2023-08-11
Following is an incident which happened in a suburb in the deep south of Sri Lanka. In this area, there was a dominant family which has been the most powerful family in the area for some generations. People feared the family and particularly the head of the family. All the businesses which were mostly things like shops, and other trades belonged to the members of the family. In all the local societies the head of the family was always treated as the chairperson or the president. That was the case of the co-operative society also which quite a popular enterprise throughout the country was during that time. At one particular meeting at the co-operative society, presided over by the head of this family, one young man who had just passed out from the school got up to ask a question. It was on some small matter of relating to minor affairs. However, the head of the family presiding over the meeting was angered by somebody daring to ask a question from him in public. What was worse was that this boy’s mother had worked for the prestigious family as a servant-woman. The old man took this as an insult. The same day he got the boy to be called to his house and with a big knife stabbed the boy to death and then carrying the knife in his hand went and surrendered himself to the police. That was the extent to which the idea of dominance prevailed and it was the son of this old man who was a graduate from a university who narrated this story. Much later when this son was asked as to whether his father ever regretted having killed this boy, his firm reply was no. He merely thought he had carried out his duty. In trying to understand this man’s behaviour, as well as those of many others throughout the whole period of many centuries, it would be useful to spend a short while on a novel that explained the way how these things happened in India. Many Indian writers over a long period of time have tried in many ways to expose similar kinds of behaviour that has happened almost everywhere in India. These writers mostly wrote in their own local languages. One of the books that excellently explained the way caste worked to keep the vast masses of India in subjugation is the novel written by Aravind Adiga titled The White Tiger.
Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger which won the Booker prize in 2008 is perhaps the most insightful narrative which exposes how deep the influence of the caste structure is on the mind and the soul of Indians. The book is written in a satirical style.
The author calls India’s interior system of social control as the Rooster Coop. The novel is written by way of a series of letters written by a young man named Balram Halwai who was from an extremely lower caste family and faced enormous hardships as a child. By describing his childhood, the stark poverty of the countryside and the draconian societal rules that keeps India’s oppressed masses under subjugation has been told most powerfully. As a young boy, Balram finds a job of cleaning the floor of a restaurant. While attending to such work, he discovers the art of getting some information about the world, by listening to the conversations among the people who attend the restaurant. There he learns how the exploitation takes place by four families who dominate and profit by all the productive activities in the village. Later, Balram through the help of a driver learns to drive and looks for a job. He finds a driving job in one of those four families. Balram later accompanies the son of the rich man who has come from United States with his wife. This young couple is western educated and their ways are different to that of the landlord family. This son is sent by the family in New Delhi mainly to promote the family business by cultivating contact with the powerful politicians. In fact his job was to arrange for a bribe in order to cultivate a business opportunity. He carries a bag full of cash to be distributed to his patrons. Balram who observed all this also understands why the underclass Indians obey the type of family patriarchs like his rich masters. He knows that there is one simple law operating which keeps the whole system together. That thread was the uneven and disproportionate punishment that would be imposed on anyone who in any way offended their masters. The punishment is not directed merely towards a single transgressor, but to his whole family meaning the larger family of the clan. One serious act of transgression could led annihilation of the entire clan. If anyone were to dare to think of a future beyond those prescribed for them within the social order, he would have to take the risk of facing the certainty that his whole clan will be annihilated if he were to take the risk. It would be the rarest of rare persons who will take that risk. It is such a person that is named ‘The White Tiger’.
Read more: https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/the-rooster-coop-its-impact-on-sri-lanka/