Narrating a fragmented nation: Arundhati Roy's Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Abstract

Published nearly 20 years after the award- winning debut novel, God of Small Things, Roy’s Ministry of Utmost Happiness seeks to articulate a postcolonial nation’s history from the perspective of the marginalized. Anjum, a hijra, Saddam Hussain, a Dalit, and Tilottama, a maverick young woman are among the main characters in this sprawling narrative whose tales intertwine to capture the failure of the secular democratic nation state. Although Anjum’s family history begins with the  Partition and its impact on the Muslims in Delhi, the prime historical focus of the novel is post-Emergency. This essay proposes that the novel’s sprawling form is a deliberate aesthetic choice which reflects the author’s engagement with the challenges of telling a national narrative from the perspective of multiple minoritarian perspectives.