Yes, that's what I thought you meant. And as I said, I like this interpretation better since I think the case for believing in God because of the story is so weak that it forms a sort of reductio so that you believe the opposite ('this is his best argument for believing in God - it's only a slightly useful Noble Lie?') But I don't think this is how the author takes the ending, or what he believes. If you look at one of Wikipedia's refs, this interview http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec02/martel_11-11.html - it comes off as your standard mushy-headed NOMA ecumenicalism. He talks about his own directionless life, admiring all religions, getting the idea in India, that sort of thing, and caps it off:

And it's funny, I realize people who reject religion or are very cynical about it usually know just enough about a religion to be able to dismiss it. So they only know the exaggerations, the excesses of that religion. In a sense, what a lot of us do with Islam, we only notice the bad things about it. We don't realize the good things that are happening with it. So now that I've suspended my cynicism, now that I've put aside my criticism let's say of organized religion and gone to the texts, yes, I do see more of where they're coming from.

To me, this makes the author sound like he's... what's that sarcastic phrase, 'spiritual but not theistic'? If I had to guess, I think he put in the twist as a trap for the cynical and atheistic which lets them (us) think they've solved the story and reduced it down to dreary rationality (unweaved the rainbow) but which serves as an opportunity for the spiritual to affirm that they believe the tiger story and that believing is important even if not all the facts seem to fit (belief in belief).