Booker winner Adiga donates Rs 1 crore to alma mater

Man Booker prize winning author Aravind Adiga has donated Rs one crore to his alma mater, the Canara High School Association, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary.

Adiga, who did his primary and secondary education from the institution, sent the cheque to the school yesterday.

The association would utilise the money to set up endowments named after five teachers who founded the institution in 1891, Association secretary M Ranganath Bhat said in a release here.

Adiga himself volunteered to make a donation to the institution and the endowments would be used to provide free education to economically backward students studying in the institution's primary schools, Bhat said.

Adiga, now based in Australia, won the Man Booker prize in 2008 for his debut novel 'The White Tiger,' which in his own words, "attempts to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India-the voice of the colossal underclass."

The novel presents a darkly humorous perspective of India's class struggle in a globalised world as told through the retrospective narration of a village boy.

Adiga was the fourth Indian-born writer to win the Booker prize after Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai.

The Canara High School Association's 125th anniversary and the new Canara English Higher Primary School was inaugurated yesterday by Harish Bhat, Group Executive Council member of Tata Sons.