INTRODUCTION
‘The White Tiger’ is the debut novel of Aravind Adiga, which grabbed him his first man booker prize award. He is an Indo-Australian writer who graduated from Columbia university in 1997. Adiga began his writing career as a financial journalist for The Financial Times. He worked on stock market and investment , he even interviewed personalities such as Donald Trump during his stint as a journalist. His Booker prize win in 2008 made him the fourth Indian to win this award after Salman Rushdie , Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. Although V.S.Naipaul is of Indian origin, he was born in the caribbean Island of Trinidad. Adiga’s works can be considered as a criticism of the paradoxes in the Indian society. He viewed that the criticisms by the 19th century European writers such as Balzac and Dickens helped them transform into better societies.
‘..it is important that writers like me try to highlight the injustices of society’criticism by writers like Flaubert, Balzac, and Dickens in the 19th century helped England and France to become better societies. That’s why I am trying to do- it’s not an attack on the country, it’s about the greater process of ”(India Today,2009)
The theme of identity is often expressed in literature through novels or poetry to intrigue the readers into the plot or the character itself. It enables them to relate to the characters emotions. Identity also helps us in distinguishing a character from all the others. However identity can be a problematic concept if the character is unfathomable much like the character of Shakespeare’s Iago. It is therefore important for the reader to contemplate the contextual background of the literary text.
Adiga has created two different India’s in the novel The White Tiger, the India of light and the India of darkness. The novel focuses more on the India of darkness as it tells the story of underclass citizens most of whom became homeless owing to the large scale development in the major cities of India.
The protagonist of the the novel is Balram Halwai, who is a typical underclass man whose goes unheard in the society. The novel refers to this kind of men as the ‘rooster coop’. He contstsnly tries to liberate himself from the age old slavery and exploitation. His anger, indulgence in crimes and drinking endorses the frustrations that are rooted deep in his life and his response to those. The entire novel is centered around the protagonist, the son of a rickshaw puller. His voice is marginal as that of other farmers, landless labourers and daily wage workers e.t.c. They together form the India of darkness as they are the vulnerable section of the society. Every time a new government proposes a development project, they are the only section of the society who becomes homeless. They lie behind the facades of improving living standards of Indians and nobody even takes notice of their miserable lives.
The novel is structured as a series of letters written to the Chinese premier by a former cab driver from Laxamnagargh. The protagonist during the course of the novel recognizes the gradual shift of power from the white man to the yellow and brown man. Every detail regarding his rise to power and status from lower caste son of a rickshaw puller is mentioned in his letter to the premier. Through his rise, he exposes the rot in the three major pillars of India- ‘democracy’ , ‘enterprise ‘and ‘justice’. The novel indirectly attacks the political and beaurocratic system of the
Indian society. It is held is responsible for the ‘rottenness’ and corruption in the society which hampers all the developmental and welfare schemes. The novel also criticizes the ‘half baked politicians’ for the one half of the country not meeting their potential. The nepotism and hypocritical nature of the politicians made the riches and the prosperity that came with the development limited to the already rich sections of the society. The failure of the system to accommodate the under classes led to their desire to get on top after breaking the system.
Both the rural and urban aspects of our society has been carefully detailed in the novel along with its various other facets that represent the portrait of India. Aravind Adiga was born in Mangalore and did most of his schooling there. However upon his return to the city, he was very much surprised to see the kind of transformation that the city undertook. But he later understood that these modernisation and development came at the cost of a particular section of the society. Behind the fa”ade of a transformed city lied the everyday miseries of drifters, ragpickers and homeless men. Adiga wanted to explore the lives of these men who lost their houses or had been displaced owing to urbanization. ‘The White Tiger’ narrates the tale of this under class and how they have been forced to beg for food and sleep under flyovers and on public parks
Even though the writer talks about the India of light and The India of darkness, the major focus is on the India of darkness. India of darkness is mainly driven by extreme poverty in the lives of both the rural and urban middle class. This poverty has led to the exodus of the unemployed youths towards the big cities. The protagonist and his brother in the novel are no exceptions in this . Balram was compelled by the harshness of the poverty to drop school and to seek job in a tea shop inorder to fund his family.
A month before the rain, the men came back from Dhanbad and Delhi and Calcutta, leaner, darker, angrier, but with money in their pockets. The women were waiting for them. They hid behind the door, and as soon as the men walked in, they pounced, like wild cats on a slab of flesh'( Adiga,2012,p27)
The novel also critcizes the nature of Zamindari system and how they help the landowners to exploit the landless labourers working for them. The four main landlords mentioned in the are ‘Buffalo’, ‘Stork’, ‘Wild Boar’ and ‘Raven’. Each one of them got their names due to their peculiar animal like behavior and attitudes towards the underclass. For example, ‘Raven’ was notorious for dipping his beak in his labourers once they failed to pay the interest for the borrowed money on time. These land lords treated their laborers as slaves and the brutal nature of this is very well depicted by the author. Adiga refers to these landlords as animals as they rarely had the need to come out of their mansions except to feed themselves.
