India in The White Tiger

            Aravind Adiga, the author of the white tiger, depicts India as a vast and dark jungle where hierarchy and corruption are the rulers of the nation. A primary motive of Adiga while writing the novel is to confront the corruption existing in modern India. He has done this quite successfully through the use of animal imagery. Throughout the novel, Balram views the whole of India as a kind of zoo, in which everyone has their own boundaries or as Balram would say, their cages. Eventually it was those boundaries that kept India in a way, somewhat civilized. But according to Balram, in 1947 when the British left "only a moron would think that we became free then." As Balram says, zoo law changed to jungle law.
             "See this country, in its days of greatness, when it was the richest nation was like a zoo. . And then, thanks to all those politicians in Delhi, on fifteenth of August 1947, the day the British left- the cages had been let open; and the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart and jungle law replaced zoo law.".
             Leaders were not ruling the whole of India, but instead the embodiments of corruption, those who preyed on the weaker animals. The Stork collected taxes, without any legality, from the fishermen and boaters. The buffalo owns, without buying, the rickshaws and the goatherds. Balram was himself nicknamed the white tiger by a man who was impressed by his surprising knowledge. He labelled his master Ashok the Lamb because on his return from America he was a humble man. "Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence". This philosophy is rarely practiced in reality, in the modern India where animals are worshipped like gods. For example, the two dogs live a luxurious life and are constantly spoiled, whilst the landlords exploit the people living in the darkness.
             Adiga even makes use of animal imagery in order to expose the weaknesses and corruptions of the Indian education system; to him it resembled a jungle.