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.
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.