Voice from the Darkness: Symbolizing the Subaltern in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger

The deep-rooted socio-economic inequality is rampant in India even today. The landowners, the industrialists, and the upper classes have always applied power over the poor peasants, laborers and the working classes. Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger is the story of Balram Halwai, son of a rickshaw puller, which is considered as ‘lower’ in terms of the caste system. It is a Bildungsroman in many senses, Balram’s journey of emancipation from deterioration and inhibition to a multi-million dollar entrepreneur. The novel is criticized by many as an exaggerated version of Indian society but similarly, there are critics who acknowledge this work as a mirror of Indian society that is why it is selected for the Man Booker Prize in 2008. In addition to that, it is included in the New York Times Bestseller list. The paper tries to analyze how the subaltern symbolized in the novel by highlighting the age-old fears and fretfulness of the downtrodden mass.