FL: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

This blog is assigned by Dr. Dilip Sir Barad and focuses on The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy. For further informationClick Here . and Click Here.

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The lecture highlights that The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a complex novel in which Arundhati Roy uses innovative literary techniques, deep thematic concerns, and rich historical references to explore marginalized lives in India. The novel opens with magic realism and surrealism, presenting Anjum in a graveyard as if she were a tree, suggesting a living consciousness within nature and inanimate spaces. This technique allows Roy to blur the boundaries between the human and non-human world, reflecting the emotional and psychological states of her characters. The narrative is also postmodern, often using irony and dark humor to undercut tragic events, such as the beheading of the saint Sarmad being compared to a motorist picking up a fallen helmet. The story follows a non-linear structure, frequently shifting into characters’ backstories to explain their present conditions, reinforcing the idea that trauma does not follow a straight timeline. A major concern in the novel is the problem of language, especially in relation to third-gender identity; the lecture explains that Anjum’s existence lies outside the male–female linguistic system, making it difficult for society—and even her mother—to comprehend or articulate her identity. Thematically, the novel deeply explores identity and transgender anxiety, showing the internal conflict of living in a body that does not align with social expectations. The contrast between Dunya (the external world of politics, violence, and war) and Khwabgah (the house of dreams) is crucial, as Anjum argues that riots and wars are not only external events but internal struggles that exist within individuals. The lecture also emphasizes the erasure of history, particularly how Mughal history and the once-respected position of Hijras are being rewritten or forgotten in modern nationalist narratives. Historical trauma plays a central role, especially the 2002 Gujarat riots, which completely transform Anjum from a glamorous figure into a haunted, ghost-like presence in a graveyard, showing how violence reshapes identity. The novel is deeply rooted in historical and mythological contexts, including Mughal traditions of the Hijra community, the story of Sarmad the saint as a symbol of defiance, and various religious and mythic allusions. Overall, the lecture stresses that the novel is not just a fictional narrative but a powerful intervention in ongoing debates about identity, history, nationhood, and the silencing of marginalized voices in the construction of modern India.

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The second part of the lecture on The Ministry of Utmost Happiness focuses on the character of Saddam Hussein (originally Dayachand) and the symbolic importance of Jantar Mantar as a space of marginalized voices. Saddam is introduced as a permanent resident of Anjum’s Jannat Guest House in the graveyard, and his life story exposes the harsh realities of caste oppression. Born a Dalit (Chamar) in Haryana, Dayachand works in a government hospital mortuary, where Roy uses sharp social satire to show how upper-caste doctors refuse to touch disfigured or accidental dead bodies, leaving Dalits to perform the most degrading labor while the privileged merely supervise. His life takes a traumatic turn when he witnesses his father being lynched by a mob over false accusations of cow slaughter, an act marked by what the lecture calls the “cold-blooded pride” of modern violence, as the attackers proudly record and circulate videos of the killing. Seeking justice and revenge against the police officer involved, Dayachand renames himself Saddam Hussein after watching the execution of the Iraqi leader on television, inspired by Saddam’s dignity in the face of overwhelming American power. Alongside this personal trauma, the lecture highlights everyday economic exploitation, showing how Saddam works as a security guard through an agency that takes 60 percent of his salary, reflecting systemic corruption where the poor are continuously exploited by intermediaries. The narrative then shifts to Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, which Roy transforms into a symbolic “parliament of the marginalized,” a space where unheard voices gather. Set against the backdrop of the 2011 Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement, the lecture criticizes media bias that focused exclusively on this protest while ignoring others, such as the Mothers of the Disappeared from Kashmir, Manipur nationalists protesting AFSPA, survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy, and various environmental and language activists. The climax of this section occurs with the discovery of an abandoned newborn baby at Jantar Mantar, leading to a conflict between Anjum and politically ambitious figures like Mr. Aggarwal over the child’s custody. Amid police intervention and chaos, the baby mysteriously disappears, creating a secret that propels the narrative toward Kashmir. Overall, the lecture emphasizes that this section of the novel blends personal trauma with political history, using Jantar Mantar as a powerful symbol of a nation where everyone protests, yet no one is truly heard.