The theme of caste is also a very important theme in the novel. The caste of the characters are regularly questioned in the novel and usually a man’s worth is determined based on which caste he belongs to. The protagonist is forced to change his name from Munna to Balram to The White Tiger to Ashok Sharma as he felt that he cannot earn the society’s respect by being a man of lower caste status. He became Ashok Sharma as he grew wealthier, there by depicting his upper class status as gradually climbed the social and economic ladder.
In Between the Assassinations, Adiga talks about struggle, dilemma, aspiration and disillusionment of the Indian middle class. The novel explores the character sketches across caste, class, religion, occupation and preoccupation from the period between the two assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajeev Gandhi respectively. The story is set in a small village in south India named Kittur. Even though the story is set in a small locality, the topic that is arised in the novel is of national importance. Each major character in the novel belongs to particular section of the society. Ziauddin is a twelve year old working in a tea shop is the major character of the novel. His started working at an age when he should be enjoying what is left of his childhood. His search for identity as a teenager gets him close to a Muslim pathan, with whom he developed a sense of belonging. Adiga uses Zia as a instrument to get into the root causes of terrorism. Abbasi is a character through whom the author rises the issue of bureaucratic corruption. His moral conscience leads him to shut down the factory that he owned. His struggle to reopen the factory exposes underlying corruption in our bureaucratic sector.
The caste than an individual is born into is presented as a major theme in the novel. It is represented as the identity that regulates whether you should feel proud of yourself or be ashamed. Even if a lower caste individual climbs up the economic ladder in the society he still has suffer humiliation and the society refuses to consider him as nobility. Adiga uses the character of Shankara to rise the issue of caste discrimination in the society. He is angry young kid who tries to take revenge against the caste based society by blowing up a bomb in his his school. The caste discrimination and the conflict in his mind that has emerged as a result of this conflict makes him think of converting to Christianity as it has no castes and judges people for what they do with their lives. The dilemma of Shankara raises a very important question in the novel of which is worst caste or class. Although Shankara is rich, he doesn’t receive the same kind of respect that some of the other upper caste men receive in the society. He hated his driver as he belonged to the upper class. The descriminations based on class and caste are both same sides of the same coin. In both the cases, the people with control and power are reluctant to let go of that and are also unwilling to include anyone who wants to come into that circle. This often means that the economically weaker section of the upper class will continue to remain so and the richer section of the lower caste men will have to fight for the respect that they rightfully deserve.
In ‘The White Tiger’, the change in the protagonists name is is very much important to the novel as it attempts to reflect on the identity of the character. ‘Halwai’ is a name that reveals his caste identity and thereby his social status. The change of his names in the novel suggests his connected to the story’s theme and core ideas. He was first Munna, then he became Balram , the white Tiger and finally adopted the name Ashok Sharma, thereby signifying his elevation of social as well as economic status.
The story introduces the character as ‘Munna’ meaning boy. He ran away from his village sob as as to live in the city. His relatives and parents were not too much worried about it and their disinterest in the child was very much evident in the story. The name Balram’ was given to him by one of his school teachers who was able to identify the talent in him. This was an elevation of some sorts for the child as he was given a distinct identity for the very first time in his life. The name is the same as that of Lord Krishna’s brother.
The content of the novel is expressed in a long letter that is expressed over a series of nights by Balram to his Chineese premier Wen Jiabao. This approach tries to showcase the audacity and arrogance of the protagonist. The letter was written at the height of his powers and the address to which the letter is being addressed to clearly indicates that he is able communicate with people that are well outside his social circle. And when he tells him ‘ In my way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind’, he is not restricted by his identity of caste or birth. In fact, the only identity that defines him at that point of time was the one that he was able to make for himself and in that he doesn’t consider himself to be inferior to anyone.
