The White Tiger

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger was published in 2008. Adiga’s first novel, The White Tiger won the Man Booker Prize and was adapted into a movie in 2021. Born in Chennai, India, Adiga has lived in India and Australia, and attended Columbia University in New York and Oxford University in England. A coming-of-age story told through a first-person narrator and letters addressed to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, The White Tiger examines the conflict between tradition and innovation in India through the rise of Munna Balram Halwai, the White Tiger, from his local village to former Bangalore (now Bengaluru) where he runs a successful taxi service. Before publishing The White Tiger, Adiga worked as a journalist for The Financial Times, and examines the effects of economic expansion in the novel. The author of four other novels, Adiga’s most recent Amnesty was shortlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Award.

This guide is based on the 2008 edition published by Free Press.

Content Warning: The White Tiger includes racially charged language and sentiments, a death by tuberculosis, and murder (including the accidental murder of a child).

Plot Summary

The White Tiger examines how India’s emerging economy and rapidly expanding class of entrepreneurs clash with its traditional, closely regulated caste system. Depicting the corruption of both modern and traditional India, the novel takes the form of a letter to Premier Wen Jiabao, who governed China in the early 21st century. Munna Balram Halwai, the White Tiger, seeks to prepare the Chinese leader for his upcoming trip to India, offering advice as an Indian entrepreneur, one who became successful after murdering his employer Mr. Ashok and fleeing to Bangalore. Over the course of seven nights and two mornings, Balram traces his journey to success from his beginnings in Laxmangarh, a village comprising what he calls the “Darkness”—largely rural areas connected by the polluted River Ganga (Ganges). Balram’s letter culminates in Bangalore, part of the “Light” areas touched by the ocean, as he builds a taxi service.

On the first night (of seven), Balram confesses to murdering his employer Ashok, incorporating details from his own wanted poster to flesh out his time in Laxmangarh. He remembers the death of his mother, her funeral pyre and burial in the black mud of the River Ganga. He discusses his own caste, his predetermined role to make and sell sweets. Balram instead tastes bitterness in Laxmangarh, a village controlled by four landlords who have carved up the land and resources, taking a cut of the village’s profits. Likened to four animals—the Stork, the Buffalo, the Raven, and the Wild Boar—these landlords have a complicated relationship with the Great Socialist, an unnamed politician who allegedly advocates for the poor, but proves corrupt.

Balram’s father, Vikram, fights to keep Balram in school, while the rest of the family led by his grandmother Kusum advocate for him to work. Vikram is a rickshaw puller (which goes against his caste as a sweet-maker), sacrificing his health to transport wealthier people around the village. Frightened of lizards, Balram almost drops out of school to avoid a lizard in his classroom. His father kills the lizard, insistent that his son will become educated. An inspector visits the school and notes Balram’s intelligence, comparing him to a white tiger.

Interspersed throughout these older memories, Balram recalls his former employer Ashok and Ashok’s ex-wife Pinky Madam. The couple criticizes Balram’s education and bemoans that people like him vote. Balram couldn’t complete his education, as Ashok’s father, the Stork, made his family pay back a loan. After he loses his job at a tea shop and his father dies, Balram joins his brother in Dhanbad, and they convince their grandmother Kusum to pay for Balram’s driving lessons. Finding a job as a driver proves nearly impossible, until Balram recognizes the Stork’s house in Dhanbad, and convinces the Stork to hire him. Once employed by the Stork, Balram returns to Laxmangarh, driving Ashok and Pinky Madam. He visits his family but leaves in anger because Kusum pushes him to marry. Although Ram Persad, another driver, outranks Balram, Balram discovers that Ram is a Muslim man. Exhibiting newfound ruthlessness, Balram engineers Ram’s dismissal.

Disillusioned by the bribes necessary for his father’s business, Ashok romanticizes life in the Darkness. One night, a drunk Pinky Madam takes the wheel and accidentally kills a child in the street. Ashok and Pinky Madam’s families force Balram to sign a false confession for the murder (for potential future use), which Kusum supports. Guilt-ridden, Pinky Madam leaves Ashok; Balram feels wounded by Kusum’s support of the confession, and her letters demanding money and his marriage (as she wants his wife’s dowry).

Ashok and his brother Mukesh Sir, the Mongoose, continue to bribe officials, hoping to solve an unnamed tax problem. Although the Great Socialist seems momentarily weakened, when Ashok and Balram move to Delhi, he advances in the elections, buoyed by supporters from the Darkness.

Ashok reunites with a former lover as his divorce proceeds, but a minister’s assistant convinces him to sleep with a blonde sex worker; Balram attempts to follow suit, stealing money to pay for the sex worker’s services. However, Balram can only afford a sex worker with dyed hair, and causes a scene. Kusum eventually sends Dharam, a young relative, to live with Balram. At the zoo, Balram and Dharam see a white tiger, and Balram faints at the sight of it “disappearing.”

At the peak of his anger, Balram kills Ashok, dumping his body on the side of the road and stealing a bribe intended for another minister. He escapes to Bangalore with Dharam, buys a fleet of cars, and bribes the police to shut down a taxi service so he can win a contract. In an echo of Pinky Madam’s drunken accident, one of Balram’s drivers, Asif, kills a young man, for which Balram takes responsibility. Having bribed the police, Balram escapes punishment, and the victim’s brother’s demand for justice is denied. However, Balram pays the victim’s parents and offers the victim’s brother a job.

Balram’s letter ends with his amoral ideas about success, which seem to have rubbed off on Dharam. He expresses no remorse for Ashok’s murder.