Name:
Budhiditya Shankar Das
Course:
M.A (English)Topic: Bringing India of "Darkness" into "Light: a socio-political study of Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger
Semester:
04
Roll
No. : 06
Paper
No.: 13
Paper
Name: The New Literature
Submitted
to: Dr. Dilip Barad,
Smt.
S.B.Gardi
Department
of English,
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Bringing India of “Darkness” into “Light”: a socio-political study of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
This study has investigated how Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker
Prize winner debut novel The White Tiger (2008) has protested against
the popular image of a shiny India. The politicians have misled the people of
India by creating a wrong logic of progress and improvement. Aravind
Adiga’s The White Tiger is a socio-political critic of modern India
because it contributing and interpreting the life and culture of the people of
rural and urban India by interpreting some metaphors.
In his Book the White Tiger Adiga talks about the
discrimination between rich and poor. He also talked about that how rich people
are exploiting the poor’s from centuries and how they are neglected by the
power position. But in todays time the centre of focus of the new writers,
journalists are raising this issue and bring justice to them.
There are many books and films which are coming out with the
new idea of “Shining India”, and carried the life of underclass people who are
neglected by the power position. In this Aravind Adiga also took a bold step by
narrating the stories of the unprivileged people who live in the “Darkness of
the society”. The central theme of the novel is to diagnose the Indian Society
which has many burning issues like Illiteracy, Poverty, Unemployment, Caste
discrimination, Corruption and most important population. The result of
India’s freedom has been expended by the insignificant minority and the other
of the population has been harshly changed. (Choudhary)
The story of The White Tiger was the life and
struggle of Balram Halwai, a little guy, in his quest for economic, social
and cultural freedom. It was a difficult struggle as he had been “confined
behind bars of class, caste, illiteracy, zamindar system and
poverty”. Here Balram referred to his village as ‘darkness’, full of
“sadness, Poverty and illiteracy”. Here Balram also tried to uncover the
struggle of the working class who are working under overpowering poverty.
Here we can see many burning issues of India for example:
1) Socio-Political Conditions of Rural India
2) Socio-Political Conditions of Urban India
3) The Evils of Caste System
4) Dowry System
5) Illiteracy
Metaphor ‘dark’ several time to show the rough side
of the rich people. In this novel “Darkness” is used as a metaphor
particularly for “Corruption”.
Finally Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger was
not only talking about the ‘dark’ living conditions of the miserable poor, but
also representing that how the rich had been manipulating the country for their
own self-centered end. The novel had played a major role in promoting the
awareness of the people about the ‘darker' aspects of both the poor and the
rich representing their deep defeats. (Choudhary)
Much of the critical and popular controversy surrounding the
2009 film Slumdog Millionaire is derived from misconceptions over the
representational possibilities of popular film, as well as the great national
background of film criticism. It is thrilled when it meets the Mumbai slum,
this essay debates that Slumdog explores the role of informal knowledge in the
navigation of changing urban backgrounds. In this way, it is not despite, but
through, the film's rejection of realist common conventions that it offers its
interpretation of the city. Police Constable in Slumdog Millionaire revolution
of excitement, commentary and controversy surrounding the film Slumdog
Millionaire (2009) in India and elsewhere calls for a careful analysis of the
possibilities and drawbacks of international cultural production. Film critics
and prominent individuals like have criticized the film, if not dismissed it
outright, for its repeating of old stereotypes of urban Indian squalor and
backwardness. Like most representations of urban poverty, films such as this
have the potential to create a sense of a troubled place "out there",
disconnected from the comforting world of the viewer. Slumdog contains elements
to support this kind of critique, but along with them exists another set of
images, plot devices, filmic elements and characterizations that are not so
easily plotted onto western fantasies of India. This is not to say the film is
not an imaginary - but rather, that within imaginary, there can be elements of
truth. Slumdog and The White Tiger both offers a theory of urban
navigation which traces leading plots about the all- surrounding power
of globalization, and which responds to those narratives by asserting the
importance of an alternative monarchy of knowledge outside of the formal domains
of the state. Slumdog Millionaire presents of Jamal Malik from
boyhood to adolescence, from Mumbai's slums, India, and back to works at a call
centre seat as a participant on "Who Wants To Be a
Millionaire?", a game show in which he is so successful in answering the
questions that he is suspect of cheating, and is ultimately arrested. With the
same manner in The White Tiger it shows that how Balram is also cheating his
master in quest or thirst of becoming master himself, he wants to become master
himself and wants to have lots of money because according to him he will get
respect in society if he will have power and money with him. On the one hand,
Jamal's journey through Mumbai's underbelly is marked by come across
with abusive teachers, anti-Muslim demonstrators, child beggar gangs,
construction mafias and brutal police officers, and in The White
Tiger is a socio-political critic of modern India because it contributing
and interpreting the life and culture of the people of rural and urban India. Here
we can say that the two narratives come together through the primary conceit of
flash- back: as Jamal is interrogated by the constable who arrested him, he
remembers experiences in his past which led him to the correct answers, and in
The white tiger we can see that how Balram is also recollecting his memories
that how he spent his childhood in village and why he came to city to earn some
money. In the scene when Jamal and Salim reunite as adults, for example, a very
different vision of urban reconfiguration appears, and in the white tiger we
can see that how Balram and his cousin came to city just to earn some money and
after this they both want to become a master and don’t want to go back in their
village because they don’t want to leave this urban life or we can say that
city life. Here, in Slumdog Millionaire the two brothers stand in the essential
of a half-built luxury apartment building high above the city but in The White
Tiger we can see that the two cousin brothers they both are in the quest or in
need of earning money and become masters because they want to live their life
as a master itself. (Choudhary)
In the back- ground is not the older city, but the new urban.
In the movie Slumdog Millionaire observations of Salim and Jamal moving
quickly from a small slum to a nearby sea of glittering new apartment
buildings, then Salim turns to Jamal and says, "That used to be our
slum. Can you believe that? By introducing Salim, backed by Javed, as a
paradigmatic entrepreneur within Mumbai's rise to global status but more importantly
identifies a new kind of subject: the urban navigator, the individual who works
their way through the underbelly of the transforming city, seeking out a unique
path, while activating the opportunities and the limitations this new
environment offers. In The White Tiger also we can see that Balram and his
cousin brother they both also chooses wrong path be become successful in his
life, Balram murdered his master and looted all the money which Mr. Ashok wants
to give as a bribe to the politicians. In his Book the White Tiger Adiga
talks about the discrimination between rich and poor. He also talked about that
how rich people are exploiting the poor’s from centuries and how they are
neglected by the power position, and in Slumdog also we can see that how people
who are in power position exploiting the poor and ruled over them. In movie
Slumdog we can also see that there is a religious discrimination also between
Hindu and Muslim community. The people of Hindu community tried to kill Muslim
community people from there also we can say that these are the darker sides of
India. (Choudhary)
Works cited-
Choudhary, Divya. Blog. 17 03 2017. 02 04 2018
<http://divyachoudhary19.blogspot.in/2017/03/bringing-india-of-darkness-into-light.html>.
No comments:
Post a Comment