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The third part of the lecture on The Ministry of Utmost Happiness focuses on the interconnected narratives of Kashmir and the Dandakaranya forest, highlighting how Roy stitches together personal lives and political histories. A major narrative shift occurs through the two chapters titled “The Landlord,” which are written in the first-person voice of Biplab Dasgupta, a senior Intelligence Bureau officer. This shift from the novel’s dominant third-person narration allows readers to enter the mind of the state itself, revealing how surveillance, control, and personal emotions coexist uneasily. The lecture then traces the shared past of four friends from an architecture college in Delhi—Tilo, Musa Yeswi, Nagaraj Hariharan (Naga), and Biplab—whose lives diverge along different ideological paths. Tilo emerges as the novel’s most enigmatic figure and is often read as Roy’s autobiographical presence, while Musa’s life is irrevocably altered when his wife Arifa and daughter Miss Jebeen are killed by a single bullet fired by security forces, pushing him toward militancy. Naga becomes a journalist who often functions as a state “handler,” shaping narratives that serve official interests, while Biplab, secretly in love with Tilo, represents the conflicted conscience of the Indian state. The lecture’s discussion of Kashmir foregrounds extreme state violence through figures like Captain Amrik Singh, whose cruelty radicalizes resistance and ultimately destroys him; after fleeing to the United States, he murders his own family and commits suicide, suggesting that the violence inflicted on others eventually turns inward. In a crucial exchange, Musa warns Biplab that while the Indian state may blind Kashmiris with pellet guns, it is in fact eroding its own moral soul, predicting that Kashmir will lead to India’s self-destruction. These narratives are finally linked to the Maoist struggle in Dandakaranya through Revathy’s long letter, which reveals that she was gang-raped by six policemen and that the abandoned baby found at Jantar Mantar—Miss Jebeen II or Udaya—is the product of that violence. The child is described as having three mothers: Revathy, Tilo, who rescues her, and Anjum, who raises her in the graveyard. The novel ultimately brings together the trajectories of gender marginalization, Kashmir’s insurgency, and Maoist resistance at Anjum’s Jannat Guest House, which becomes a sanctuary for those rejected by the “Dunya.” Through symbols such as Miss Jebeen II and the figure of “The Landlord,” Roy suggests that the state’s obsessive control and violence do not secure power but instead lead to moral and psychological collapse, reinforcing the novel’s central warning about self-destruction through oppression.

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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness focuses on how the novel resolves its multiple narrative threads while reinforcing its central metaphors and themes. A key symbol discussed is the Dung Beetle (Guiamolo), which becomes a powerful metaphor for the marginalized characters in the novel. Just as the dung beetle persistently rolls its ball of waste despite surrounding chaos, characters like Anjum, Tilo, and Saddam continue to build their own fragile yet meaningful world in the form of the Jannat Guest House amid political violence and social breakdown. The lecturer explains that what society dismisses as “waste” or “dung” is, in fact, essential for sustaining life, symbolizing how neglected and discarded people form the foundation of resilience and survival. The novel’s resolution brings together its three major struggles—Anjum’s journey representing gender identity and the Hijra community, Tilo’s involvement with the Kashmiri struggle for azadi, and Revathy’s experience within the Maoist movement—through the figure of the child Udaya Jebeen (Miss Jebeen II), described as having “six fathers and three mothers.” This child becomes the emotional center of the Jannat Guest House, embodying a new kind of family created through shared trauma rather than blood ties. The graveyard itself transforms into a sanctuary, with rooms built around graves, suggesting that for the marginalized, safety exists only among the dead, away from the cruelty of the living world. The lecture highlights moments of ethical transformation, such as Saddam choosing care and marriage with Zainab over revenge, and Tilo finding peace and belonging by helping raise the child within this unconventional community. Reflecting on the line “How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everything,” the lecturer explains Roy’s non-linear narrative as a necessary form to represent fractured lives and histories. Ultimately, the novel redefines “utmost happiness” not as the absence of suffering but as resistance through shared joy, compassion, and community. The lecture concludes by framing the novel as a biography of modern India and an attempt to create a language for the unheard, ending with the vision of Jannat as a collective paradise where everyone, especially the forgotten, is invited.

