The Darkside of India: The Sociological Issuance in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower

 

B. Mariappan ¹, Dr. M. Kavitha ²

 

¹ Ph. D Research Scholar in English, Park’s College, Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu, India

² Ph. D Research Supervisor, Park’s College, Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu, India

 

1. INTRODUCTION

The contemporary Indian novelist Aravind Adiga draws attention on the social problems. In 1974, Aravind Adiga was born in Mangalore, and when he was a teenager, he moved to Australia. At Oxford University and Columbia University in the United States, he studied English literature. He was committed to his academics and showed teachers’ respect. The White Tiger (2008), Between the Assassinations (2008), Last Man in Tower (2011), Selection Day (2016), and Amnesty (2020) are only a few of Adiga's novels. Adiga (2008)

Aravind Adiga’s debut book, The White Tiger, won the Booker Prize. The story examines the                            differences between India’s rises to become a modern, international economy. The protagonist, Balram Halwai, hails from a desolate rural region. Laxmangrah is where Balram Halwai is born which is located in Bihar. Bihar which is focuses as especially the Laxmangrah which is exaggerates as the Darkness, a rural area where Balram lived in this place which he discusses his life in a letter to the Chinese leader, Wen Jiabao. The seven nights were spent writing the letter. Balram’s self- described successful businessman, writes this letter to explain how, as the son of a rickshaw puller, he was able to escape servitude and rise to success. Adiga (2011)

The third book by Aravind Adiga, The Last Man in Tower, was released in 2011, a retired school teacher named Yogesh A. Murthy, struggles for acquiring a real estate property. The protagonist is jokingly referred to Masterji. A well-known developer proposes to purchase the entire housing complex. With the exception of Masterji, all the inmates concur. For the builder and the other occupants, this is problematic. Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga offers deep insight into human sensibility. In these two novels Adiga highlighted the social issues such as globalization, corruption, caste system and poverty as such social evils.

 

2. ‘Theme of Poverty’ in Adiga’s The White Tiger

1)    Balram Halwai became a child laborer to serve his family to make both ends meet.

2)    The poor are not properly cared for in Balram's own community, which is devoid of any fundamental rights, and elections there are openly rigged using hush money and corruption.

3)    The poor are oppressed by the immoral landowner autocrats. Balram develops eavesdropping skills, which make him a simple driver and a devoted employee of his master.

4)    Landlords oppressed the lower classes of people in the pretext of caste, and they made them suffer.

 

Through the Landlords character, Adiga vividly depicts "Castecism" in this novel.

 All these issues are happened to Balram Halwai in Laxmangarh village which is located in Bihar. Bihar which is one of the states in India whereas Adiga highlights the theme of ‘Poverty’.

Adiga draws attention to rural poverty and the state of India’s health and educational systems early on in the book. The suffering of the underclass and subaltern is sustained by great poverty, which casts a shadow over both rural and urban civilizations. The underclass and subaltern are outcasts from society, they are often denied their rights, made to endure hardships, and made to keep quiet. Chandra and Samy (2010)

 

3. Themes of the novels

Most of the modern writers’ deal with question of alienation, rootlessness, boredom, disillusionment, and melancholy caused by conflicts. Aravind Adiga’s concept is “Cobweb of human struggle” is a well-known concept on which his novels have been written. His     selection of them and style can be able to maintain the ‘desired classes in projection of themes, portrayal of characters, and experimentation of style and presentation of the contemporary world.

The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga both feature the sociological issues concerning poverty, corruption, political exploitation, bribery, degeneration of values. These two novels reveal the real picture of contemporary Indian society. Dineen (2011)

Adiga’s two novels, The White Tiger, and Last Man in Tower, both focus on poverty as the primary social issue. The main character of the book The White Tiger, Balram Halwai, uses his story to highlight poverty. Last Man in Tower Adiga depicts poverty, the social problem through the life of the people in slums and condition of people in construction work cities of builders in Bombay.