CHAPTER 2
THE WHITE TIGER- ANALYSIS
While the novel moves from country to city, the whole world of underclass also migrates’their exploitation and sufferings. With the labourers working in the industrial set-up, taxi and auto drivers, servants, prostitutes, beggars, poor and shivering lots hiding under flyovers, slum-dwellers, corrupt police, legal and administrative structure, unfriendly master-servant relationship underclass emerges. Big cities like Delhi and Bangalore witness both kinds of India. Balram’s journey from Laxamangarh to Dhanbad then Delhi and finally to Bangalore endorses that the socio-psychological condition of the underclass remains unchanged. Though the cities provide ample opportunities of job, social behaviour and psyche of the upper class is identical everywhere’whether it is a landlord or politician, police official, bureaucrat, upper caste people, richman, industrialist or entrepreneur. Everywhere underclass is trapped in ‘Rooster Coop’, struggling to come out of the cage. Balram is the conscience of underclass’their anger, frustration, protest and revenge, ready to adopt a new moral code of conduct to succeed in life. Murder of Ashok by Balram is the reaction of deep-rooted frustration of underclass experiencing the polarities between the upper class and lower class. Apart from these, pollution, hectic routine of life, harmful effects of mobile, impact of city culture etc. create new territories of Darkness in India. India is shown as an emerging entrepreneurial power in the world. Advancement in the field of science and technology, space, transportation, hotel industry, tourism, real estate, expansion of cities, mall culture, industries and outsourcing etc. characterize the image of India. But all these developmental activities depend on underclass with distinct identity:
These poor bastards had come from the Darkness to Delhi to find some light’but they were still in the darkness. (Adiga,2012,138) To live under some concrete bridge, begging for their food, and without hope for the future. That’s not much better than being dead. (Adiga,2012,P 314-315)
Auto and taxi drivers constitute a big fragment of underclass inhabiting in the cities. Balram is a true prototype of this class manifesting miseries of their life, humiliation, struggle, dreams and involvement in criminal and illegal activities. Balram as a chauffeur was hired by Stork, a village landlord for his son Ashok, daughter-in-law Pinky and their two Pomeranian dogs. From behind the Wheel of a Honda City, Balram first sees Delhi. The city is a revelation. Amid the cockroaches and call-centres, the 36,000,004 gods, the slums, the shopping malls and the crippling traffic jams, Balram’s re-education begins. Under the conflict between two opposite thoughts to be a loyal son and servant or fulfill his desire to better himself, he devises a new morality at the heart of a new India. Drivers also carry out the work of a servant washing utensils, brooming the floors, cooking, massaging, scrubbing, lathering and drying the skin of dogs; they sell drugs, prostitutes and read with full enthusiasm Murder Weekly because, ‘a billion servants are secretly fantasizing about strangling their bosses’ (Adiga,2012,p125). There is no space for the poor in the malls of New India. The worst part of being a driver is, Balram narrates:
‘ You can spend this time chit-chatting and scratching your groin. You can read murder and rape magazines. You can develop the chauffeur’s habit’it’s a kind of yoga, really’ of putting a finger in your nose and letting your mind go blank for hours'( Adiga,2012,p128)
Drivers and servants are also forced to confess the crime their masters have committed. Though they earn some extra income but they remain servant. Balram is so much disgusted of the life of a slave that he never feels guilty of Ashok’s murder. He wants to experience ‘just for a day, just for an hour, just for a minute, what it means not to be a servant’. Prostitution is another dark area of India of Light. In the big cities, due to poverty most of the women are forced to adopt this profession. In Dhanbad, Delhi and Bangalore, there are red light areas one can negotiate a price with these women. And the price depends on, ‘High class or low class? Virgin or non-virgin?’ (Adiga,2012,p227). In Delhi, especially rich people prefer ‘golden-haired women’. Forgery also involves in this racket; suppliers present a woman dyed in golden hair to snatch the maximum price. Nepali girls, Ukranian students and poor labourers from the village working in construction of mall allow their women for prostitution. Corrupt police, legal and administrative structure mark off another dark spot of shining India. Police masterminds the forced out confession to protect the rich men from the legal proceedings and get huge money in lieu of that. The hit and run case which legally belongs to Pinky is shifted to Balram: ‘The jails of Delhi are full of drivers who are there behind the bars because they are taking the blame for their good, solid middle-class masters. We have left the villages, but the masters still own us, body, soul, and arse’. Even judges ignore to see forced confession, because they ‘are in the racket too. They take their bribe, they ignore the discrepancies in the case. And life goes on’ . The close nexus between criminals, police and media persons is also exposed. Balram Halwai transformed into Ashok Sharma’a Bangalore based successful entrepreneur is confident that he is ‘one of those who cannot be caught in India’. Entrepreneurial success and modern city culture has deeprooted impact on our life. A man ‘innocent and rustic becomes a new man’selfish, opportunist and criminal which is the greatest harm to humanity. Balram’s journey from Laxamangarh to Dhanbad then to Delhi and finally to Bangalore proves this loss: ‘All these changes happened in me because they happened first in Mr. Ashok. He returned from America an innocent man, but life in Delhi corrupted him’and once the master of the Honda City becomes corrupted, how can the driver stay innocent?'( Adiga,2012,P17)
