James Watts

12/18/2020
LITR 580
Dr. Nataša Kovačević Watts 1

On the Inside Looking Out: The Use of The Internal Outsider in Aravind Adiga’s

The White Tiger

The contemporary international novel is no stranger to its share of criticism. It has

recently been accused of being intentionally mundane, even dull, in order to resonate with the

generally shared experiences of western audiences in the hopes of finding more of a foothold in a

multinational literary marketplace. But what is lost in this wave of criticism is the tend of

international authors making their own critiques, not of the validity of their critics (as one might

expect) but that of the shortcoming of the nations and cultures they hail from and thus are

inescapably tied to their work. Regardless of their nation of origin, these authors seem to

consistently use their protagonists as literary devices that both address cultural norms that the

author (and possibly their targeted Western audiences) may find questionable, if not at least

worthy of contestation. For a prime example of this device, we can look towards Aravind

Adiga’s novel, The White Tiger.

“Balram Halwai” exists within the margins of his settings, both physically and socially.

Balram shows either a fascination or admiration of the Western world (especially when it comes

to concept of blonde women) and welcoming the growing influence of Western culture in his

native country with open arms. More importantly, Balram acts as a disenfranchised minority

within his society. While he is completely initiated within his culture, he is not a not fully

venerated member of it. This is by design as his otherness is a means to explore the culture that

the author wishes to critique. We can coin this particular archetype as "the internal outsider"; one

that is a part of the in-group of any given setting, yet due to some factor outside their control (be
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it economic, cultural, ethnic, or gender, etc.) the character is initially set to be within a

disenfranchised position.

We can theorize that any given author that uses this very tenuous status for their

characters does so as a means of allowing them to critique their respective cultures with an air of

infallibility. It is reasonable to assume that if such criticism came from outside of any given

ethnic or social group, the objections could be dismissed as either a cultural misunderstanding or

outright derogatory remarks. When criticism such as this is made by a member of the in-group it

is not nearly as easy to hand wave them away as something that may have been lost in

translation. In short, making the statement that “these are the things that are wrong with us”

carries much more weight than hearing someone else state “do you know what your problem is?”

The basis of this sentiment can be found in classical sociological studies as a form of In-

group vs. out-group bias. In a Yale University study, Sumiko Iwao summarized the reasoning

behind this as “that an in-group member is more important to a person than an out-group

member, because of the former's important role in establishing social reality for an individual”

(Iwao, p.410). That is to say that the opinions of those deemed to be within one’s own social

group will always seem to carry more of an impact than those outside of the group as fellow

insiders, in theory, can potentially influence the standing of individuals within said group much

more readily than any outsider could. In a literary sense, by using the internal outsider as a

device, the author imbues their criticism with much more of a threat to the social order of which

they are objecting. The character may be a marginalized voice in the community but that voice is

still coming from within that community, and thus cannot completely be ignored.
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As for the reception of criticism from what could be considered outside sources, a 2005

study by Robbie Sutton, Tracey Elder, and Karen Douglas “found that criticisms elicited greater

sensitivity, lower agreement, and harsher speaker evaluations when they ostensibly came from an

outgroup as opposed to an ingroup speaker” (Sutton et al., p. 564). They go on to say that while

“criticisms of a group may be accurate and helpful regardless of their source […] people use cues

such as the group membership of the speaker in deciding whether to accept or reject his or her

comments“ (Sutton et al., p. 564). With this in mind, we can see how the use of the internal

outsider circumvents any possible objections. While any offended member of the Indian literati

may be tempting to point out that Aravind Adiga moved to Australia with his family during his

teenage years and thus might no longer truly be in touch with the struggles of India’s lower

classes, the same criticism cannot be said of Balram Halwai as we see him drive dutifully

through the streets of New Delhi and wash is elderly master’s feet.

But now that we have a better understanding of just how the internal outsider functions as

a device and what authors may wish to accomplish by using it, it is important to see just how this

device is applied within the scope of contemporary world literature. By revisiting some prior

analysis of The White Tiger and Snow respectively, we can highlight just how much impact the

internal outsider has on the overall narrative if any.