 

4. Balram Halwai: Ultimate Poverty and Suffering

Balram begins the book by talking about his time living in Laxmangarh. He lived with his brother, grandmother, parents, and siblings. Halwai is forced to give up his studies because he has to pay for the dowry of his cousin's sister. He works as a servant in a tea shop at first. He learns about the Indian economy from the conversations that customers have in this tea store. He decides to become a driver so that he can make more money. Gupta (2018)

He was forced to work harder here by society in order to support his family and live his life. The study reveals that Adiga makes it clear that middle-class and lower-class people compete with high-class people for peaceful coexistence by focusing on their financial situation.

Vikram Halwai, the father of Balram Halwai, a rickshaw puller conveys,

‘My whole life, I have been treated like a donkey. All I want is that one son of mine -at least one – should live like a man. (TWT 30)

His father’s statement demonstrates his wish for his kid to escape poverty and to live like a man rather than a slave. In order to run his family, he worked hard to earn his living. He wanted to satisfy his wish through his son. He wanted his son to lead a good life. Nivetha (2017)

In Laxmangarh, Gaya there is so many jobless youths including Balram and his brother Kishan. So, they went in big groups to Delhi, Calcutta and Dhanbad in search for a job. Their travel is described as difficult ones. When the buses arrived, they started loading the interior and climbed the roofs to travel to Gaya, while the rest travelled to Delhi and other locations to work. This shows the pathetic conditions of villagers to make both ends meet.

 

5. Lamentable Public Health System

In Laxmangarh, protagonist’s village, the condition of hospital in the village is very pathetic. There is no doctor on staff, and doctors don’t frequently go to hospitals. The portrayal of medical services as a target of political parody and societal shame is prevalent. Sebestian (2009)

Vikram Halwai, father of Balram Halwai, a rickshaw puller died of tuberculosis without treatment in a hospital. Adiga highlights poverty, the social problem in his novels. He highlights the problems of the dark side of the society in the modern era. In the modern world of technology and inventions, the poor people are suffering by poverty. It is very clear from the novel that there are lots of poor people in India struggling a lot to earn their living. The White tiger shows the extreme poverty in India.

 

6. Trapped in Rooster Coop

    Balram quickly considered the justifications for his own family’s inability to object. He thought that the Rooster Coop housed the slave class of India. Forced labour is the outcome.  The downtrodden class will feel happy to demonstrate their slavish allegiance to their rulers in place of protesting. Their slavish attachment to their proprietors is what prevents the downtrodden from escaping their oppressive circumstances.

“The greatest thing to come out of this country in ten thousand years of its history is the Rooster Coop” (173)

 

7. Last Man in Tower

Aravind Adiga depicts poverty, the social problem in his novel Last Man in Tower, through the life of people in slums and the condition of the people on the construction work cities of builders in Bombay.

‘A small village had sprung up around the construction work: migrants from North India, the workers had re-created the old home’. (LMT 61)

The extreme poverty has forced the workers of North India to work on a construction side in Bombay. They have to work in extreme hot condition to earn their living. Dharmen Shah the builders bring workers from North India to work on his construction site.

The people live in slums in Bombay are pathetic. The slum is described as: a long black water, on whose banks a row of blue tarpaulin tents had risen. (LMT 142)

The cleaning lady of vishram co-operative housing society is living in the slum by the nullah. They earn their living by cleaning works or other works. They are working hard to earn their living. Adiga brings to light the truths of a city in transition. He draws attention to the detrimental effects of commuter trains being packed everyday with untold millions of people. The tale relentlessly exposes the tragedies and ugly realities of the re-development sector in the powerful city.

The second renaissance of the new generation, is taking place in this century, the wealthy must alter their perspective towards the masses or risk extinction.

This is a time when people only worry about getting money; they don't care about the tracks or imprints they leave in the process. Even the impoverished want to get rich, therefore they will kill someone to do it.

‘Pathetic life of Mumbai People’ which depicts in Adiga’s Last Man in Tower

1)     Adiga makes it abundantly evident that people in Bombay have a desperate need for money in order to fulfill their needs and aspirations, and that they will end relationships of their ambitions on order to obtain that money. Adiga also shows that a man like Dharmen Shah can easily influence people for money’s sake.

