Adiga's 'Darkness'

Arvind Adiga, in this year's booker prize winning novel The White Tiger has talked about the dual space within our border that we all reside in. To elaborate on that point, he talks about how some of us live in One India while the rest of our underprivileged compatriots live in perpetual 'Darkness' in the Other India. Though in his much overtly exaggerated and highly cynical and biased view of our country in his novel (which has virtually won him the booker, as the narrative isn't remarkable but his anglophile sycophancy is stark), Adiga has actually made a very important point. That we all may speak of unity for all we may want but we, The Citizens of India, live in two spaces which are totally different in every possible way. The 'Darkness' and the 'Light', as Adiga rightfully calls them, are not just different in their conditions but they have two totally different kinds of people, people with diametrically opposite aspirations, views, way of living and personality. And the most dangerous part about these two Indias is that they are not separated by any tangible borders, these marks of separation are so blurred and deeply buried in our subconscious selves, that we might live in a totally differnt India than someone my age in the slum 'right at the back' of my building. Though there are apparent links between the Light and the Darkness but they are so inconsistent, that we in Kolkata might choose from one moment to the other whether we want to listen to people in Kalahandi or Sonagachi. They are completely at our disposal, we who live in the Light. The word Darkness which Adiga often uses in the novel and he hatches a biased (towards the westerners view of India lying in the gutter) plot out of which genuinely meticulous narrative outline of this one individual who makes out of the Darkness only by taking recourse to devious, unlawful ways. I don't comply with the smucky, overtly cynical view of us as a third world nation, upheld by Adiga in his novel but i certainly don't disagree that somewhere down the line, he does make a point. And a quite pertinent one at that, which is very important at the crunch of time we, as Citizens of our country, are in today. We are all in a constant state of denial of the Darkness. It is not as worse as it is made out to be in Adiga's novel but it is still extremely disgraceful for each one of us to allow people who have an equal right to all the privileges that we all enjoy, to live under terrible conditions where they are denied the basic rights of proper sanitation, food, health facilities, water and education. This could be within one kilometer radius in the area we all live in. We all enjoy this and we would certainly keep them slogging in the 'Darkness' as that is what establishes our supremacy over them as 'Better Indians' and gives us the harness to rule them through vote-bank politics. After all if everyone moves to Light wouldn't us who have created the 'Darkness' would run into loss? But i guess we can afford it no more. Now in post-26/11 Indai we are talking about change in the system, which can only come with a change in our attitude towards our society. It is time we have to push these people out of 'Darkness' by rehabiliting them in 'Light', thereby extending the space of light. We need to practice a policy of inclusion, if we were to do away with Dual Indias which could be extremely dangerous for us when we are going to fight against the sluggish system which is only in place because of their exploitation of the 'Darkness'. And we are responsible for this, as we keep on voting these people to power. The 'Darkness' is created by us, and it can only be done away when each one of us in 'Light' extend our hands to our counter-part in 'Darkness' and pull them out of the social quagmire they all live in. It is only by standing together then, that we can actually make a CHANGE.