Much has been made of the animal imagery and symbolism with Aravind Adiga's novel,

The White Tiger. From the various animal names of the supporting characters to the title of the

book itself, one can not go a few pages without seeing some sort of reference to one animal or

another as well as the implied meaning therein. In her essay, Fables of the Tiger Economy:

Species and subalternity in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Sundhya Walther directly
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addresses the subtext of these zoomorphic analogies and applies them to the greater socio-

economic and cultural critiques found within the novel. Walther begins her claims with the very

bold statement that despite his very humble origins and a life of subservience, Balram is not part

of the subaltern of India at all. While he may have been at one point, by the end of the novel

Balram had become “an animal figure, an embodiment of the predatory power of contemporary

Indian and global capitalism” (Walther, p.1).

It is hard to argue with this initial notion as the Balram we see at the closing of the novel

is a completely different animal than we see during the previous parts of the text. At this point,

he has even gone as far as to steal hundreds of thousands of rupees, change his name, and of

course, murder his master and leave to an entirely different city to accomplish his change in

fortune. On the final ‘day’ of the novel, Balram goes on in great detail on how he has escaped his

fate as a servant and has truly become a White Tiger; a predator in the rapidly growing jungle of

the modern Indian economy. He has even gone as far as to change his name to “Ashok Sharma”,

sharing the first name of his victim in a final predatory act of consuming and being empowered

by his prey. Balram even foreshadows this transformation earlier in the novel, stating “These

days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And only two

destinies: eat—or get eaten up” (Adiga, Kindle Locations 755-756).

Any feelings of severance or loyalty to his former masters have long since died and

Balram now revels in how separated he is from the culture that he previously felt shackled to. In

his own words, Balram states:

If you were sitting here with me, under this big chandelier, I would show you all
the secrets of my business.
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You could stare at the screen of my silver Macintosh laptop and see photos of my
SUVs, my drivers, my garages, my mechanics, and my paid-off policemen. All of
them belong to me—Munna, whose destiny was to be a sweet-maker! (Adiga,
Kindle Locations 3505-3508).

It is as if Adiga has designed Balram to revel in his newfound Tiger nature, knowingly rejecting

the cultural norms of his people and proving that by doing so he can transcend the limitations

that culture set upon him at birth.

References to India’s supposedly outdated caste system such as these are as abundant as

the animal references throughout the text. And despite Balram's earlier clam of there only being

to castes in modern India, we see the effects of his servant level caste throughout the novel. This

discrimination comes not only from Balram's masters but also from those that would also be his

peers. We see this when Balram is spending time with the fellow drivers as he waits for his

masters as they shop. When one of the older drivers ask Balram directly what caste does he hail

from, and Balram replies, he is met with a tort, “ "Sweet-makers," the old driver said, shaking his

head. "That's what you people do. You make sweets. How can you learn to drive?" […]"That's

like getting coals to make ice for you” (Adiga, Kindle Locations 654-655).

This interaction shows just how engrained this system of belief is within modern Indian

society and yet it is this very notion that Adiga is using Balram to lash out against. At the end of

the novel, Balram (now fully actualized in his White Tiger persona) state both that his drivers

will either note the example of his actions and advance or not and stay as they are, (Adiga,

Kindle Locations 3511-3512) and that one he opens up his school, he will have generations of

White Tigers like himself unleashed on the streets of Bangalore (Adiga, Kindle Location 3731).

When we examine these sentiments, we can how one could look at Balram as a symbol of
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retribution for the Indian Subaltern. Instead of having some outsider reform the system in the

role of the “Great White Savior”, Adiga has his internal outsider (a lowly servant turned criminal

turned innovative entrepreneur) as a template of how to disturb the social system of his

homeland.

Lena Khor brings ups this idea of Balram being a sort of subaltern heroic template in her

essay, Can the Subaltern Right Wrongs?: Human Rights and Development in Aravind Adiga's

"The White Tiger". In her essay, Khor poses the question of Balram’s morality (or lack thereof)

in the face of his circumstances. The crux of Khor’s argument is as followed:

“I contend although killing and stealing are unethical actions, which the moral
assumptions undergirding the principles of human rights would abhor, Halwai 's
thoughts and actions may not be as ethically reprehensible if viewed from the
perspective of the poor who have long-suffered the wrong of underdevelopment
and class inequality. (Khor, p.42)

This then becomes another instance where the use of the internal outsider lends itself as a tool of

critique. If we read Balram not as an opportunistic criminal but as a sort of subaltern antihero,

then Adiga’s portrayal of Balram becomes a sort of folk tale for the underprivileged of his home

culture to aspire to become.