Pollution, mechanical routine of life, changed structure of family and society, terrorism, emergence of underclass etc. are ample evidences to verify the Dark image of India. Adiga has graphically portrayed the different images of India’ India of Light and India of Dark. But his focus is on the latter and he tries to give it a literary voice. Adiga in conversation with Hirsh Sawhney explained the nature of progress: ‘technology is one aspect of progress; it is not progress in itself. Progress is holistic’its water and cell phones. Deirdre Donahue considers the novel one of the most powerful books she has read in decades with, ‘No hyperbole’an amazing and angry novel about injustice and power. Lee Thomas has reviewed the novel in San francisco Chronicle (April 27, 2008): ‘Adiga’s first novel ‘The WhiteTiger’, delivers an indomitable central character and an India bristling with economic possibility, competing loyalties and class struggle. Sudheer Apte finds the most enjoyable part of the novel, ‘is richly observed world of have-nots in India’with his keen observation and sharp writing Adiga takes us into Balram Halwai’s mind, whether we want or not. In an interview he was asked how he got the inspiration for
There is a kind of continuous murmur or growl beneath middleclass life in India, and this noise never gets recorded, Balram is what you’d hear if one day the drain and faucets in your house started talking. Adiga has successfully highlighted the subaltern issue in the novel and brought home the idea that in the story of India’s progress role of the underclass is important. He, as a communist manifesto, pleads strongly for the classless society
CHAPTER 3
Between the Assassinations- Analysis
The stories and characters created by Adiga have a definite purpose. Through them, he tries to give a message. Although the setting of the novel is local, the issues raised by him are of national importance. In the twenty first century, no one can talk about progress ignoring the burning issues raised by Adiga. The intention giving this title to the novel must be to invite the attention to the important national issues. The galaxy of characters represents each section of our society. Among these, Ziauddin, a twelve year old sixth of the eleventh children of a farm labouring family, works in a tea stall. Working in an age in which he should reap the joy of innocent childhood, he develops a sense of isolation from the society. Left entirely to his own wits, he has to struggle for survival like an adult. In the town of Kittur, Muslims are marginalized from the mainstream social discourse. The shopkeepers near the railway station never hire a Muslim worker but Ramanna Shetty employs Ziauddin due to his innocence. After a stay for four months with his parents, the boy returns completely metamorphosed, losing his innocence. He develops a sense of pride in his religion and takes a keen interest in knowing his ancestral roots. However, the honest boy changes as a thief stealing small things. This leads to his removal from work after another. While fighting, he always asserts his identity as a Pathan, slapping his chest, ‘From the land of the Pathans, far off the north, where there are mountains full of snow! I’m not a Hindu! I don’t do hankypanky!'(Adiga,2012,p10)
The religious pride and a sense of separation spreads poison in the mind of the little fellow. A feeling of jealousy makes him hate the Hindus with whom he had spent happy moments of life. Adiga talks about struggle, dilemma, aspiration and disillusionment of the Indian middle class. The novel explores the character sketches across caste, class, religion, occupation and preoccupation from the period between the two assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajeev Gandhi respectively. The story is set in a small village in south India named Kittur. Even though the story is set in a small locality, the topic that is arised in the novel is of national importance. Each major character in the novel belongs to particular section of the society. Ziauddin is a twelve year old working in a tea shop is the major character of the novel. His started working at an age when he should be enjoying what is left of his childhood. His search for identity as a teenager gets him close to a Muslim pathan, with whom he developed a sense of belonging. Adiga uses Zia as a instrument to get into the root causes of terrorism. Abbasi is a character through whom the author rises the issue of bureaucratic corruption. His moral conscience leads him to shut down the factory that he owned. His struggle to reopen the factory exposes underlying corruption in our bureaucratic sector.
The caste than an individual is born into is presented as a major theme in the novel. It is represented as the identity that regulates whether you should feel proud of yourself or be ashamed. Even if a lower caste individual climbs up the economic ladder in the society he still has suffer humiliation and the society refuses to consider him as nobility. Adiga uses the character of Shankara to rise the issue of caste discrimination in the society. He is angry young kid who tries to take revenge against the caste based society by blowing up a bomb in his his school. The caste discrimination and the conflict in his mind that has emerged as a result of this conflict makes him think of converting to Christianity as it has no castes and judges people for what they do with their lives. The dilemma of Shankara raises a very important question in the novel of which is worst caste or class. Although Shankara is rich, he doesn’t receive the same kind of respect that some of the other upper caste men receive in the society. He hated his driver as he belonged to the upper class. The descriminations based on class and caste are both same sides of the same coin. In both the cases, the people with control and power are reluctant to let go of that and are also unwilling to include anyone who wants to come into that circle. This often means that the economically weaker section of the upper class will continue to remain so and the richer section of the lower caste men will have to fight for the respect that they rightfully deserve.
In ‘The White Tiger’, the change in the protagonists name is is very much important to the novel as it attempts to reflect on the identity of the character. ‘Halwai’ is a name that reveals his caste identity and thereby his social status. The change of his names in the novel suggests his connected to the story’s theme and core ideas. He was first Munna, then he became Balram , the white Tiger and finally adopted the name Ashok Sharma, thereby signifying his elevation of social as well as economic status.
The story introduces the character as ‘Munna’ meaning boy. He ran away from his village sob as as to live in the city. His relatives and parents were not too much worried about it and their disinterest in the child was very much evident in the story. The name Balram’ was given to him by one of his school teachers who was able to identify the talent in him. This was an elevation of some sorts for the child as he was given a distinct identity for the very first time in his life. The name is the same as that of Lord Krishna’s brother.
