The Pact

Father signed the pact.

To dispatch, loads of coal.
The uncouth facts smiles
Like an inverted rainbow
With a sinister contract!
The concerns over repercussions, danced,
Like filthy waves of Ganga!
What would happen to the family?
Home might be confiscated,
He might have to become a slave.
The post-pact life, how unroll?
Unfamiliar with the future,
The father, burnt the hearth,
With the cooking pot empty!
He was relieved, thinking that
To impede his independence,
His wife had taken “I-pills”.
When asked, he said-
“I am happy, with my only son who-
Was killed in a bigotry place.
And I do not care for the future of
Me, my middle aged wife,
And my ‘half naked’,
Alzheimer’s patient, Grand Father.

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The Indian Village and the Power Structures:A Scrutiny of "The White Tiger".

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Village appears in “The White Tiger” as a space for implementing the paraphernalia of power, by the power structures. Power, and rule, both as ideological and restrictive forms are acting upon the village. More prominent in it is of course the restrictive apparatus, not as police or judiciary but as the landlords and their laws. The ideological apparatus finds not as much prominence as the restrictive apparatus, as the protagonist, who being the measure for interaction between the reader and the village, questions the ideological apparatus and traditional shoulder-stoop philosophies, on the way of his existential saga. But he fails to win over the restrictive apparatus most of the times, during his times in the village and later.

The protagonist, Balram Halwai, moves from his village to town, in the process of his growth. Even though, toward the end, we can see him as a holder of power, we cannot find him coming back to his village or confronting any of those involved in the power transactions in the village. Also, the village memories leave him in a rather disturbing thought, about his parents’ and family’s security. From this we can understand that the village as the subject of power, still remains in the consciousness of Balram Halwai.

As I said early, it is through the protagonist’s vision, that we are being exposed to the village. Therefore, we can assume that Aravind Adiga, in his novel, “The White Tiger”, wants to convey that the village is the subject of an autonomous power structure. These autonomous power structures, the landlords, retain their power by the successful interactions with cultural, political, economic, and social environments.

The inability of the villager to fight back and to win his ends is often related to his innocence. The villagers in the novel are presented as innocent, passive bearers of the exertion of power. In other words, it is this obedience, to a neocolonial power, that bestows on them the title of being innocent. Here, innocence becomes an inclination, subordination, inability, and a silent obligation towards those who rule them, only because they are the ones being ruled. And thus it becomes a crime.

Balram has the persona of an enlightened man, who questions the power structures. Thus the character of Balram is made to identify as one out of the innocent folk. He is the one who makes his end win.

Still toward the end the novel, as mentioned early, the protagonist remains co-axial with the inability of breaking the influence of the power structures, like an ordinary villager. This can be perceived as a discourse where the neocolonial centers of power remain unchanged and the village becomes a neocolonial prototype of passive obedience.

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Pak-China Bhai Bhai!

India accused Pakistan for its direct involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks, occurred a few months back. The government of India has declared its stand in the battle against terrorism and provided all the evidences needed for proving Pakistan’s sinister interests. Not only in the Mumbai attacks, but also in the Pakistan sponsored infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir, India has proven without any doubt the direct involvement of Pakistan.

Taking for granted the stand of the government of India, we can see that Pakistan’s political agenda, ever since its formation was the anti-India policy, which is nurtured by our not-so-friendly-neighbourhood, the country of China. We must not forget that they have shown their intentions quite clearly to India before.

Pakistan’s politics had tried to give the anti-Indian policy, with which they exerted influence and gained support from the Islamic population of the country, an ideological persona. Now it’s the turn to, modify that ideological apparatus into a system, with its own order, law, economy and power.

‘System’ is a highly scientific word. Whenever an ideology or a theory takes the form of a system, it will assume an identity. That identity is not that of the ideology, not that of the theory, not that of the social milieu, and not that of the people involved in it but that of its own. This identity might have relations with each of those components in the system, but the interaction of the system with the components will be one sided, that is, from the system to the component and not vice versa. The exertion of power includes itself as a major impetus in those interactions. Thus a system assumes the form of an autonomous entity, with an identity of its own, or we can put it as a self-reliant organism with multifarious one-sided interactive components.

This is what happening in Pakistan. For giving the ideological apparatus, the form and influence of a system, the Pakistani government has signed a pact with the Taliban, allowing them to establish their system of law and order in the Afghan boarder of Pakistan.

The recent attack on the Sri-Lankan cricket team in Pakistan is showing that the “system” has started “functioning”. As it is said, it will become out of control from the government’s hands and will start working of its own. It will cause serious threats to the peace loving parts of the world.

China would also suffer from Pakistan- even though they have supported them- from the legion of terror blooming in the Pak soil, just like how America has suffered from Taliban, on 9/11. As a matter of fact, USA had supported Taliban in order to vanquish the Russian power in the cold war, which is not a secret any more.

It is not the role that USA will play, raises the Indian concerns, but the role that China is going to add to the Pakistan-Taliban drama. We must not forget that during the Mumbai attacks, the explosives and guns seized from the terrorists were made in China. From this, one thing is very clear, that is, “even though the bullets were fired by Pakistan, it were made by China”!

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