Throughout the novel, Adiga (through Balram) repeatedly uses the metaphor of the

Rooster Coop to help explain the mentality of the subaltern within modern Indian culture. While

this is yet another example of Adiga’s zoomorphic theme that we have come to expect

throughout the novel, it also serves to illustrate the collective attitudes of the lower classes within

the country and why they seem resigned to fulfill a role of unquestioned servitude. Adiga most

succinctly summarizes this metaphor with:

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Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens
there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed
tightly into wire-mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each
other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage
giving off a horrible stench—the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the
wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh
and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of
dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the
organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they're next. Yet they do
not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.
The very same thing is done with human beings in this country. (Adiga, Kindle
Locations 1991-1997).

Khor also recognizes the cultural impact that Adiga seems to be objecting to with his chicken

coop metaphor by stating that:

Halwai clearly recognizes not just economic underdevelopment as a reason why

poor Indians are poor. He also identifies the psychological and emotional
underdevelopment of poor Indians. These other aspects of underdevelopment
extend to other arenas of Indian society where poor Indians are excluded from
access to real political power, civil society organizing, and even legal justice.
(Khor, p. 47)

This is where the idea of the internal outsider becomes a powerful narrative tool. To

barrow Adiga’s metaphor, it would not be jarring enough for another animal, say a monkey, from

outside of the coop to come in and point out all these observations to the roosters waiting to be

slaughtered. The roosters have no idea who this monkey is and what he might have to gain by

disrupting their home. Who is the monkey to judge how those roosters live, anyway? They are

safe and fed inside the coop, for the most part. And sure, they will eventually end up on the

chopping block but that is just the way things are. Until then, if they behave, they will not want

for anything. But when one of their own jumps down from his cages and declares “I do not want
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this for me! There is no reason for things to be this way! And you shouldn’t what this for you,

either!” the disruption is far harder to ignore.

But this brings up the question of Balram’s true motivations (and, by proxy, Adiga’s). In

Roghayeh Farsi essay, Narrative mapping and motivation in Adiga’s The White Tiger, Farsi uses

Self Determination Theory as a lens to get a better understanding of Balram and his sudden shift

from a loyal servant to an ambitious fugitive in such a relatively short amount of time. To briefly

summarize, Self Determination Theory (or SDT) suggests that people are motivated to grow and

change by three innate and universal psychological needs: A need to gain mastery of tasks and

learn different skills (Competence), a need to experience a sense of belonging and attachment to

others (Connection) and a need to feel in control of their behaviors and goals (Autonomy).

(Farsi, p. 774)

When we apply this theory to Balram as a servant, we quickly see that his like has much

to be desired concerning these three innate and universal needs. The most demanding skill he is

expected to master is the operation and basic maintenance of his masters’ Honda City. He is

removed from his family in order to work and yet ostracized from his fellow servants for

processing mind sharp enough to truly observe and question his surroundings and situation. As

for controlling his own behavior, such a notion would be considered outlandish to Balram as a

servant. He is expected and even praised to sign a confession and allow himself to be imprisoned

after Pinky Madam accident. His very sense of freedom is considered a resource for his master to

use at their convenience. Farsi sums up this complete lack of Self Determination by pointing out

“As a servant, Balram has to be obedient to the existing forces, figures, norms, and

authorities. No matter what role or relation he has, he has to serve others’ needs and
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wishes” (Farsi, p. 777).

But when we apply these same standards to Balram’s life once he realizes himself as The

White Tiger, the situation has completely changed. The skillset that he strives to master now is

that of an entrepreneur and philanthropist, growing both his business and his influence through

the city of Bangalore and helping shape its future. We see him connect with his nephew but also

with the idea of sponsoring a school to help break the cycle of unquestioned servitude in his

community. Most of all, Balram’s actions and goals at this point are his own. No one is going to

make him sign away years of his life or assign him a spouse. He is the master of his own life and

forever will be. It is this desire to be free that Farsi claims is at the core of Balram’s

transformation. According to her, “Balram’s human psychological need for autonomy urges him

to make a decision that sets him as a free man. Killing Ashok and escaping with a bag of seven

hundred thousand rupees is the only possible but morally horrible way he breaks through” (Farsi,

p. 780).

