White tigers have always been a topic of curiosity and admiration. Perhaps it is their pigmentation (or lack thereof) or rampant inbreeding, or maybe their origins in the Bengal tiger of the Sunderbans, that makes them so exotic.
Exotic enough for authors to win Man Booker awards!
In Arvind Adiga’s White Tiger, the protagonist Balram Halwai is referred to as the White Tiger, a term which symbolizes power in East Asian cultures and also doubles up as a connotation for freedom and individuality. Balram is seen as different from those he grew up with — he is the one who gets out of the “Darkness” and finds his way into the “Light”.
It is reference in popular culture such as this, which makes White Tigers, so interesting. Distinctive due to the colour of their white fur, caused by a lack of the pigment pheomelanin, white tigers are extremely rare — one in about 10,000 births.
A rare hybrid mutant variant of the existing tiger subspecies which symbolises power, freedom and individuality!