The content of the novel is expressed in a long letter that is expressed over a series of nights by Balram to his Chineese premier Wen Jiabao. This approach tries to showcase the audacity and arrogance of the protagonist. The letter was written at the height of his powers and the address to which the letter is being addressed to clearly indicates that he is able communicate with people that are well outside his social circle. And when he tells him ‘ In my way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind’, he is not restricted by his identity of caste or birth. In fact, the only identity that defines him at that point of time was the one that he was able to make for himself and in that he doesn’t consider himself to be inferior to anyone
In the costly urban life a man has to struggle for his survival to accomplish his daily needs. Ratnakar Shetty, the father of three daughters, toils day and night to save money for their dowry. He sells the pills as sexologist. While coming home in the bus, he sells books, pens among other things. Although he saves for his first daughter, he is worried for the next two. When his first daughter is about to be married off to a young boy, Ratna discovers that the boy is found with mysterious disease due to visiting prostitutes and the wedding is cancelled.
Paradoxically, the same boy approaches him with a request to cure from the disease. The sexologist reveals that the pills he gives to the patients are nothing but white sugar pills purchased from the chemist. The boy feels that if he goes to the hospital, his father will come to know about it. Ratna brings him to the real sexologist who diagnoses that it is the disease of kidney failure. Ratna’s journey thus starts from a hope to get a groom for his daughter but destiny has strange mystery. Adiga has very finely narrated the stories of ‘everyman’ in an ‘everytown’. A local flavour gives an universal appeal to the realistic treatment of the characters. Adiga invites reader’s attention towards the disparities between the poor and the rich, communal disharmony, corruption, violence and hypocrisy. The book thus has ‘eye-openers to law makers and administrators to have the political will to deliver justice to the poor and the marginalized, rooting out corruption in all forms.’ (Adiga,2012,p13) Just like in The White Tiger Adiga metaphorically presents India in Light and Darkness, in Between the Assassinations he chronicles India in a period of transition from aspiration to disillusionment
CHAPTER 4
Theme of Identity in Indian English literature
The crisis of identity has always enjoyed a defining significance in the thematic framework of the Indio Anglican novels. The novels of R. K. Narayan, Mulkraj Anand and Raja Rao redesigned the techno-thematic fabric of Indian English fiction and laid the foundation of the new Indian English fiction. The post-colonial age represented by these three novelists was chiefly a quest for identity along different dimensions of socio-political and economic order of India. The novels of Mulkraj Anand explored the thick congested fabric of Indian life and structured his fiction with unquestionable authority. The crisis of identity plays vital role in the cast of the narrative of Anand. His novels like The Untouchables and The Coolie explore the hidden dimensions of human psyche along socio-economic and cultural dimensions. Barkha’s dramatic reaction to the situation when the modesty of his sister is attempted by a Brahmin aptly illustrates the agony of identity crisis at a socio-cultural level; the man must have made indecent suggestions to her
Narayan explores the idea of the crisis of identity along various dimensions. Almost all his novels are based on the idea of the crisis of identity and the consequent efforts to locate them. His first novel, Swami and Friends (1935), has the seeds of the same theme manifest in form of children’ pains and pangs. The other novels are also structured on the same idea explored along different dimensions. A reference to The Dark Room is obligatory as the crisis of identity plays a very important role. All the three major characters suffer the crisis of identity in their own ways. Ramani is torn apart between marriage and infatuation. Savitri endures all the pains and alienation of a conventional, male dominated family set-up. Shanti Bai is the new representation of identity crisis. She is ‘married to an unscrupulous husband’ but rejects identity with him and escapes to Madras’. It is, however, interesting to note that the identity crisis of Savitri continues to grow more and more piercing. The last scene of the narrative elucidates the perpetuity of the crisis of identity when she feels like calling her one time aid but realizes her helplessness and withdraws . It can easily be inferred that Savitri in the beginning is same as Savitri in the end.
The Guide is another major novel of Narayan. The East-west confrontation plays decisive role in the cast of the narrative and thus the crisis of identity owes its genesis to this ideological conflict. Both the major characters- Raju and Rosiespend their life locating their identity, and the search remains an effort in vain. The Vendor of Sweets is the most poignant representation of the identity crisis that owes its genesis to the conflicting values of the east and west. In this stream a powerful entry is of Anita Desai who gave a new dimension to the search of identity. The novels of Anita Desai mark a parallel stream in the history of Indian English fiction. It is however undeniable that her novels have been knit around the complex idea of identity crisis with a female character on the focus. Her first novel- Cry the Peacock published in 1964 is an important landmark in history of Indian English literature. Anita Desai added impetus to the feminist wave that came into critical notice since the advent of Nayantara Sehgal in the horizon of Indian English writings. She explored a world subsisting within the world and located the fragmentation of the protagonists’ identity. The protagonist of her first novel- Maya is a wrecked soul who longs for her identity realized in terms of marital harmony but never succeeds.
