Where Margins Intersect: A Study of Arundhati Roy‘’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Abstract

Arundhati Roy exhibits amazing ingenuity in crafting a literary dais for the people who exist on the fringes of the Indian society. After the remarkable success of her debut novel The God of Small Things (1997), Roy continued writing non-fictional works that were quite provocative and radical in nature. She often contemplates on the issues of national importance. She is a novelist, a feminist, a literary activist and an ardent environmentalist. Some of her non-fictional works include The End of Imagination (1998), The Cost of Living (1999), The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2002), Public Power in the Age of Empire (2004), Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy (2010), and Kashmir: The Case for Freedom (2011).

Her recent novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), enthralls the global readership with its epic-like scope, a wide spectrum of characters and a fascinating narrative with interwoven stories. This novel encapsulates the rapidly transforming face of Indian democracy with the rise of Right-wing political ideology, the degenerating condition of the marginalized groups of people, the atrocities that are rampant in Kashmir valley and the environmental hazards that have surfaced due to rapidly evolving urbanization.

This paper delves into a judicious study of the process of marginalization by analyzing Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. It aims to explore the way in which Roy makes an artistic effort to connect the margins with the mainstream in order to restore the lost grandeur of Indian societal structure.