2)     Adiga has showed clearly that Mumbai people who crave money for fulfillment of their dreams and desires can easily be affected by Dharmen Shah, and that they will leave their dreams and human relationships for the sake of money.

3)     Adiga looks into the harsh and brutal methods used by the developers to seize the land. They come smiling and gently trying to convince the landowners. But as stated in "behind the smiles were lies and knives."(LMT-168) This is how the Mumbai real estate industry operates every day. The price of land in Mumbai is higher than the price of gold. The grim realities of the agitated city are the focus of Last Man in Tower.

4)     The rural and urban environments of India are expected to change. It is possible to claim that the same characteristics that define the fashion of the new generation and lead to the change in the psyche are the pervasive corruption, decline of the caste system, rise of materialism, advancement of technology, modernization, social mobility, law and legislator, cinema, sense of fierce competition, disloyalty, change in the norms of social institutions, alienation, extent of urbanization, globalization and such.

Even if globalization is seen as a stepping stone for developing third- world nations like India, it has its negative edges because it encourages and strengthens local neo-colonialist micro-agents like Dharmen Shah in Last Man in Tower. In the fiction Last Man in the Tower, the urban middle-class residents of Vishram Tower A are all astonished by a great offer from a builder who wants to buy their dilapidated spectacular apartment to make place for his magnum opus, an ultra-modern skyscraper. It is a social fiction that clumsily securitizes morality-related concerns on both the social and personal levels.

The Last Man in Tower in visharam society to reject Dharmen Shah’s proposal was Mr. Yogesh Murthy, the novel’s protagonist also known as Masterji. His status as a person continues to decline in society as a result of his refusal to change his old beliefs and practices in the face of a modern, opulent lifestyle. He loses the respect of his neighbors because his decision does not align with theirs, who being self-centered picked money.

The hedonistic civilization in these novel values human greed more than it does humanity. In this novel the desire for a luxurious lifestyle serves as the basis for all evil. When Masterji threatened the aspirations of Shah and the Vishram society residents for success, they went as far as to murder him. More important than human values and even more important than life are material demands.

It is a postcolonial novel that dramatizes the inevitable exploitation and marginalization of the colonized by the colonizer under neocolonialism. In the novel the problems that economic liberalization and globalization cause between the individual and the group are examined in Last Man in Tower.

 

8. Justification of the title ‘The Darkside of India: The Sociological Issuance’

Hence, the novels The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower emphasis socio-economic and subaltern concerns. ‘Humanity and Patience’ are lacking in today's society. These two novels show humanity is on the verge of annihilation. The modern age has failed to demonstrate mutual affection and understanding for their fellow humans and has refused to lend a helping hand to those in need. Casteism, communalism, regionalism, economic and social bias are only a few of the poisons that impede progress. Every Indian must be strong and determined to tackle the challenges.

 

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS

None. 

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

None.

 

REFERENCES

Adiga, A. (2008). The White Tiger. New Delhi : Harper Collins Publishers India.   

Adiga, A. (2011). Last Man in Tower. Noida : Harper Collins Publishers.  

Chandra, J., and Samy, K. S. A. (2010). Classical to Contemporary Literary Theory a demystified Approach. Chennai : Atlantic publishers.  

Dineen, R. (2011). “Holding Out”. Rev. Of Last Man in Tower. The Times Literary Supplement.

Gupta, A. (2018). A Critical Inquisition of the Novels of Aravind Adiga. Nagpur : Dattsons.  

Nivetha, D. (2017). Sociological Aspects in Aravind Adiga’s the White Tiger and Last Man in Tower. UGC Approved List of Journals Serial Number 49042, 17(9).  

Sebestian, J. A. (2009). “Poor-Rich Divide in Aravind Adiga’s “The White Tiger”. Journal of the Alternative Perspective of the Social Sciences, 1(2), 229-246.