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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness as a deeply layered thematic exploration of modern India, where Arundhati Roy uses symbols, characters, and fragmented storytelling to expose social and political realities. A central idea discussed is the paradox of Jannat (Paradise), which in the novel is not a heavenly afterlife but a graveyard turned into the Jannat Guest House, suggesting that true paradise must be created on earth through secular coexistence and shared humanity. The lecture emphasizes ambiguity and diversity, embodied in Anjum, whose intersex identity challenges rigid binaries and represents the difficulty yet necessity of living with difference. Roy also critiques modernization and development, questioning who benefits from India’s material progress while marginalized communities—farmers, slum dwellers, and the poor—lose land, dignity, and livelihoods. The novel repeatedly blurs the boundary between life and death, turning the graveyard into a living space and introducing the idea of “second burials” as emotional acts meant to heal the living rather than merely honor the dead. The purpose of storytelling itself is examined through Roy’s non-linear, fragmented narrative, which mirrors the shattered lives of her characters and insists that broken histories can only be told in broken forms. The lecture further explores marginalization and social status, focusing on the Hijra community, Kashmiri separatists, and Maoist insurgents, while criticizing modern capitalism for reducing people to consumers and ignoring deep inequalities. Roy’s critique of corruption, violence, and power highlights how religion is manipulated by political forces, with extremism—both Hindu and Muslim—creating insecurity for ordinary citizens. Despite these harsh realities, the novel affirms resilience and hope, symbolized by the Dung Beetle and the child Udaya Jebeen, which represent humanity’s ability to survive and find meaning amid suffering. Through characters like Anjum and spaces like the Jannat Guest House, Roy offers a powerful social commentary, ultimately presenting the novel as a “biography” of modern India that urges readers to embrace diversity, inclusivity, and compassion in a fractured world.

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Arundhati Roy uses symbols and motifs in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness to critique modern Indian politics, social hierarchies, and fragmented identities. It begins with Sarmad the saint, a Jewish-Armenian convert to Islam who was executed for questioning religious orthodoxy, symbolizing the danger yet necessity of doubt, internal division, and resistance to rigid belief systems. Politically, the novel uses the 2011 Anti-Corruption Movement at Jantar Mantar, represented through the figure of the “old man” (a fictionalized Anna Hazare), to show how Gandhian imagery can unite people temporarily while ultimately enabling polarized and authoritarian political regimes; this transition is further satirized through Mr. Aggarwal, who symbolizes the shift from activism to institutional power. In the Kashmir sections, cinema halls like Shiraz Cinema function as powerful cultural symbols: once spaces of pleasure and community, they are first shut down by militants as a rejection of Indian cultural influence and later converted by the Indian army into interrogation centers, reflecting the erasure of joy and the invasion of state violence into everyday life. The chilling phrase “Jannat Express,” used by Captain Amrik Singh to describe killing militants, exposes the brutal dehumanization normalized in conflict zones. Roy also contrasts Dunya, the violent and chaotic outside world, with Jannat, the fragile paradise created in a graveyard, redefining happiness as survival rather than comfort. The motif of motherhood complicates nationalist ideas of Bharat Mata, as inclusive mother figures like Anjum and Tilo are set against a modern nationalism that uses the image of the motherland to justify violence against “others.” Recurring descriptions of internal organs murmuring or fighting symbolize psychological trauma and inner conflict caused by constant exposure to violence, while the disappearance of vultures represents unintended victims of modernization and the erasure of traditional ecosystems and communities. The lecture concludes that these symbols are central to Roy’s shattered narrative style, allowing her to tell the suppressed stories of those living on the margins of an ancient yet deeply fractured society.

 Worksheet: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

 Activity A: The "Shattered Story" Structure (Textual Analysis with ChatGPT)

In The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy employs a non-linear narrative structure that mirrors the fragmented experiences and traumas of her characters. The novel does not follow a straightforward chronological order; instead, it weaves together multiple timelines and perspectives, reflecting the psychological reality of characters who have endured displacement, loss, and political violence. This structure embodies the idea of "how to tell a shattered story by slowly becoming everything," in which the narrative itself absorbs the pain, memory, and multiple identities of the characters, allowing the story to emerge from the fragments rather than a single linear plot.

One key example of this is the transition from the "Khwabgah" in Old Delhi to the "Graveyard" (Jannat), spaces that serve as physical metaphors for displacement and marginalization. The Khwabgah, a communal living space, represents the liminal world of those on the fringes of society, while the Graveyard becomes a sanctuary for Anjum, reflecting both her personal grief and the larger social exclusion of transgender individuals. The narrative shifts between these spaces non-linearly, often looping back to past events, emphasizing how trauma persists across time and cannot be contained within a simple chronological sequence.

