Posted on: 17-10-08 09:34:05
Aravind Adiga of Mangalore won the Booker Prize of 50,000 pounds for his first novel. A few years ago a lady from Kerala won the prize and that too was for her first novel. Ever since she won the prize, she has been in the limelight and uttering statements on and off to the effect of undermining Indian nationalism. The statement that India should allow Kashmir to cede was viewed with great consternation by none other than our retired Chief of Staff, V.P. Malik. Let us hope that the latest winner does not join the bandwagon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This should be something that an Indian could be proud about but alas not many here seem to care. Case in point...
Anyways, thanks for the post. By the way, he seems to have stirred a hornet's nest with the book. Now I have to give it a shot! I read some of the post announcement articles and as usual instead of being proud, majority is crapping on him in India. All he seems to be saying...is the truth:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3222136/Indians-fear-Aravind-Adigas-The-White-Tiger-says-too-much-about-them.html
~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt:
"Look at the intimate access that servants have to their masters in their homes, and yet there are very few murders or attacks. But that doesn't reassure the middle class. It is becoming more insecure than before because it is richer now and has more to lose," says Adiga.
The White Tiger marks a new departure in India by portraying the emotions, sorrows, and aspirations of the hitherto invisible poor. For Adiga, his achievement is capturing "something new" in India, a stirring, a glimmer of a refusal by the poor to accept the fate ordained for them by their masters.
~~~~~~~~~~
Man I already like it...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If you have a gun, you can rob a bank.
If you have a bank, you can rob everyone.
- Bill Maher
Thanks for your reply. We are glad that Aravind Adiga could win the Booker Prize, bring laurels and 50,000 pounds of valuable foreign exchange. But what he said in a newspaper interview on the eve of prize announcement still rankles. He says that though he was a hindu by birth, he studied only in christian missionary schools, he has more friends in the christian community than hindus and that he strongly condemns attacks on the former. This has to be viewed in the context of the skirmishes that recently happened in Mangalore, the author's city. Should he necessarily say all this to receive the prize money? Will it not suffice that rioting and attacks on all innocent/unarmed civilians whatever religion they belong needs to be condemned and deserve the strictest punishment. If he had said anything otherwise than what he purportedly said will his prize money might have been withheld? May be in the coming days he will join the bandwagon of "secularist and human rights" activist Arundhati Roy, the earlier winner. And may be this is what the prize is being paid for.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Quote:
Originally posted by blorean
This should be something that an Indian could be proud about but alas not many here seem to care. Case in point...
Anyways, thanks for the post. By the way, he seems to have stirred a hornet's nest with the book. Now I have to give it a shot! I read some of the post announcement articles and as usual instead of being proud, majority is crapping on him in India. All he seems to be saying...is the truth:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3222136/Indians-fear-Aravind-Adigas-The-White-Tiger-says-too-much-about-them.html
~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt:
"Look at the intimate access that servants have to their masters in their homes, and yet there are very few murders or attacks. But that doesn't reassure the middle class. It is becoming more insecure than before because it is richer now and has more to lose," says Adiga.
The White Tiger marks a new departure in India by portraying the emotions, sorrows, and aspirations of the hitherto invisible poor. For Adiga, his achievement is capturing "something new" in India, a stirring, a glimmer of a refusal by the poor to accept the fate ordained for them by their masters.
~~~~~~~~~~
Man I already like it...
Here is an interesting critique
http://www.sandeepweb.com/2008/10/16/when-an-award-is-not-just-an-award/
n a sentence, the White Tiger is award-winning India-bashing. Vide the template laid down by the illustrious likes of Pankaj Mishra. Poverty levels in India had decreased during the NDA rule? (I mentioned NDA purposely because the India Shining campaign was their slogan): take a second-class train journey and decree that it hasn’t. Middle class folks are able to afford cars? No problem: show them the millions who can’t afford the money for tickets to travel in public transport. Farmers who used to eke out a miserable living on their lands have suddenly found themselves in the league of the really rich? Point to their employees/servants who still work under the same conditions. India is still a land of darkness. Booker-prize stuff.
There is no shaking off the Third World tag no matter how hard our industry czars or other professionals try. No amount of buying out multi-billion dollar First World Companies can change that reality. The cacophony about the Crouching Tiger, and the next Asian Giant generates a decibel level equivalent to a pin dropped on the floor. It is still a man’s world White World. Natives only need to wear that tag. Aravind Adiga leans really well on the shoulders of giants and makes them proud: from Salman Rushdie to Arundhati Roy to Kiran Desai although I suspect Arundhati Roy’s name is ill-chosen here.
The First World Award is still the most Coveted. You can safely ignore piffling questions, insignificant realities. Like what was the economic condition of them middle-class car-owners before they became car-owners? Or the fact that in India Shining 2004, India had paid off her foreign debt and sat on a mountain of surplus foreign reserves?
The “thuggery of the traditional Indian Left remains where it can afford to remain: in West Bengal and Kerala, primarily. The reviewer never mentions the real thuggery of the Indian Left. For over thirty years, this thuggery destroyed almost everything that India could take pride in. If the Left today had even fifty percent of the power it had in its heydays, Aravind Adiga’s novel would have been torn into shreds by the intellectual elite. The review would proceed along these lines: Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger panders to the imperialist/capitalist West’s stereotyped perception of India as a backward country. Ample proof of this is in the fact that it has been awarded the Booker Prize, a creation of the ex-imperial Britain.
I am looking forward to reading it. I just heard about it on National Public radio (NPR) in USA and it appears to be fasinating.
Congrats to Arbind Adiga again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aravind_Adiga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Tiger
-----------------------------------------------------------------
You know you are a desi when ........ You spew forth the virtues of India, but don't want to live there...............You've never had a tanning salon membership
Another water boy who peddles half truths to the western liberals. The western liberal needs to snort his daily quota of poverty in other parts of the world. If he doesn't get his daily whiff of gutter inspection, he becomes restless and cannot validate his life. Aravind Adiga supplies the rolled-up dollar bill in the form of his book. Well done Gunga Din!
