Morality and Indian Society Theme Analysis

The White Tiger portrays an India that has not only lost its traditional social structure, but also outgrown a conventional moral framework. Balram’s description of the Light India versus the Dark India in the novel, which subverts usual associations of “Light” with virtue, and “Darkness” with immorality, reflects this upset of moral values. Light India is not virtuous at all. Rather, its members do whatever necessary to preserve their own wealth and power, acting morally only when it is convenient for them. They are “Light” primarily in the sense that they can actually see the “light” of wealth and luxury, much as a plant might grow tall enough to see the light of day and further its own growth. Meanwhile, Rooster Coop logic prevails over Dark India: men dutifully behave according to familial and religious values, but they do so because they are terrified into submission, not out of genuine desire to lead a good life. In both cases, people sacrifice morality as they fight for survival within India’s cutthroat social landscape.

Traditional Indian values founded on deep religious faith and the teachings of venerated national heroes like Gandhi are similarly comprised. Throughout the book, Balram goes through the motions of religious faith and prayer largely to impress his master with his devotion. Yet he argues that he is both “sly and sincere, believing and mocking” at the same time: that this fickle embrace of faith is typical of Indian culture. Indians have a deep yearning for their past, when their country strived so heroically to define the terms of morality for itself, and yet this attachment does not necessarily inspire them to uphold those time-honored values.

In the midst of India’s moral upset, Balram develops his own personal moral framework founded on his sense of himself as a “white tiger”: a rare creature with superior intelligence who lives in the jungle but is exempt from its rules. His embrace of this notion that he is special and therefor deserves to exist outside legal and moral codes allows him to justify murdering his master Ashok, knowingly and callously exposing his own family to likely fatal vengeance, so that he can begin his first business—White Tiger Drivers—with Ashok’s money. Balram jokes, “The devil was once God’s sidekick until he went freelance.” He believes that the struggle to escape social and economic subjugation in Indian society, to go “freelance” and achieve control over one’s future, trumps traditional notions of good vs. evil, God vs. the devil, rendering actions the reader might consider immoral understandable, and yet also depicting the society that could make such actions understandable as brutally lost and corrupt.