‘The White Tiger’, a truly subversive text by Aravind Adiga, one whose relevance sweeps way beyond the shores of its native India. This is a novel that is destined to set a parameter for the 21st century, a novel that sheds light wherever there is a master-servant culture and that of course, is in every country and in every corner of every country. To break out of the ‘chicken coop’, as Adiga describes modern day slavery, that is the never-ending task for all humanity, and the White Tiger of Bangalore is, in his own marvellously compromised way, right in the vanguard of that task.

What is so amazing about this book is Adiga’s sublime ability to launch into his scathing satire from the very first line, and to maintain it, without hesitation or lapse, to the very last line. Adiga won the Man Booker Prize for this work and there can be no doubt that this was a most worthy winner. Adiga explains in his make-believe letter to the Chinese Premier, Mr Wen Jiabao, that India is a land full of entrepreneurs, but one with no schools, no clean water and no sewage system. It is that juxtaposition between grinding poverty and high flying entrepreneurs that so successfully sums up not just India, but whole swathes of planet Earth as it reels under the ravages of corporate, neo-liberal globalism.

There are two Indias, explains Adiga, one is perpetually in the ‘darkness’, the other is in the ‘light’. But that is true not just of India. Take a walk around many of the world’s major cities; London, New York, Shanghai, Rio, Capetown, Sydney, and if you look beyond the tourist attractions you quickly see the validity of Adiga’s description. Why, way back in the mid nineteenth century Karl Marx and Frederick Engels would take a break from their labours in the British Library and stroll around the back streets of London shaking their heads in despair and mumbling in their beards, ‘two cities, two cities’. Take a stroll today through the back streets of Westminster or Kensington and Chelsea and the same ‘two cities’ still exist. A handful living in the privileged light, hundreds of thousands still living in the socio-economic darkness.

Addressing the Chinese Premier, who we learn is about to make an exploratory trip to India, we encounter Adiga at his satirical best:

‘Now I doubt that you have rickshaw-pullers in China or in any other civilized nation on earth you will have to see one for yourself. Rickshaws are not allowed in the posh parts of Delhi, where foreigners might see them and gape. Insist on going to Old Delhi, or Nizamuddin there you’ll see the road full of them thin, sticklike men, leaning forward from the seat of a bicycle, as they pedal along a carriage bearing a pyramid of middle-class flesh some fat man with his fat wife and all their shopping bags and groceries.’ P27

What makes The White Tiger so poignant is that it moves beyond simply blaming the old colonial authorities for the present plight of the majority of Indians, though of course the British have a great, great deal to answer for. No, Adiga is intent on exploring a post-colonial India where a rich parasitic class lives off the misery and impoverishment of India’s rural and urban destitute masses. India’s ruling class proves every bit as ruthless and heartless as its colonial predecessors. And Adiga moves beyond simply seeking to blame the master class, though that he does with great forcefulness.

What Adiga is attempting to do is to get into the mind-set of those trapped in the ‘chicken coop’, those that are born into the servant class but lack the determination, or rather the consciousness, to break out. Better to peck at each other within the coop than muster up the fire of indignation to break free. Adiga describes with such pitiful clarity how one tier of servants in India will set upon and humiliate a ‘lower’ set. But then this is the very purpose of India’s caste system the ultimate self-regulating form of social control. In the final pages of this magnificent novel Adiga chastises his Indian readers for their passive acceptance of their servant status:

An Indian revolution? No, Sir. It won’t happen. People in this country are still waiting for the war of their freedom to come from somewhere else from the jungles, from the mountains, from China, from Pakistan. That will never happen. Every man must make his own Benaras. The book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian. Crap it out and read. Instead of which, they’re all sitting in front of colour TV’s and watching cricket and shampoo advertisements.’ P304

As for India so too for the rest of the planet. Having broken out of the chicken coop, Adiga’s White Tiger dreams of setting up an English language school for the poor children of Bangalore. A school where you won’t be allowed to corrupt anyone’s head with prayers and stories about God or Gandhi nothing but the facts of life for these kids.’ P319

No one in the Indian ruling class is spared in this searing social indictment of Indian society, not the established political parties of both left and right, not the business class that milks the system for all its worth, and not the police and army of civil servants that are forever on the take through backhanders and open corruption. Is the ‘socialist’ China of Wen Jiabao substantially any different? I rather doubt it, as economic scarcity inevitably breeds class and corruption. And the so called developed countries are little different either, the only difference being their corruption and social division is somewhat disguised by an army of accountants, lawyers and marketing companies.

East or West, North or South, the vast majority of humanity is still facing the task of breaking out of the chicken coop. While I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the old wisdom, those with a slave mentality deserve to be slaves, (It’s un-dialectical and places the blame on the oppressed rather than the oppressor), like most well- worn sayings there is invariably an element of truth to be found in it. Adiga, for all the right reasons, has set about the task of inspiring his fellow countrymen to shake off that slave mentality. In so doing he has created a highly valuable text, not just for his fellow Indians, but for all of humanity. And with an inspiring revolutionary flourish Adiga concludes his novel with the following lines:

‘I’ll never say I made a mistake that night in Delhi when I slit my master’s throat. I’ll say it was all worthwhile to know, just for a day, just for an hour, just for a minute, what it means not to be a servant. P321