Liberty

  

    In the White Tiger, innumerable amounts of themes and issues are brought out, dealing with the very nature of India itself. One encounters incredible corruption, devastating poverty, suffocating oppression, and rampant injustice in this book. The ending of the book, though, centers on one topic, one topic that is central to the human experience and something that has been struggled for everywhere throughout history: Freedom.

                Balram killed Ashok, a terrible sin that weighs on him even at the time he writes to the Chinese premier. He is not  “a politician or a parliamentarian. Not one of those extraordinary men who can kill and move on, as in nothing had happened.” He is haunted by it. Yet, he is completely, 100% unrepentant, certain he made the right choice. Certainly he, a good man, must have gained something of incalculable importance to feel this way.

                As a central theme to the ending of this book, I will say that “liberty is an absolute requirement for individuality and humanity, the only way a human can be a person”.  To call it an absolute can sound strange, but it can be pretty simple to argue: if a person prefers to hear rock to classical music,  but is not given the option to hear rock, that preference is irrelevant. Such an argument can extend to all of individuality, all of what makes a person unique and identifiable as a person. No wonder that people throughout history fought and died for it so unhesitantly.

                It makes it seem almost obscene how we spit on that liberty today. Freedom of the press became the ability to gossip about the sex life of pop stars. People desperately trying to “fit in” where they can act how they can, having the beliefs their parents and people around them do… Facebook and its such CRUSHING individuality systematically. Conforming desperately to brands and clothes and everything to the people around us. Saying one is a “normal person” as a badge of pride.

                India has a different culture. The poor are animals. Family is sovereign over everyone. The government buys and sells votes. Poor cannot enter malls. Poor cannot enter hotels. They live in quarters and speak subdued. People turn on any other person’s weakness, so you can have none. Freedom there isn’t a concept. People don’t understand it exists. The poor there have become used to the fact there is no freedom to be had. If someone was to understand what it is, they would fight to the death for it. It would be a divine gift unparalleled to any other.

                It is what Balram obtained. When Balram obtained freedom by killing Ashok and his family, he became a person, with a personality, with quirks and beliefs. It turns out he is a bit of a philosopher. He likes chandeliers. They’re nice. He has skill in business, capable of multiplying the money he has with effort and foreseeing future trends. He is superstitious, avoiding cellphones. He doesn’t like pizza much. He enjoys nightlife.

                He wasn’t any of this before he was free. Not really. Because it was utterly, completely irrelevant. He was an animal after all. Animals can’t do those things. His characteristics had no chance to surface, to the point they didn’t exist. That is what freedom meant for him.

                Balram became a person by freedom. That is how freedom is crucial. Central to all importance in human existence.

                I pray our culture remembers this, and be less decadent.        

Balram Throughout the White Tiger

A static character is a character that does not change throughout a novel, one who does not learn a lesson or change his person. A dynamic character is one that changes and develops throughout a story. Balram is one of the most dynamic characters I have ever seen, with his development being a central part of this novel.

                At the beginning of the novel, Balram is a mere child and a peasant in the darkness. He is a completely unimportant and unloved person, to the point no one will even bother to give him a name. He is expected to be completely submissive to the will of his family, and he is, dropping a lifetime opportunity without even a say in it to get a job in a teashop, working with no pride for little pay.

After he gets the idea to become a driver, his family gives him 300 rupees to learn, an act of some generosity. He becomes the number two driver of the Stork family, gaining a salary of 1500. Which his family steals almost completely and thanklessly. It becomes clear that his family wants to use him, suck him dry, “scoop him out from the inside and leave him weak and helpless, until he got tuberculosis and died on the floor of a government hospital, waiting for some doctor to see him, spitting blood on this wall and that!” (74). And so he rebels. He refuses to get married and dedicate his life to their ends. This is the first time in the book he does such a thing, and it signifies a major transition for him.

Later, he gets the ambition to go to Delhi. A rather hopeless cause: he cannot hope to get enough money to bribe the Nepali, and the family likes the other driver more. Balram decides to conspire and act to get what he wants. He sees the number one driver is secretly a Muslim serving a racist master, and blackmails him into leaving. While he feels some guilt upon doing this, he becomes happier. By now it becomes clear that in this story and as far as Balram is concerned, the more ruthless he becomes the happier he is. The more ruthless he becomes, the stronger his sense of himself as a person becomes, a person that was raised like an animal, made to provide dumbly until he died unceremoniously. Ruthlessness is a good element for Balram.

What does this indicate for Balram? Is he a horrible human being? Does he delight in killing and bribing and blackmailing his way to the top in exchange for money and such pleasures? I believe its more of the fact that Balram values individuality and freedom more than he does morality. Freedom is a cause worth dying for, and thus it must be a cause worth killing for. Balram is not a bad person, for what he does he does in the process of becoming a person at all.

