Book Review : The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Writing this blog as a thinking activity Which is given by Megha ma'am for the paper of Research Methodology.

 

Arundhati Roy is one of the prominent authors in Indian English Literature. Her major writings covered the political, social, economic,

Is novel the right word, though? I hesitate. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, hulking, sprawling story that it is, has two main strands. One follows Anjum, a hijra, or transwoman, struggling to make a life for herself in Delhi. The other follows Tilo, a thorny and irresistible architect turned activist (who seems to be modeled on Roy herself), and the three men who fall in love with her. But as was true of The God of Small Things, there is more than a touch of fairy tale in the book’s moral simplicity—or clarity, if you’re feeling charitable. Roy will say of a character, “He was a very clean man. And a good one too,” and he is swiftly, unequivocally pinned to the page. (Sehgal)

"The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" is a novel written by Arundhati Roy, published in 2017. The novel follows the lives of several characters living in contemporary India, including a transgender woman named Anjum, a Kashmiri freedom fighter named Musa, and a young woman named Tilo who is drawn into their lives.

The novel explores themes such as political unrest, social injustice, religious conflict, and identity politics. It also delves into the complexities of human relationships, including love, betrayal, and the search for belonging.

Overall, "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" is a deeply moving and thought-provoking novel that offers a vivid portrait of modern India and the struggles faced by its diverse population.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a curious beast: baggy, bewilderingly overpopulated with characters, frequently achronological, written in an often careless and haphazard style and yet capable of breathtakingly composed and powerful interludes. The idea that the personal is political and vice versa informs its every sentence, but it also interrogates that assumption, examining its contours and consequences.

We begin with Anjum, who has taken up residence, for reasons that gradually unfold, in a graveyard, where she lives “like a tree” (part of the natural world, unspeaking, all-seeing is one interpretation; attempting to avoid notice another), but also as a “mehfil”, “a gathering. Of everybody and nobody, of everything and nothing. Is there anybody else you would like to invite? Everyone’s invited.” And indeed, over the course of the novel, Anjum’s graveyard home comes to function as a secular, or at least multifaith, sanctuary, protected by willpower from the turbulent outside world. (Clark and Myers)

Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness presents the shattered stories of misfits and weirdoes. The marginal people are suppressed under the socio-political structure of the government guided by the Hindu ideology in the novel. According to the novelist, after the rise of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the political system, Muslims, Dalits, women and other ethnic minorities are thought to be out of the social structure. India has stood as a federal democratic country in the world with its stratified societies of diverse culture, ethnicity and religions. The novelist believes that a true democratic state ought to accept and tolerate different ideologies. It must accept pluralism and tolerance. The accretion of monolithic vision over governing the nation aggravates the social harmony, which lessens the individual potential, subjectivity and agency. Thus, the literary writings of postcolonial India have become one of the important hidden scenes to reflect the biased policies of the nation that hinders the citizens’ potentiality. (Aryal)

Roy effortlessly captures the love Anjum feels for an abandoned child named Zainab, whom she adopts as a daughter; and the friendship she develops with a young man who calls himself Saddam Hussain and who also takes up residence in the graveyard. Roy’s depiction of Tilo and Musa’s furtive romance in Kashmir has a cinematic quality — a reminder of her work as a screenwriter — as well as a genuine poignancy and depth of emotion. (Kakutani)

It’s when Roy turns from the specifics of her characters’ lives and tries to generalize about the plight of India that her writing can grow labored and portentous: “Normality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg: its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence. It is our constant anxiety about that violence, our memory of its past labors and our dread of its future manifestations, that lays down the rules for how a people as complex and as diverse as we continue to coexist — continue to live together, tolerate each other and, from time to time, murder one another.” (Kakutani)

Work Cited:

Aryal, Binod. “Reading Polity from the Margin in Arundhati Roy’s the Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” SCHOLARS: Journal of Arts & Humanities, vol. 4, no. 1, 2022, pp. 77–86., https://doi.org/10.3126/sjah.v4i1.43057.

Clark, Alex, and Benjamin Myers. “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy review – a patchwork of narratives.” The Guardian, 11 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/11/ministry-utmost-happiness-arundhati-roy-review. Accessed 14 March 2023.

Kakutani, Michiko. “Arundhati Roy's Long-Awaited Novel Is an Ambitious Look at Turmoil in India (Published 2017).” The New York Times, 5 June 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/books/review-arundhati-roy-ministry-of-utmost-happiness.html. Accessed 14 March 2023.

Sehgal, Parul. “Review: ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,’ by Arundhati Roy.” The Atlantic, 15 August 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/arundhati-roys-fascinating-mess/528684/. Accessed 14 March 2023.

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