On the one hand Balram is going to break open the Rooster Coop and on the other hand he is going to eliminate poverty forever for himself and Dharam. This idea makes him call his master out of the car. Balram describes the event as; “There it was the broken bottle with its claws of glass. ‘There’s something off with the wheel, sir. Just give me a couple of minutes’…. There was soggy mud everywhere. Picking my way over mud and rain water, I squatted near the left rear wheel…” Then he calls his master: ‘Sir, will you step out, there is a problem’…. The wheel, sir. I’ll need your help. It’s stuck in the mud” (p.281). Now the climax of Balram’s plan takes actual shape. He hits his master at first and sees his master “still struggling”.
Balram kills his master ruthlessly. It is a murder of his poverty and a victory of the poor from the perpetual servitude. But Balram is not a murderer who would come in the grip of the police. He knows how to grease the palms of the Police. He also knows that his master’s family will not spare him for this crime. It is not only revolt against the rule of the rich but it also shows the emergence of the poor as a rich man. The anger that has been growing in him is not easily cooled down so he turns Ashok’s body around and stamps his knees on his master’s chest. When he pierces his neck, he realizes that his master’s “life-blood-spurted into” (p.286) his eyes. Balram now realizes that he is now a free man. He talks of the replacement that should have been made a long time ago: “There is a problem, sir. You should have got a replacement a long time ago” (p.284). Now the time has come up for the poor to make this replacement themselves. Balram accepts his crime: “True there was the matter of murder- which is a wrong thing to do, no question about it. It has darkened my soul. All the skin –whitening creams sold in the markets of India won’t clean my hands again” (p.318). These words of Barlram resemble with the words of Queen Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, where she says: “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” ( Act-v, Sc-i) It was this expression that compelled the judge Portillo at the 2008 Booker Prize ceremony to say, “It is about ambition through murder, but with a delicious twist. Whereas lady Macbeth and Macbeth are driven mad by their crime, the hero of this book is only driven mad by the fact that he hesitated and might not have committed his crime” (Higgins). Balram has been struggling with this idea: “I was looking for years, but the door was always open” (p.267).
Barlram’s crime makes him the successful entrepreneur. He is aware of the fact that some day he will be caught like the criminal politicians. There is possibility that some day “a man in a uniform” will come and “point a finger at” him and say “time is up Munna.” But his crime is essential for him to get freedom because he knows that a moment of freedom is better than the whole life of slavery. After he commits the murder of his master, he steps into the world of
entrepreneurs. Having gone through different stages he emerges as a well equipped and trained soldier who can fight and win any battle. Now there is no zoo where he may “hypnotize himself by walking like” (p.277) a haughty tiger. He knows “after twelve years of school and three years of university, wear nice suits, join companies, and take orders from other men” (p.11) would have made him live the rest of his life like a servant and no more. It is because of his sharp wit that he comes out of the zoo. Moreover he is aware about the importance of entrepreneurs in India “though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, does have entrepreneurs.” Balram remarks that India has “thousands and thousands of” entrepreneurs “in the field of technology.” These entrepreneurs “have set all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now” (p.4).
Balram’s anger is genuine with a philosophy: “Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans” (p.276). His feelings about the rotten governing system make him dishonest. He satirizes this system: “My country is the kind where it pays to play it both ways: the Indian entrepreneur has to be straight and crooked, mocking and believing sly and sincere, at the same time” (p.8-9). He has himself done his job “with total dishonesty, lack of dedication, and sincerity” (p.57). But now sitting on the throne of the entrepreneurial world he makes predictions for the better life of the poor. He says, “I am tomorrow” (p.6) because the time has changed and “yellow and brown man” (p.7) is going to rule the world in future. It is going to become true as China and India have made a fast economic growth since 2000. They are going to leave other countries behind in the economic growth statistics in future.
Balram dreams of a free India where the poor will not be treated as outcastes and beautiful malls and hotels will be open for them. For the fulfillment of this dream there is an immediate need of eradication of poverty. Balram who is a woken up man from the nightmare of the India of Darkness wants to lead his country on the road of real progress where he can eliminate unemployment, slavery, dependence and backwardness. While addressing the Premier he says:
One day a cunning Brahmin, trying to trick the Buddha, asked him, ‘Master, do you consider yourself a man or a god?
The Buddha smiled and said, “Neither. I am just one who has woken up while the rest of you are still sleeping.
I’ll give you the same answer to your question, Mr Jiabao. You asked, ‘Are you a man or a demon?’
Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are still sleeping, and that is the only difference between us (p.315).
After a thorough study of the novel The White Tiger it becomes clear that India even after sixty five years of independence has failed to eliminate poverty, corruption, favoritism etc. As the leaders of the nation have not come up to the expectations of its masses, there has developed a big difference between the reality and the projected figures.
Works cited:
Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger. New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2008.
—– —– —–. Between the Assassinations. London: PanMacmillion-Picador, 2008. (Abbreviated BTA)
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New Delhi: UBSPD, 2001. p 32.
Higgins, Charlotte. “Adiga’s White Tiger rides to Booker Victory.” Guardian 14 Oct 2008. Downloaded on 9 July 2012.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/14/booker-prize-adiga-white-tiger Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Delhi: Surjeet Publications,1991.
p 154.
Shakespeare, Williams. Macbeth. New Delhi: Peacock Books, 2007. Act V Sc I.
Rana, Pawan and Lenin Raghuwanshi. “Crime and Indian Politcs: The Nation at Cross Roads.” 20 July 2008. Downloaded on 5 July 2012