In her second novel- Bye Bye Black Bird the crisis of identity is born of the conflict between the spirit of place and the protagonist’s soul. The incompatibility between these two dominant forces constitutes the dynamics of the action and the nature of the narrative. The crisis of identity and efforts to locate it along the finite dimensions of the narrative is the kernel of the techno-thematic frame work of her novels. In Custody (1984) and Clear Light of the Day (1980) – her most celebrated novels, have another revelation of the perennial quest for identity which is put to stake under the chafing pressures of the cultural forces and the efforts to relocate it becomes a painful enterprise. The spirit of eighties was spearheaded by Salman’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ published in 1980 and Shame published in 1983. Both these novels are knit around the idea of identity crisis which owes its birth and life to the direct collision between individual and history. The Satanic Verses published in 1988 explores the religious identity of an Asian expatriate in England. In Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1991) by Salman, he takes the identity of a writer on the focus of the thematic structure and knits the narrative. The success of these novels firmly established the prominence of identity crisis in the thematic set up of the Indian English fiction. The novels that hit the literary horizon capture our attention for the prominence of the theme of identity crisis.
Amitav Ghosh’s ‘The Shadow Lines’ is another masterpiece published in the same decade. It also explores the identity of the protagonist against the backdrop of the Indian culture and heritage. The Shadow Lines is a story told by a nameless narrator in recollection. It is a non linear tale told as if putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in the memory of the narrator. This style of writing is both unique and captivating; unfolding ideas together as time and space coalesce and help the narrator understand his past better. It is a story of a middle class Indian family based in Calcutta. The boy narrator presents the views of the members of his immediate and extended family, thus, giving each a well defined character. However, narrator’s grandmother is the most realized character in the novel, giving a distinct idea of the idealism and the enthusiasm with which the people worked towards nation building just after independence. It is chiefly through her character that Ghosh delivers the most powerful message of the novel; the vainness of creating nation states, the absurdity of drawing lines which arbitrarily divide people when their memories remain undivided. The nineties were the natural extension of the thematic boldness and technical innovativeness. It is also the decade which marks the flowering of Githa Hariharan as novelist. She, along with Anita Desai, shared the stage with another prominent figure of Indian English fiction Arundhati Roy who surprised the world with a unique first- The God of Small Things published in 1995 and was awarded Booker in 1996. The God of Small Things is also knit around the complex idea of the crisis of identity realized at the level of human relationship..
It is however interesting to know that the changes that took place confronted the traditional values system that ruled over the Indian society with despotic authority. The concept of generation gap acquired new impetus and became more decisive compared to previous years. The birth of a new order and new system became obligatory. The advent of the multi- national companies is another very prominent feature responsible for the new shape of the society. Education too had a new form and a new function by acquiring international order. Employment was also redefined. The limitations of times and spaces were reduced to non-existence and movements of the young aspirants became more free. The induction of new technology in the fields of computers paved way for the escape of Indian minds and women too became integral parts of this new wave. Thus it becomes clear that the society was changed and the women were no exception to it. The birth of a new woman in the old society practicing quaint orders and methods was the common phenomenon witnessed in all corners of the vast social set up. Anita Desai’s fictions are generally existentialist studies of individuals and hence background, politicality, historicity, social settings, class, cross-cultural pluralities are all only incidental. But being incidental does not mean that they are essentially extraneous. The solitude that Desai depicts in her diasporic characters is a result of the inner psyche of the characters as also their external circumstances. Loneliness is a manifestation of both inner and outer conditions and hence, its sense can be evoked even in the middle of society. The Jew, Hugo Baumgartner in the novel Baumgartner’s Bombay by Anita Desai (1998) had spent his childhood in his native Germany with his parents. Even as a child a sense of loneliness gnaws at his being and is evoked at his crucial moments of triumph. On his first day at school when his mother comes to fetch him with a cone of bonbons for him, he holds up his prize for the others to see but already ‘the other children were vanishing down the street’ and ‘no one saw his triumph’. He accuses his mother for being late and complains:. Hugo’s loneliness as a child, in the midst of society comes because of the lack of identification.
