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Who is the Great Socialist in The White Tiger?
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In The White Tiger, the Great Socialist is a powerful local politician. Despite his claims to be a voice for the poor and downtrodden, the Great Socialist is actually a corrupt, disreputable character who systematically abuses his power for his own benefit.
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga centers around the story of Balram Halwai, who has managed to rise from one of the lowest positions on the social strata of India to one of the highest. Along the way, Balram encounters or learns about many different people, including a man called the Great Socialist.
The Great Socialist is a politician. He tries to make himself look good, like he cares about and serves the poor, but he is far more interested in gaining more and more wealth and power for himself. He and his followers are extremely corrupt and are more than willing to resort to murder, embezzlement, rape, and fraud to claw their way to the top of the political system.
The family Balram works for ends up on the wrong side of the Great Socialist, and they pay a large amount of money in bribes just to try to...
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get back in his favor. They know how powerful he is and how miserable he can make their lives if he wishes. Somehow, though, they can never quite keep up with his expectations.
By the end of the novel, the Great Socialist has achieved his goal at last. He and his allies have captured national power, finally defeating their enemies. The Great Socialist is now in power, and anyone who opposes him had better be prepared to pay up.
The Great Socialist is quite an ironic character, for he is certainly not great in the true sense of the word. He is merely corrupt and grasping. Nor is he actually a socialist, for he cares nothing about society as a whole, but rather only about himself and his own power.
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According to Balram Halwai, the novel's main character and narrator, the Great Socialist "had been the boss of the Darkness for a decade." The Darkness is what Halwai calls his region of India. It's not managed by upright people. It's ruled by toxic, corrupt rulers like the Great Socialist.
As Halwai notes, there's disagreement about how and why the Great Socialist grew to be not great. Some of his subjects say he was actually trying to do good at one point. Others claim that he was rotten from the start and now his criminal foundation is coming to the forefront. While Halwai writes his letter to the Chinese official, there's ninety-three criminal cases against the Great Socialist and his cohorts.
Halwai has a specific connection to the Great Socialist due to his role as Mr. Ashok's driver. As a member of the wealthy Stork family, Ashok’s fortune is tied to unlawful coal mining activities that are facilitated with bribes to the Great Socialist and his regime.
While the Great Socialist is venal, deceitful, and violent, he is also a source of irony. As mentioned before, the Great Socialist is not great; nor is the Great Socialist much of a socialist. He doesn’t care about the collective well-being of the people in the Darkness. His goal is to enrich himself and amass political power.
In this book, the “Great Socialist” is a symbol representing politicians in India. The title “Great Socialist” is ironic because contrary to expectations, the politicians do not adhere to socialism but instead exploit the poor people to their selfish advantage. Balram narrates how the “Great Socialist” is corrupt in all his ways and extorts money from the wealthy businessmen in order to pardon their unscrupulous ventures. The “Great Socialist” has been in power for a decade due to open election malpractices and his culture of fraud has nurtured a system of corruption so deeply established that other people who intend to dethrone him have to be corrupt themselves. His political symbol, two hands breaking shackles, is even more ironic because instead of liberating the people and making their condition better, the “Great Socialist” worsens it and pushes them deeper into darkness.
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