Can the Subaltern Right Wrongs?: Human Rights and Development in Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

Building on Gayatri Spivak's proposal that we destabilize the presupposition in human rights that the rich are destined to right the wrongs of the poor, this article considers one instance of what development efforts for human rights might look like if they were undertaken by the poor. It argues that the story of Balram Halwai, the protagonist in Aravind Adiga's novel The White Tiger, represents one version of a subaltern righting the wrongs of underdevelopment and class inequality in postcolonial India. This version recognizes the problem of underdevelopment, and proposes modernization as the solution even though it comes at a high cost. The article then explores a paradoxical presupposition in a human rights approach to development and equality, namely that it functions according to an ethics of the rich, rather than that of the poor.