While no one is implying that Adiga is advocating murder in order for the subaltern to

achieve self-determination, Balram’s path does serve as both a sobering mirror of why such

people would find themselves dissatisfied with their current existence and what they can

(figuratively) do to self-actuate themselves into a better life. And while the current system may

provide a sense of comfort and predictability, Balram’s life proves that that system does not have

to be absolute and those that wish to follow his example will have the opportunity to achieve

what would otherwise be unfathomable.

However, this idea of Balram as an internal outsider folk hero or as a template for the

subaltern to follow is not without some complications. In Golchin Pourqoli’s essay, The
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Subaltern Cannot Speak: A Study of Adiga Arvinda’s The White Tiger, Pourqoli raises the

question of Balram truly represents the oppressed subaltern people he is first surrounded by or if

his otherness and eventual transformation disqualify him from being a voice for the voiceless.

According to Pourqoli, it is not Balram’s unfulfilled need to be self-actualized or a deep-

seated desire to break the system of oppression that sparks his transformation into The White

Tiger, but simply even of watching his masters and envying their lifestyle. This is especially true

of Ashok, the man Balram eventually robs and murders. Pourqoli suggests “that by seeing Ashok

as an ideal image of himself, Balram desires to be a (whole) man like Ashok, to be a master and

thus, to have a position which was ideologically and socially restricted for him” (Pourqoli, p.

216). This is why Balram chooses to use the name of Ashok when he finally makes it to

Bangalore. It is the culmination of envy and usurpation; becoming the person he normally would

never have been able to have otherwise. Pourqoli goes on to say:

Then, his identification with Ashok already done, he began to see the poor as the
‘other’. This also results in his complete identification with rich which is evident
in the beginning of narrating his story to Mr. Jiabao. So, he points out that “In my
way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind” (p. 3). Then, as a result of his full
identification with rich and the members of upper-class, he began to produce his
‘other’, that is, to make a clear distinction between himself and the others who
remain poor. (Pourqoli, p. 216)

While this may be a bit of a cynical reading of Balram’s character, it is not one that is not

worthy of consideration. More importantly, if Balram (now Ashok) considers himself as one of

the “ones who eats” opposed to one of the “ones who are eaten”, how can we reconcile this with

the idea of an internal outsider? Has he not rid himself of that designation by no longer being a

member of the subaltern and thus, an outsider? In actuality, even in his new role as master,
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Balram proves himself to be just as much of an internal outsider as he was as a servant, albeit it

in a much different way.

While Balram is indeed “The White Tiger of Bangalore” and a man of influence and

power, he goes to great lengths to make sure that how he wields such power is drastically

different than the treatment he received when he was a servant. Balram is still fulfilling his role

as an internal outsider, that is to say, as a narrative tool for the author to highlight objections in

his culture and suggest alternatives. Only now, the objection Adiga seems to have is not about

how the subaltern should rise up and refuse to accept the abuse they have been trained to tolerate,

but how those with wealth and power can alter their practices and ways of thinking in order to

greatly benefit the society as a whole.

As mentioned earlier, Balram long term plan includes opening a school for the

impoverished children of Bangalore, one that does not teach them to embrace servitude and

pacificity (Adiga, Kindle Location 3731). Additionally, the way Balram treats his drivers is

striking different than the treatment we see him receive earlier in the novel. He even directly

explains in his letter that he doesn’t “treat them like servants—I don't slap, or bully, or mock

anyone. I don't insult any of them by calling them my "family," either. They're my employees,

I'm their boss, that's all” (Adiga, Kindle Locations 3509-3510).

We even see Balram goes as far as to personally take responsibility and pay

compensation for the death of a young boy when one of his drivers is responsible for an accident.

