Can the Subaltern Become an Entrepreneur? Rewriting Subalternity in Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger

Abstract

The transformation of subaltern identity in The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga raises significant questions about the possibility of transcending structural oppression through entrepreneurship. The narrative follows Balram Halwai’s movement from a poverty-stricken village in the “Darkness” to his emergence as a successful businessman in Bangalore. His ascent is achieved not through collective resistance or institutional reform, but through calculated violence, strategic self-fashioning, and the appropriation of capitalist values. Balram embodies a reconfigured form of subaltern consciousness in post-liberalization India. Unlike the conventionally silenced and immobilized marginalized subject, he constructs a self-authored narrative addressed to a global audience. His voice functions not as a demand for justice but as an assertion of ambition and survival within a deeply unequal socio-economic order. The metaphor of the “Rooster Coop” illustrates the internalized mechanisms of fear and obedience that sustain class hierarchy, while his rebellion signals a decisive rupture within this structure. However, the transition from servant to entrepreneur remains fundamentally paradoxical. In securing economic mobility, Balram simultaneously replicates the exploitative systems he once endured. Entrepreneurial success emerges as both empowerment and complicity, revealing that mobility within neoliberal India is intertwined with moral compromise and the persistence of structural inequality rather than transformative social change.