The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy Multidimensional Novel Cob web of various themes MA Semester 4, Department of English, MKBU.

1. TOPIC: THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS
BY ARUNDHATI ROY
A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL NOVEL
A COB WEB OF VARIOUS THEMES
KHUSHBU LAKHUPOTA
MA SEMESTER 4
BATCH 2020-2022
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, MKBU
3 MARCH, 2022 THURSDAY
PAPER 207: CONTEMPORARY LITERATURES IN
ENGLISH
khushbu22jan93@gmail.com

2. Table of Contents
1. Themes
2. Other Aspects Literature Review
3. Quotes
4. Citations

3. Themes
01

4. Corruption, Political Violence, Capitalism
● Contemporary postcolonial Indian politics
● Indian Army - Profiting from the war
● Indian officials - killing innocent Kashmiris
● Naga - a corrupt journalist

5. Gender Identity, Social Division, Coexistence
● Anjum - a transgender, hijra, special society status.
● Traveling to a Muslim shrine, attack by Hindu
terrorists.
● Nimmo - conflict between masculine & feminine
genders in hijras & conflict between two countries.
● Anjum embodies the concept of coexistence.
● Roy - Power that comes from embracing difference
rather than seeking to destroy it.

6. Social Hierarchy vs. Social Inclusivity
● Struggle of the oppressed & marginalized characters.
● Social hierarchy - isolates and perpetuates violence.
● Social inclusivity - allows characters to live in peace & happiness.
● Biplab’s class privilege.
● Anjum - accepts all marginalized populations.
● Through Jannat, Paradise, welcome of downtrodden, home
marginalized, Roy illuminates the values of social inclusivity rather
than hierarchy.

7. Religion and Power
● Hindu - Muslim conflicts, violence.
● Blending of religion & government, religion as tool to fool
people.
● Kashmiri word for freedom, There is no God but Allah.
● Rule of militants - citizens experience religious conflict &
violence.

8. Other Aspects
Literature Review

9. ● To so confidently believe oneself to be on the right side of history is risky—for a writer
especially. In that balmy glow of self-regard, complacency can easily take root. And good
prose demands a measure of self-doubt—the worry that nags at a writer, that forces her to
double back on her sentences, unravel and knit them up again, asking repeatedly: Is this
clear? Is this true? Is this enticing? is book has a slackness to it that suggests Roy has
abdicated some of these anxieties. (Sehgal)
● The novel is a political novel which questions the socio-political situation in India.
Keeping Anjum at the centre of various narratives in the novel, Roy has empathized with
the sufferers of numerous incidents that happened in India, be it National Emergency,
Godhra Kand, Cow Lynching or Bhopal Gas tragedy. Through this novel, Roy has also
implicitly criticized the political atmosphere of India. (Maurya, Nagendra)
● The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is not a picaresque tale of sorrowers but a saga of
small-time renegades of fate who emerge as portraits each of a singular fortitude through
the darkest hour. (Dwivedi)

10. ● The true measure of a democracy is in how it treats its most marginalized and vulnerable people.
For some of us, it is the condition of the powerless and marginalized, not the powerful that best
reflects the character of a country. It’s people on the margins who are able to observe a country
most clearly, and from all angles, rather than following the lead of how the people at the center
of the country, at the center of its norms want to see themselves. (Felicelli)
● Ecofeminism devises women as having the capability to generate ecological change. It can be
seen as asserting women by emphasizing their close association with nature. Roy, through her
novel was able to encourage and induce women to become the representatives of change. She
has penned all the events beautifully in her present novel and proficiently highlights the
uncertain relationship between women and nature in the present world. (Choudhary)
● “At magic hour”, tells Roy, as though beginning a fairytale. However, the fantastic imagery of the
magic hour takes a sharp turn with the introduction of flying foxes and crows, Banyan trees and
the old graveyard. All images that are in contradiction to the initial fairytale opening. There is a
binary opposition between the magical charm of the opening line and stark realities that follow.
It must therefore be noted that this novel has no element of magic realism. In Waterstones
interview held on 5 June 2017, Roy emphatically asserts that the creatures and characters that
populate her novel are not magical. All the images that appear are neither magical nor
metaphorical but true. (Mohsin, Taskeen)

11. Quotes From the Novel
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Arundhati Roy
● "It doesn't matter. I'm all of them. I'm Romi and Juli, I'm Laila
and Majnu. And Mujna, why not? Who says my name is
Anjum? I'm not Anjum, I'm Anjuman. I'm a mehfil, I'm a
gathering. Of everybody and nobody, of everything and nothing.
Is there anyone else you would like to invite? Everyone's
invited"
● "Everybody, that is, except for Guih Kyom the dung beetle. He
was wide awake and on duty, lying on his back with his legs in
the air to save the world in case the heavens fell. But even he
knew that things would turn out all right in the end. They
would, because they had to."

12. “How
to
tell
a
shattered
story?
By
slowly
becoming
everybody.
No.
By slowly becoming everything.”
This is how the
Quote is written
in the Novel.

13. Choudhary, Swati. "Ecofeminist study of Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost
Happiness." IJCRT (2018).
Dwivedi, Divya. "The Poetic Realism of Arundhati Roy." The Wire (2017).
Felicelli, Anita. "Outside Language and Power: The Mastery of Arundhati Roy's 'The
Ministry of Utmost Happiness'." LARB Los Angeles Review of Books (2017).
Maurya, Prashant and Nagendra Kumar. "Political Overtones and Allusions in Arundhati
Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness." Research Journal of Humanities and
Social Sciences (September 2019).
Mohsin, Syed Wahaj and Shaista Taskeen. "Environmental Concerns in Arundhati Roy's
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness." Research Gate (2017).
Roy, Arundhati. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Gurgaon: Penguin Random House,
2017. Print.
Sehgal , Parul. "Arundhati Roy's Fascinating Mess." The Atlantic (2017).
Works Cited

14. Thank You