Tilo’s story in Kashmir also exemplifies this non-linear storytelling. Her experiences of love, loss, and political violence in Kashmir intersect with Anjum’s life through the discovery of a baby, creating a narrative convergence that links personal and collective trauma. By connecting Tilo’s past with Anjum’s present, Roy shows how lives ruptured by historical and political upheavals are intertwined, suggesting that understanding trauma requires moving across timelines and perspectives.

Through these techniques, the novel demonstrates that a shattered story cannot be told in a straight line. By “slowly becoming everything”—inhabiting multiple spaces, voices, and temporalities—Roy crafts a narrative that captures the complexity of trauma, showing how personal and political histories coalesce in the lives of her characters.

Activity B: Mapping the Conflict (Mind Mapping with NotebookLM)

overview or Mind Map

connections between Anjum (The Graveyard), Saddam Hussain (The Mortuary/Cow Protection violence), and Tilo (Kashmir/Architecture).

Activity D: The "Audio/Video" Synthesis (Multimedia with NotebookLM) 

V. Phase 3: Critical Reflection 

Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a novel with a reputation for being profoundly complex. Its narrative intercepts the lives of a vast cast of seemingly unconnected characters, spread across the length and breadth of India. This narrative intricacy is not accidental; it is a mirror reflecting the fragmented nature of modern India and the fractured lives of its most marginalized people.

Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a novel with a reputation for being profoundly complex. Its narrative intercepts the lives of a vast cast of seemingly unconnected characters, spread across the length and breadth of India. This narrative intricacy is not accidental; it is a mirror reflecting the fragmented nature of modern India and the fractured lives of its most marginalized people.

This post aims to distill five of the most profound and counter-intuitive truths the novel offers. Through a deep analysis of its characters and themes, we can uncover the challenging perspectives that make this book such a vital, if difficult, work of contemporary literature.

The Real War is Fought Within

The novel introduces us to Anjum, a Hijra (a third-gender identity) who is part of a community living in a haveli called the Khwabgah, or "House of Dreams." Her community makes a sharp distinction between their world and the outside world, which they call the "Duniya." They observe the people of the Duniya, who are made unhappy by external conflicts they see on the news: Hindu-Muslim riots, the Indo-Pakistan war, domestic violence, and financial stress.

The Hijra community, however, experiences these conflicts differently. For them, whose very bodies and identities defy the rigid categories of the outside world, these external battles are rendered internal. The war is not on a distant border; it is within the self. The novel makes this point with a staggering statement from Anjum:

"but for us the price rise and school admissions and beating husbands and cheating wives are all inside us all inside us they're not outside they're all inside us the riot is inside us the war is inside us Indo-Pak is inside us it will never settle down it can't"

This perspective radically challenges conventional ideas of conflict. It suggests that for those whose identity is a battleground, the internal struggles against societal norms, biology, and self-perception are far more relentless and inescapable than any external war.

You Can't Live Without a Language (But Some People Have To)

When Anjum’s mother, Jahanara Begum, discovers that her newborn baby (then named Aftab) is intersex, she falls "through a crack between the world she knew and ones she did not know existed." Her shock is rooted in language. Her world, and her Urdu language, is strictly binary—"either male or female either masculine or feminine." Everything has a gender.

While she knew the word "Hijra," the novel powerfully illustrates that a single label is not enough to build a world, an identity, or a life. A word is not a language.

"but two words do not make a language"

This realization pushes Jahanara Begum to a profound philosophical crisis that resonates throughout the novel: "Was it possible to live outside language?" The question addresses her not in words, but as a "soundless embryonic howl." Language provides our worldview; it gives us the tools to understand ourselves and our place in society. To be born outside of its fundamental structures is to be excluded from reality itself, a state of profound and terrifying isolation.

True Paradise Might Be a Graveyard

The novel opens with the surreal and disorienting sentence, "She lived in the graveyard like a tree." For several pages, Roy deliberately blurs the line between human and object, leaving the reader to wonder if "she" is a personified tree or a woman who has become one with her funereal surroundings. This is our introduction to Anjum. After surviving a traumatic event during the 2002 Gujarat riots, she leaves the Khwabgah and builds a new home for herself among the tombstones of a Delhi graveyard.