While Balram did still buy his way out of legal troubles (as is to be expected of one of his

newfound status in this culture), we see him take extra the additional approach of both personally

delivering the money to the grieving parents of the victim and offering to take in their surviving
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son into his company and care. In his own words, Balram states “But I had to do something

different; don't you see? I can't live the way the Wild Boar and the Buffalo and the Raven lived,

and probably still live, back in Laxmangarh. I am in the Light now” (Adiga, Kindle Locations

3648-3650).

It is actions like these that allow one to believe that it is more than just simple envy that

drives Balram to his new place in the world. While he is by no means a saint, Balram still shows

compassion and forethought in his role as The White Tiger, even if how he came to that role is

more than dubious. And yet, even though he has very much changed his role in his society, he

still finds himself in that template of the internal outsider. He is still on the fringe of his society.

Still acting in a way that highlights the shortcoming of his peers. Still being the living means of

objection that Aravind Adiga seems to have with modern capitalism in the culture of post-

colonial Indian. Only now as Ashok Sharma, the criticism is being leveled at the part of society

that has servants instead of the part of the society where those servants live.

Aravind Adiga is not the only commemoratory international literature author that seems

to use the internal outsider device as a means of social critique. We see the template used time

and time again, in different years, settings, and cultures. We see Zimbabwean author NoViolet

Bulawayo use this device in her 2013 novel We Need New Names, as her protagonist “Darling”

scrutinizes both immigrant story and the image of the American Ideal throughout the world as

Darling spends her teenage years disillusioned with the reality of the United States. We see

Italian author Elena Ferrante use the device in her Neapolitan Novels, starring My Brilliant

Friend in 2012, in which the two main characters Elena and Lila are two highly intelligent girls

growing up and navigating the oppressive patriarchal culture of post-World War II Naples. We
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even see it in Turkish author Orhan Pamuk’s 2004 novel Snow where the narrative character, a

poet named Ka, returns to the Turkish city of Kas to investigate a series of suicides while

exposing the nuances of the political and religious influences that surround almost every aspect

of life within the city.

Each of these novels, regardless of their origins, highlights exceptional people surround

by undesirable circumstances that are either the byproduct of or exacerbated by aspects of their

respective cultures that their authors seem to deeply disapprove of. By making these characters a

part of yet apart from the general populace of their settings, these authors can attempt to become

a voice of change from within. And by doing so, call attention from the outside world without

attracting yet more foreign judgmental criticism of cultures such people just wouldn’t fully

understand.
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Works Cited

Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger. Free Press. Kindle Edition.

Iwao, Sumiko. “Internal Versus External Criticism of Group Standards.” Sociometry, vol. 26, no.

4, 1963, pp. 410–421. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2786145. Accessed 18 Dec. 2020.

Sutton, Robbie M., Tracey J. Elder, and Karen M. Douglas. "Reactions to Internal and External

Criticism of Outgroups: Social Convention in the Intergroup Sensitivity Effect."

Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 32, no. 5, 2006, pp. 563-575.

Walther, Sundhya. “Fables of the Tiger Economy: Species and Subalternity in Aravind Adiga’s

The White Tiger”, Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 60, no. 3, 2014, pp. 579–598. JSTOR,

www.jstor.org/stable/26421746.

Farsi, Roghayeh. "Narrative Mapping and Motivation in Adiga’s The White Tiger” Neohelicon,

vol. 45, no. 2, 2018, pp. 771-788. ProQuest,

http://ezproxy.emich.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/

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accountid=10650, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11059-018-0434-0.

Khor, Lena. “Can the Subaltern Right Wrongs?: Human Rights and Development in Aravind

Adiga's ‘The White Tiger.’” South Central Review, vol. 29, no. 1/2, 2012, pp. 41–67.,

www.jstor.org/stable/41679388. Accessed 19 Dec. 2020.

Pourqoli, Golchin, and Akram Pouralifard. "The Subaltern Cannot Speak: A Study of Adiga

Arvinda’s the White Tiger." International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English

Literature, vol. 6, no. 3, 2017, pp. 215-218. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.emich.edu/login?

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url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.emich.edu/scholarly-journals/subaltern-cannot-

speak-study-adiga-arvinda-s/docview/2188111460/se-2?accountid=10650,

doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.emich.edu/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.3p.215.