Breaking out of or Breaking apart: How ‘The White Tiger’ brings India’s class hierarchy to the fore

- Sudithi Bhattacharyya

DISCLAIMER : NOT REALLY A “SPOILER-FREE” REVIEW.

- Samriddhi

Rousseau, the great eighteenth century philosopher, opens ‘The Social Contract’ with his well known observation — “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are.”

As I was re-watching ‘The White Tiger’ a few days ago, this opener popped right into my head. Adapted from Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Man Booker winning novel of the same name, the film, under Ramin Bahrani’s direction depicts the unfiltered scathing reality of India. 

The 2021 movie stars Adarsh Gourav, Rajkumar Rao, Priyanka Chopra-Jonas, Mahesh Manjrekar and Vijay Maurya in the leading roles. Adarsh plays the role of the title character and the narrator Balram Halwai, a.k.a the “white tiger”. In the film, Balram narrates his life story – his rise from being the chauffeur for Ashok (played by Rao) and Pinky (played by Chopra-Jonas) – an affluent couple who have come back from the U.S – to being a hardworking and sincere entrepreneur in India’s Silicon Valley, Bengaluru. Highlighting several aspects of social reality, this is not your quintessential “rags-to-riches” tale. Balram emerges from the darkness of obscurity to the bright life or commercial success through the serpentine alley of cunning, deceit and corruption in the post Liberalisation India. This work of fiction is as strange and raw as the truth, if not more. 

It is 2010 when the film opens and Balram Halwai, the rising entrepreneur emails the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who had been visiting India back then. He requests Jiabao for a visit to the Silicon Valley as he begins his story. Balram expresses his admiration towards the Chinese people who put up an active resistance against the colonizers and never obliged to exploitation and slavery. With this historical reference, he relates to his earlier life when he too used to be a loyal servant to his masters. 

Born and raised in the underdeveloped village of Laxmangarh, Balram has always been a bright kid. His merit had earned him a scholarship to a school in Delhi. The school inspector called him the “white tiger”, the rarest animal born once in a generation. Balram was supposed to be one of a kind. Yet, his circumstances forced him to be just like every other individual. He belonged to a lower-caste joint family. His grandmother, the matriarch, appropriated all the earnings of his father and his brother. Balram’s father was indebted to the local landlord ‘the Stork’ (played by Manjrekar) which eventually led him to quit school and join his brother to work in the village tea stall. Later, his father was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He passed away due to the lack of treatment.

The episodes in Balram’s life were hardly ever conducive for his progress. His social and economic backgrounds made him believe that he was only meant to serve and accept his condition as it is. In the mail to the Premier he compares the common Indians to roosters in a coop. They watch their friends and families getting massacred yet they never retort. They never seek to escape. Similarly, every servant here is like a rooster stuck in a coop. They are taught to accept their subjugated stance happily and to never question it. 

When a grown up Balram starts serving the Stork’s younger son Ashok and his NRI wife Pinky as their chauffeur, he is subjected to immense disrespect by his so-called “masters”, the Stork and his elder son, the Mongoose (played by Maurya). They abuse him for belonging to a lower caste, for harbouring more knowledge than them in certain matters. The Stork says that in India, servants ought to be assaulted and disciplined for them to respect and revere their “masters”. Masters like them keep their servants loyal by the threat of them and their entire family being murdered if they ever “betray” them. 

“This is how the rooster coop works”, says Balram. This is how countless Indians get trapped in the system. Balram wants to be an exception.

It is easy for the rich to get away with anything especially in post Liberalisation India where money matters the most. Pinky and Ashok decide to go to Delhi where they would bribe the politicians to avoid paying taxes. Balram drives them to the Capital. Although both of them treat him respectfully unlike the Stork and the Mongoose, that is simply the bare minimum. In their eyes, he is just another servant who is disposable. That intent becomes evident when an inebriated Pinky hits a kid with the car at midnight. The only witnesses to the accident are her husband and Balram. Like a loyal servant it is his duty to save his master. And he does so, by advising them to drive away.

However, Balram’s unquestioned allegiance and duty are unrecognized by his “family”-like masters. Unjustly, he is made to confess a crime he did not commit. The case never reaches the Court for no other witness reports it. Balram does not have to go behind the bars. But this chapter becomes his eye opener. 

He no longer remains the docile slave he once was. He begins to cheat his master in more than one way. As now he has seen the true colours of his masters, he no longer feels guilty. Rather, the more he cheats, the more he is filled with seething rage – because it is nothing compared to the money they cheat out of the common Indian, the poor Indian by evading taxes. He no longer considers them as his “masters” and starts seeing them as his employers who can get rid of him any time they want. He learns the rules of the game from his masters, adopts them and defeats them in their own game.

In the zoo, Balram comes across the rarest animal, the white tiger. Upon seeing it, he recalls the great poet Iqbal’s words – 

“The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave.”

What happens next proves that he is indeed one of a kind. The young Balram, who lost his opportunity of studying in Delhi, finds a way out of his life of servitude from Delhi. His journey from a helpless unassertive boy to a responsible and confident entrepreneur begins here.

Although the white tiger breaks free, the other roosters cannot. Balram Halwai is an exception, not the ultimate. The glorification of the unchallenged obedience of the working class is a stumbling block in their path to emancipation. Many normalize the inhumane treatment and disrespect they are subjected to. After all, for them, “What is a servant without a master?” They are hammered to believe that they have no other choice than to give in to the wants of their lords.

The mutual respect between the employer and the employee is often shattered in instances like these. Here’s where Balram’s business of taxi service stands out at the end of the film. He introduces a new model of entrepreneurship where the employer and the employee are bound by a contract which is transparent. He takes responsibility for the mishaps and faults of his men.

“The White Tiger” shows how one man rose up from the nadir and how his hands got muddy and bloody in the process. It also shows how majority of men and women cannot do the same. A system which does not allow equality and basic freedom is a system which one either breaks out of or breaks up. Balram did not shatter the system. He learnt how to survive out of it and play with it. His utmost was to gain freedom and he did not hesitate to attain it through dubious means. As the dividing line between right and wrong becomes blur in post Liberalisation India, Balram does not feel any prick of conscience to kill his employer and move out of harm’s way. The film does not present him as an example of success to the downtrodden. It just shows how he, one of the countless people from the lower strata of the caste hierarchy in India could twist the rules of the system in his favour.

“The White Tiger” is the tale of two Indias – “an India of light and an India of darkness.” Exploring the social hierarchy, relationship between the haves and the have-nots, the film mirrors the real India. The words of Rousseau that I quoted earlier can be discarded in the case of Balram, but not quite for others. Yet, the people who are in “chains” are capable of liberating themselves. As Karl Marx’s visualised, they are capable of being creative, self-determined, the master of their environment, of the universe, and of themselves by the means of spontaneous and harmonious cooperation among themselves.