She names this place "Jannat"—Paradise. What begins as a single room slowly evolves into the "Jannat Guest House," a sprawling, unconventional sanctuary built around graves. It becomes a refuge for the city's outcasts, misfits, and forgotten souls, a place where a true community flourishes. The novel presents us with a startling paradox: its most hopeful, inclusive, and life-affirming space—a true paradise—is a place of death. Anjum’s philosophy is one of total inclusion, establishing Jannat as a 'mehfil'—a gathering—where absolutely everyone is invited.

This suggests a bleak truth about the "Duniya." For those who are rejected and marginalized by the world of the living, a truly harmonious existence can only be found among the dead and the forgotten, in a place where society’s rules no longer apply.

 The Most Shocking Violence Isn't the Act, It's the Pride

One of the novel's most unforgettable characters is Saddam Hussein, whose birth name is Dayachand. He is a Dalit man whose father was lynched by a mob for skinning a dead cow. The novel identifies the most disturbing aspect of this horrific event not as the brutal violence itself, but as the triumphant attitude of the perpetrators.

The mob was proud of their actions. They filmed the beating on their phones. They proudly shared the video on social media, treating the murder as a great achievement. The novel's analysis of this moment is chillingly precise:

"...what is shocking is that those people who are doing that they are very proud of doing that they are doing video recording and they are very proudly sharing that video over social media that see what we have done and this is the right thing to do now that is very shocking"

This insight shifts our understanding of horror. The violence is not just an impulsive act of anger; it is a celebrated, performative spectacle. The true terror lies not in the lynching itself, but in a society where such cruelty can be a source of pride.

Fear is a Weapon That Makes Your Enemy Destroy Themselves

In the Kashmir section of the novel, we meet the cruel army officer Captain Amrik Singh, who tortured and killed many innocent people before fleeing to America with his family. We also meet Musa, a militant whose family was a victim of this violence.

Musa and others follow Amrik Singh, but not to attack him directly. Instead, they create an inescapable environment of fear. They make their presence known, ensuring he lives in constant terror, seeing threats around every corner. The outcome is devastating. Amrik Singh, who once wielded fear as his primary weapon, "almost got mad out of fear" and ultimately killed his own family before committing suicide.

The novel’s chilling conclusion is that fear can be a more potent weapon than a gun, forcing an enemy into self-destruction. Musa articulates this as the novel's most radical political statement, connecting Amrik Singh's personal unraveling to the broader conflict:

"You are not destroying us; you are constructing us. It is yourselves you are destroying."

This haunting insight suggests that oppressive violence is ultimately suicidal. In trying to destroy others, the oppressor plants the seeds of their own destruction.

Conclusion: We Are All Shattered Stories

These five truths—that the real war is internal, that language can exclude you from existence, that paradise might be a graveyard, that pride in violence is the ultimate horror, and that fear makes the oppressor self-destruct—are windows into the world Roy builds. They are not isolated fragments but interconnected pieces of the same shattered reality. The profound isolation of being born "outside language" creates the internal battleground where every conflict is fought within the self. This internal exile makes a graveyard feel like a sanctuary and reveals how the celebrated violence of the oppressor ultimately ensures their own destruction.

The novel itself seems to understand that a conventional, linear narrative would be a lie. It can only tell these stories by adopting a fragmented, shattered structure. In its final pages, the book offers its own meta-commentary on this challenge, leaving the reader with a thought that is as complex and profound as the novel itself.

Thank you for reading ...

Reference :

Barad, Dilip. "Flipped Learning Worksheet on The Ministry of Utmost Happiness." ResearchGate, Feb. 2025, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399801292_Flipped_Learning_Worksheet_on_The_Ministry_of_Utmost_Happiness

DoE-MKBU. "Part 1 | Khwabgah | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy." YouTube, 28 Dec. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=-29vE53apGs.

DoE-MKBU. "Part 2 | Saddam Hussein and Jantar Mantar | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy." YouTube, 28 Dec. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr1z1AEXPBU.

DoE-MKBU. "Part 3 | Kashmir and Dandakaranyak | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy." YouTube, 28 Dec. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIKH_89rML0.

DoE-MKBU. "Part 4 | Udaya Jebeen & Dung Beetle | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy." YouTube, 28 Dec. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH5EULOFP4g.

DoE-MKBU. "Thematic Study | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy." YouTube, 28 Dec. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NYSTUTBoSs.

DoE-MKBU. "Symbols and Motifs | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy." YouTube, 28 Dec. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbBOqLB487U.