Hello readers...
This blog is the part of my thinking activity in the classroom. We have paper on Contemporary Literatures in English. So in that we have 4 contemporary novels by contemporary writers. This task is assigned by Dr.Dilip Barad sir.
In this blog i would like to talk about the one famous contemporary novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy.
So first of all let's throw some light on writer.
Arundhati Roy:-
Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things, which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.
About novel:-
Spanning the 1950s to the 2010s, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a 2017 novel by Arundhati Roy, follows the interconnected lives of several characters against the backdrop of contemporary India. The novel skips backwards and forwards in time freely, often pauses for detours into the stories of minor characters and includes several texts within the main text (e.g., Bhartiya’s manifesto, or Tilo’s Kashmiri-English Alphabet). At heart, however, the novel consists of two main narrative threads, one of which is centered in Delhi, and the other in Kashmir.
The book has a remarkable narrative plot, with complex set of characters mostly drawn from the lower strata of the society. The terse prose style mingled with occasional aphorism and apt similes is used to dig deep into the Indian modern history to explore the socio-political themes. Roy, as a keen observer of the events -land reform that disowned poor farmers; Godhra train burning; and the insurgency in Kashmir, compels the reader to search facts in the debris of history. The book is replete with the themes of racism, gender in equality and religious fanatism. In fact, it is a compendium of alternatives – alternative structure of kinship, resistance and romance. It is a kind of novel, where we find, a perfect marriage of art and politics, history and fiction, reason and imagination. She, through her beautiful language, creativity and wide reading, exposes the grim and violent truths that would scare anybody of the prevailing socio-political condition of the nation. The hybrid language of the book with beautiful quotations from Urdu, and references to sacred scriptures expose myth with religion. This widens the critical horizons of the novel as a new innovation in the contemporary Indian English fiction. The book can be read from various theoretical approaches –feminist/ gender theories, cultural discourse, political per se and so on.
Now I will try to ponder some points which is given by sir as task:-
1) political issue in novel
2) Gender concerns in novel
3) Environmental concern in the novel/ Ecofeminist study
4) narrative patern in novel
1) political issue in novel:-
The novel also incorporates many social and political events occurred in India and other parts of the world against the backdrop of its story. Political discourse in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness can be seen deeply entwined with the nationalistic agenda. Kashmir conflict is in the center of the novel, discussing the attitude of the political power center in dealing with it. Instead of working for a solution for one of the biggest crises on humanitarian grounds, the politicians used and keep using Kashmir as repetitive rhetoric to keep them in power by gaining more votes. An example of the political slogan is given by the author, “‘doodh mangogey to kheer dengey! Kashmir mango gey to cheer dengey!’ Ask for milk, we’ll give you cream! Ask for Kashmir, we’ll rip you open seam to seam!” (103).India’s national and political agenda has developed its roots in the religious discourse. Despite maintaining a façade of democracy, the country is ruled by the people of RSS, which is a Hindu party essentially and believes in the superiority of only the Hindu people. The ruling party of India is the BJP, which is a branch of the extremist Hindu religious party of Hindutva. Religion, in the hands of these people, is used as a tool to keep their power positions maintained and keep the people of the other religions like Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis and lower-caste Hindus as well, at the periphery. Roy shows the plight of people who are slaughtered, raped and penalized because of their religion, caste or political differences. Thereaders see Anjum; the Hijra stuck in the massacre of Gujrat, Dayachand, the Dalit changing his identity to secure a lowest paying job, Tilo, the Syrian Christian woman travelling to Kashmir for Musa, the Muslimbound to be persecuted. All these threads tell storiesof plight under the fast-rising totalitarian system of India.
2)Gender concerns in novel:-
The transgender issue in this novel is portrayed mainly through the transgender protagonist Anjum, who is a Hijra. When Anjum decides that she wants to become a woman, she joins the community of Hijra called “the Khwabgah,” or “the House of Dreams,” where a group of transgender people live together and strengthen their community through a historical narrative. Although “the House of Dreams” seems to be an ideal place for them, Hijras suffer from their social position as outsiders and insiders at the same time. Moreover, Hijras have suffered from people’s negative view of them, the unethical treatment of the surgeon in sex reassignment surgery, and the power struggle and conflict between old and new generation Hijras in “the House of Dreams.” Later, Anjum leaves “the House of Dreams” to live in the graveyard where she sets up the Jannat Guest House, or Paradise. The Jannat Guest House becomes the place where Anjum welcomes other Hijras who leave the rigid structural power of the established Hijra Gharanas.8 With Anjum’s desire to be liberated from heteronormative society and the hierarchical system, she comes to live within the territory of the graveyard, where she forms connections with other Hijras.
One of the characters, Nimmo, another Hijra with whom Anjum lives, relates the experience of being a Hijra to the conflict between India and Pakistan, linking the gender binary to the violent partition of the two countries. Through presenting us with a character who defies the gender binary, Roy invites readers to see past not only the strict, artificial categories that separate masculine and feminine—but also, by extension, those that separate Hindu from Muslim, Indian from Pakistani. In a way, Anjum embodies the concept of coexistence, by allowing two genders considered to be fundamentally opposite to coexist within her. By characterizing this as a special, and even sacred, identity, Roy demonstrates the power that comes from embracing difference rather than seeking to destroy it.
