Aravind Adiga winner of Booker prize – fame of shame ?

Arvind Adiga  a Chennai born  Indian got this year’s Booker  prize for  his  first novel The white tiger.  Can we Indians  be proud of this achievement of an Indian ?

 

I  feel  the award  is given for a novel  which makes fun of  and denigrate  Indian achievements, during a period when  the world is appreciating the all round achievements  of our nation.

 

The novel is  presented in such a way that   a business man Balram of Bangalore, son of a Rickshaw puller,  writing the  ‘dark side’ of  India to a visiting Chinese Prime minister , Wenjiya bavo.  Writing the negatives  of  the motherland to a foreign country’s (China)  minister which always looked down upon India for the last many decades  and even creates  continuously the negatives to this nation.  

 

Adiga , it is reported that has presented  the negatives  with exaggerated novel style  of the ‘cruelties and  decaying traditions’ of India .  It is quoted thus ” Adiga , with all anger and  curse  in  funny languages sends  to the readers the arrows in the most exaggerated negative words to expose all the  dirty  hidden  side of  India “  in his book.

 

For some of  the western scholars , it may be necessary to denigrate our  nation.  That might have motivated  them to give this prize to Adiga ?. It  may also be an easy path to  get a prize  by denigrating  India that too for  an Indian . But for us , the Indians  this can never become a matter of proud. 

 

Adiga has done this  antinational activity residing in  Bombay, it is reported.  I wish the  reader of this news will evaluate the quality of the  novel and react  intellectually.

—
Dr. N. Gopalakrishnan,
M.A., M.Sc., Ph.D., D.Litt.,
Director, IISH