White Tiger Author Aravind Adiga Answers Your Questions

India and the United States are natural allies in just about every way. They’re both liberal, tolerant, democratic countries in a world where democracy, free speech, and religious tolerance are increasingly under threat. 

 In other words, India ends up as a kind of immense South American country in the heart of Asia. India can do much, much better than this, and I hope that its citizens force its government to give them this better future.

My point in The White Tiger is to puncture the sense of complacency that too many Indians have — this feeling that, oh, we’re a democracy, all our problems are fixed. Democracy isn’t a panacea. Corruption and misgovernance can thrive within a democracy, as India’s history shows; they have to be addressed before democracy works for the poor.

What unites India is the innate liberalism of its culture, I think. Indians are a liberal, tolerant people: there is room for free speech and debate here. No other country in South Asia is as free as India; that is why India is the only truly stable country in a region torn by civil strife and chaos. Look at the example of Pakistan, for instance, which is plunged in chaos. What keeps India strong is its freedom. In the last 10 years, this freedom of expression has come under attack from various extremist groups — Hindu extremists, Islamic fundamentalists, ultra-nationalists — and I fear that freedom of speech is diminishing by the day. Without its freedoms, India turns into a failed state like Pakistan.