Even when he is not neglected he feels the same loneliness as is evident from the Christmas incident in the school when all his classmates were sent gifts by their parents to be distributed to them by their teacher. Hugo longs for the red glass globe that adorns the top of the Christmas tree. When the teacher makes it up as his gift he instinctively realizes that his parents have not sent any gift for him and he stubbornly declines from accepting it even though goaded by his classmates to take it. It is perhaps this sense of loneliness experienced by the Jewish community in Germany that helped Hitler fuel his Aryan myth and transform loneliness into fear. The Baumgartner family lives in fear in Nazi Germany and fear is an acute form of loneliness. Long before Hugo has a literal displacement after the suicide of his father, he has experienced a displacement whereby he has not literally moved but the world around him has moved or rather changed. So when Hugo has a physical displacement and migrates as a teenager to India, he already harbors the sense of loneliness. Thus it seems that the change in location is only incidental to his sense of solitariness. But the circumstantial changes also help to aggravate one’s solitude and hence it is not merely incidental and this fact is quite apt in consideration with the estrangement that Hugo suffers from his mother. That Hugo’s mother stayed back in Nazi Germany and her highly censored letters only bear the curt statement that she was well and it provides no comfort to Baumgartner. The memory of his mother in Germany is a constant deterrent against stopping him from succumbing to a sense of loneliness. Influences and counter-influences that mould one’s perceptions govern human life. When the tension generated by these counter-acting influences rises to a critical level, human beings suffer. The molding gives rise to senses that off late were in a latent state. Thus Baumgartner’s loneliness is also aroused from latency when in India he is in the loneliness-alleviating company of Lotte, a German cabaret singer. Hugo’s relationship with Lotte is no doubt vital but acts only as a poor substitute for all the relationships he craves for. Just as Baumgartner keeps stray cats and cares for them in an attempt to give some purpose to his lonely existence, his relationship with Lotte can be thought to be in parallel to it. The relationship in itself is important but it is more important because it gives some purpose to Hugo’s ‘Sisyphus-like’ existence as explicated by Taneja (1991) in the essay “Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay: A Note”. At the height of Second World War, Baumgartner is interned in a camp in British India because he carries a German passport. In the camp Baumgartner is among other Jews yet he stays aloof because he, unlike others, could find no way ‘to alleviate the burden, the tedium, the emptiness of the waiting days’ (Baumgartner’s Bombay). Even after the war, when he meets one of his campmates, he finds that he has changed his name from the ‘too Jewish’ Julius to the ‘very English’ Julian. If Julius deliberately dilutes his Jewish identity, Baumgartner unknowingly suffers from an identity crisis and to counter it, there arises in him a sense of non-belonging.
The Second World War rendered the Jewish Diaspora nation less and hence identity crisis becomes inherent in the community. Baumgartner cannot go back to Germany because the Germany of his childhood no longer exists and hence his perennial sense of loneliness continues. The only time that Baumgartner tries to reconcile the Germany of his childhood with the present-day Germany by taking a stoned German youth, Kurt, to his apartment, he is robbed and murdered by him. It is perhaps the ultimate indictment that no reconciliation is possible and all attempts to wipe out the sense of diasporic loneliness are futile. The German, Kurt follows the typically decadent lifestyle of the hippies in India but another German, Sophie, from the novel Journey to Ithaca is most unlike in that regard. She has come to India following her Italian husband, Matteo, who is seeking spiritual love. Sophie cannot identify with Matteo’s ideals and does not find the Mother as inspiring as Matteo does. She is left neglected and lonely in a foreign land. It is quite ironic when Sophie discovers that the Mother Tiwari 9 herself is a seeker of divine love and is of Egyptian origin who has traveled all over the world until settling in India. But by the time she comes to make the revelation to Matteo, the Mother is already dead and Matteo has disappeared. She is left stranded bearing in her the sense of spiritual loneliness that has come out of the mysticism in the churning of differing cultures. The Diaspora of Indian community is also not exempted from being a victim of the sense of loneliness. Since Indian independence, UK has been a prime destination for migrant Indians. The earliest of such communities constituted either of ‘Anglophiles,’ whose purpose of migration has been to experience the pristine beauty of England, or of ‘Anglophobes,’ who migrate to take the proverbial ‘postcolonial revenge’. In England both these types of migrant Indians are pressed together and marked as ‘the Others’. This sense of otherness is sometimes due to blatant racism and sometimes it comes out from the individual’s own inner needs. It is such a situation when both the Anglophobe and the Anglophile find themselves in the same boat that their distinctions diminish as their purposes dilute. Purposeless, they find themselves lonely.
Anita Desai’s novel ‘Bye-Bye Blackbird’ is about migrant Indians in the England of 1960s. Adit lives in London with his English wife, Sarah. Dev is a newly arrived immigrant from India. Adit has well adjusted himself in the country of his adoption and has allayed his sense of loneliness by being non-chalant to its various causes. Dev, on the other hand, is critical of Adit’s attitude. He gets disturbed and angry when someone whispers the word ‘wog’ behind his back. Obviously, Dev has more reasons to be lonely and thus when he ventures into the city he feels, ‘like a Kafka stranger wandering through the dark labyrinth of a prison’. Dev’s loneliness eventually stops haunting him and he decides to stay in England. Adit, in the interim, suffers from a crisis of identity. He starts longing for the land and the people he has left behind. He feels depressed of “Mrs. Roscommon-James’ sniffs and barks and Dev’s angry sarcasm” as well as from the fact that Sarah “had shut him out, with a bang and a snap, from her childhood of one-eared pandas and large jigsaw puzzles”. He finally decides to return to India with Sarah. What this proves is that the sense of loneliness is not a phenomenon of overpowering presence but rather of intermittent overpowering, guided by circumstances incidental and always in flux. Just as the United Kingdom, the United States of America has also attracted Indians as a destination of academic and economic prosperity.