When Balram gets to the city, he is lost and humble and unsightly. He doesn’t know anything would be the conclusion drawn by most, something humorously observed on his comment on the shaved women. Balram is a simple country boy. But he learns. He sees how toothpaste can improve his teeth and he uses it. He stops scratching his crotch and using as much paan. He wears better clothing. He even gets himself a little coming of age ritual by getting a blonde whore, a luxury almost completely unheard of for a servant. He rapidly improves himself into a civilized city dweller.

One of the most interesting things in this book is the link between Ashok and Balram as he changes. Balram looks up to Ashok. Ashok is a good man. So he doesn’t steal, so he doesn’t cheat him. When Ashok tries to get him to take the blame for the traffic accident, it shatters that illusion for him. He is devastated by how he was cheated and used. When Ashok gets dumped, he gets corrupted. He starts sleeping around and partying, he partakes in every sin from gluttony to lust. He sleeps with that Russian actress while Balram sits there, “…hoping he’d come running out, arms flailing, and screaming “Balram, I was on the verge of making a mistake! Save me-lets drive away at once!” (187). When Balram becomes disillusioned with Ashok, he losses respect for him. And ironically his makes him imitate him, follow him in his corruption by stealing petrol, by using the car himself, by using it as a taxi, by going to corrupt mechanics.  Until finally the idea of stealing the bag pops up. The idea of taking 700,000 rupees and be free.

He wrestles with it. He can finally understand what freedom is. He can finally see what it is he was to gain by killing Ashok. He would lose his family, but they only saw him as a resource. He would become a fugitive, but he would become free.

The instant he hits Ashok with the bottle, he starts referring to Ashok as an “it.”

Balram is now an entrepreneur, a “pillar of Bangalore society”. He is a philosopher. He has strong opinions on government on the macro and micro scale. He is knowledgeable on the city more than almost anyone. He is superstitious. He has ventures in real estate and transportation.  Before he was a servant treated like an animal and acting like a piece of furniture. That is the transition he made in this book. It was worth everything he did to change.

For he became the White Tiger.

 

Religion in the White Tiger

Religion in the White Tiger

By Jose Trejos

                Religion appears to be an inconstant topic in the white tiger, shown in a large variety of ways and lights. As the character often tells us, there are thirty-six million and change gods in Hinduism, all of which are worshipped in many varying intensities throughout India. Religion is shown often in a very negative light in this book.

As a way to keep the masses passive, people are told to worship Hanuman, “a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love, and devotion” (pg. 16). Religion is sometimes criticized as “the opiate of the masses” (Karl Marx), and this is shown to full effect with Hinduism. A variety of religions are shown in this book, with the main character having little preference, and showing the faith of whatever is the nearest authority figure, like when Buddha is called an enlightened god by the scholarship-giver. People are also showily religions, as shown when he fakes the spiritual feeling for his master (that moment with the “sacred tree” was quite humorous), and when he competes against the other driver, bringing in a variety of statues to show piety. Several religions specifically criticize this attitude, notably Christianity, where Jesus is said to claim that whoever shows off his religion to impress has already claimed their reward for their faith and can expect none in heaven. And then there are the celebrations which would be horrible and unseemly without their religious title, notably the strikingly horrible and very detailed, graphic way the main character’s mother is burned and tossed into the river.

Yet despite all these negative attributes, the narrator never openly rejects or condemns religion, often swearing to any and all gods. While he is not very pious, he is religious. Religion is shown in some positive lights. The most beautiful thing in the book so far is almost unquestionably that ancient temple, the black fort that the narrator visited in the beginning… The same fort where he condemns and spits upon god, after a grim exchange reminiscent of Voltaire’s Candide.

Possibly the most strikingly negative thing religion causes in this newest reading is the discrimination against Muslims. In the recent ABC news article “Indian Muslims Pose as Hindus to get Jobs”, one can see this is a problem ongoing today. This reality of discrimination is quite obvious, with some job agencies openly recommending their Muslim clients to hide their identities as worshippers of Islam. This is a reality portrayed when the White Tiger discovers the senior driver is a Muslim. When this happens, he knows he has won. The boss would not ever tolerate a Muslim, even one that has been with him for so many years, even one that is so skilled and trusted. The discrimination is absolute.

This discrimination is a historical problem stemming, like many others in this book, after India is freed from the British. The Muslims and Hindus engaged in a very violent and tragic conflict that ended in the split of India into two nations (later three), India Hindu and Pakistan Muslim. Nations that bitterly hate each other and today point nuclear weapons at each other today.

Perhaps the most saddening aspect of this history of hate is how it affects small ordinary people, like Lakshmi from the article. This reality is reflected in the book when the White Tiger succeeds in getting the number one driver fired disgracefully over being a Muslim. The Muslim is pitiful as he leaves, losing his place and his job having done nothing wrong. Just one example of how the White Tiger reflects the horrible, horrible life conditions in India.

Should any readers want to learn more about these issues, here is the article I saw, just one of the many similar stories born of this discrimination:

Indian Muslims Pose as Hindus to Avoid Discrimination