3)Environmental concern in the novel/ Ecofeminist study:-
Women and environment share a close bond. They care and nurture each other. Both have
the inherent capacity to flourish in a conducive atmosphere. Literature which mirrors life
has a huge say in producing content which discusses topics related to environment.Several women writers like Margaret Atwood, Anita Desai, Kiran, Desai and Arundhati Roy have written extensively about environment in their novels. In India, Arundhati Royis among the prominent contemporary fiction writers who is also a staunch environmentalist.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (TMUH), Roy demonstratesa penchant to discuss issues related to the environment and the destruction caused to itthrough human greed. Seasons, rivers, dams, polluted environment in cities, factories thatdestroy natural resources are common themes. Both imaginary and real places in her novels are characterized by the vivid imagery of nature and the surrounding environment, thus making it a recurring theme in her fictional works providing a non-fictional angle to story-telling.
In The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Roy has these lines as her opening:
"At magic hour, when the sun has gone but the light has not, armies of flying foxes unbinge
themselves from the Banyan trees in the old graveyard and drift across the city like smoke. When the bats leave, the crows come home. Not all the din of their homecoming fills the silence left by the sparrows that have gone missing, and the old white-backed vultures…that have been wiped out. The vultures died of diclofenac poisoning."
The harsh reality of how the behaviour of humans is affecting the environment and destroying the lives of birds and animals which are as much a part of the living community in this earth is elaborated by the author. This is the theme which runs through the entire novel. We find a description of the river in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. As Tilowalks near the riverfront and stopped on a bridge, she ‘watched a man row a circular raft
built with old mineral-water bottles and plastic jerrycans across the thick, slow, filthy river. Buffaloes sank blissfully into the black water. On the pavement vendors sold lush melons and sleek green cucumbers grown in pure factory effluent’ (TMUH 234). Giving a true picture of the havoc caused by the river Jhelum, in Kashmir, during the floods, Roy
writes: ‘When the Jhelum rose and breached its banks, the city disappeared. Whole
housing colonies went underwater. Army camps, torture centres, hospitals, courthouses,
police stations – all went down. Houseboats floated over what had once been market
places’ (TMUH 264).
Hence Roy, an active participant of several social causes, places similar occurrences in
her novels too. The Bhopal gas tragedy is recounted in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.The struggle of survivors “to demand compensation: clean water and medical care for themselves and the generations of deformed babies who were born after the gas leak” is presented along with related issues plaguing the country and its environment.
The pollution choking the capital city of Delhi and causing massive havoc is elaborated in
detail in the novel. The marked differences between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ is
discussed. ‘On the city’s industrial outskirts, in the miles of bright swamp tightly compacted with refuse and colourful plastic bags, where the evicted had been ‘re-settled’, the air was chemical and the water poisonous. Clouds of mosquitoes rose from thick green ponds’ (TMUH 100).
4) narrative patern in novel:-
The narrative pattern of ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness' is very hard and tough to understand. Because it is not easy to understand Roy’s technique of writing.A major criticism that has arisen about the narrative of the novel is about it‟s over expository nature.
The narratives are too explanatory and direct that it leaves no subtext for the readers to chew on. The whole narration in done in the form of a heap of information packets that the reader is often left confused and bored.
Instead of footnotes, each and every detail is over explained in the novel, leaving no space for the readers imagination or curiosity, for e.g. explanation is given for the festival dussehra and Bollywood legends, not to speak of the Mughal history, which leaves the novel close-ended. But thematically the novel is open-ended. Character development is lost to the convenience of listing out the litany of corruptions of the system, as Roy is keen to include characters from each sphere through various narrative technique to drive home her message eloquently. Thus the novel gives the quotient of influence more value over that of pleasure or entertainment.
Thus the main stream of the narrative builds up the dystopian society, giving the readers an
apocalyptical warning, whereas in the undercurrent Roy creates a utopia, build up by the rejects of the society under the guidance of Anjum. Miss Jebeen the second or Miss Udaya Jabeen is the ultimate diptych link in the narrative, connecting both halves of the dystopia, and is considered as a savior, who would help in the propagation of the maneuver of empathy, which in turn shows Roy‟s hope in the future generation, unlike her tone in The End of Imagination.
The first half of the story is said in the third person omnipresent narrator who details the life of Anjum and the people associated with her. The second part altogether starts without a clue with Biplab Das as the narrator, introduced as „The Landlord‟ by the title, and later as Hobart Garson (the name by which Tilo called him since he acted out that role in their skit). Thus this part of the narrative is subjective and biased as seen by the evidence, “Or at least that‟s the way I see it” leading to an unreliable narration.
Conclusion:-
In nutshell we can say that The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness is as much a heartbreaking tale of love, friendship and family; as it is an eye opener to the disastrous political situations in India, corruption, the prevailing caste and religious prejudices and terrorism and the never ending fight for Azadi (freedom) in Kashmir.
Because of the controversial subjects addressed in the book, many are sure to criticise the book. With the state that our country is in right now, we need more bold authors to come up with such books. This is a must read for every single Indian out there as many a youth are either blinded by the senseless political parties that they support or basking in the safety of their metropolitan environment.
References:-
Ann Theres Joy. " Seaming a Shattered Story: Roy‟s Narrative Patterns in the Ministry of Utmost Happiness‟."Quest Journals Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science, vol. 06, no.12, 2018, pp. 20-23
Das, Shruti. “Trauma and Transgender Space in Arundhati Roy’s the Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series, vol. 9, no. 2, 2020, pp. 44–53., doi:10.31178/ubr.9.2.5.
Roy, Arundhati. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. 2017.
Suleman, Danish. "Political and Gender Issues in Arundhati Roy’s "TheMinistry of Utmost Happiness"Masalah Politik dan Gender dalam Arundhati Roy "The Ministryof Utmost Happiness"." ReserchGate (2020): 8.
Thank you....
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