CONCLUSION
Adiga often infuses his own multiple-nationality background into his characters, exploring the impact of class and racial differences while simultaneously examining larger questions regarding the direction of Indian identity and the experience of Indian residents. This infusion, while useful to pair with Turner’s work, prompts further study beyond Turner’s evaluation, which considers social class while skirting other forms of expression of social immobilizing. The theme of identity is often expressed in literature through novels or poetry to intrigue the readers into the plot or the character itself. It enables them to relate to the characters emotions. Identity also helps us in distinguishing a character from all the others. However identity can be a problematic concept if the character is unfathomable much like the character of Shakespeare’s Iago. It is therefore important for the reader to contemplate the contextual background of the literary text.
Adiga has created two different India’s in the novel The White Tiger, the India of light and the India of darkness. The novel focuses more on the India of darkness as it tells the story of underclass citizens most of whom became homeless owing to the large scale development in the major cities of India.
The protagonist of the the novel is Balram Halwai, who is a typical underclass man whose goes unheard in the society. The novel refers to this kind of men as the ‘rooster coop’. He contstsnly tries to liberate himself from the age old slavery and exploitation. His anger, indulgence in crimes and drinking endorses the frustrations that are rooted deep in his life and his response to those. The entire novel is centered around the protagonist, the son of a rickshaw puller. His voice is marginal as that of other farmers, landless labourers and daily wage workers e.t.c. They together form the India of darkness as they are the vulnerable section of the society. Every time a new government proposes a development project, they are the only section of the society who becomes homeless. They lie behind the facades of improving living standards of Indians and nobody even takes notice of their miserable lives.
The novel is structured as a series of letters written to the Chinese premier by a former cab driver from Laxamnagargh. The protagonist during the course of the novel recognizes the gradual shift of power from the white man to the yellow and brown man. Every detail regarding his rise to power and status from lower caste son of a rickshaw puller is mentioned in his letter to the premier. Through his rise, he exposes the rot in the three major pillars of India- ‘democracy’ , ‘enterprise ‘and ‘justice’. The novel indirectly attacks the political and beaurocratic system of the ndian society. It is held is responsible for the ‘rottenness’ and corruption in the society which hampers all the developmental and welfare schemes. The novel also criticizes the ‘half baked politicians’ for the one half of the country not meeting their potential. The nepotism and hypocritical nature of the politicians made the riches and the prosperity that came with the development limited to the already rich sections of the society. The failure of the system to accommodate the under classes led to their desire to get on top after breaking the system.
Both the rural and urban aspects of our society has been carefully detailed in the novel along with its various other facets that represent the portrait of India. Aravind Adiga was born in Mangalore and did most of his schooling there. However upon his return to the city, he was very much surprised to see the kind of transformation that the city undertook. But he later understood that these modernisation and development came at the cost of a particular section of the society. Behind the fa”ade of a transformed city lied the everyday miseries of drifters, ragpickers and homeless men. Adiga wanted to explore the lives of these men who lost their houses or had been displaced owing to urbanization. ‘The White Tiger’ narrates the tale of this under class and how they have been forced to beg for food and sleep under flyovers and on public parks
The towers house Masterji’s collective community, and the novel’s opening pages introduce the stories of forty-five of its members. Masterji and the community must each decide what they are willing to do to achieve their aims. In the end, the community acts to achieve its desired result by murdering the individual, Masterji. Instead of remaining within a single tradition, such as Western or South Asian crime novels, contemporary Indian popular fiction, or postcolonial dialogues, Adiga draws from multiple canons and traditions to fully examine the direction that identity takes when torn between individual autonomy and group loyalty. This examination leads, in turn, to an answer to the questions over the values emerging in contemporary Mumbai and Indian life in this novel. Like characters in Adiga’s other works, Masterji struggles as a justice-seeking individual, yet the insight the reader gains by the novel’s plot and modern Indian setting leads to a more authentic understanding of Indian individualism, identity and nationalism than Adiga previously offered.
WORKS CITED
PRIMARY REFERENCE
Adiga,Aravind, The White Tiger, India, Harper Collins, 2008
Adiga Aravind, Between the Assassinations. India, Picador Books, 2008
SECONDARY REFERENCE
Kumar , Gajendra, Indian English Literature, Sarup and sons, 2001
Jha,Vivekananad., The Dance of the Peacock. Canada: Hidden Brook Press, 2014
Jha,Vivekananad., The Dance of the Peacock. Canada: Hidden Brook Press, 2014