“The Ministry of Utmost Happiness,” by Arundhati Roy,
2017
There must be a trend in Indian fiction to have
ironic titles that do not reflect the real nature of India. Roy’s first work of fiction in many years, it
interweaves the story of various ‘losers’ whose lives are damaged by the conservative
Hindu nativism paid for by the “millionaire God men" that now control the
political scene in India. This is political fiction, where individuals, love, children, babies and family stories are inextricably
tied to social reality, not escapes from it.
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| A Tourist Destination! |
The book opens with the story of a boy Aftab who
wanted to be a girl and became an unhappy ‘hijra’ named Anjum after a somewhat
botched sex-change operation. She joins
a collective of hijras in Delhi,
who help each other in the very conservative atmosphere of Indian
sexuality. At first you think that Roy is going to tell a
story about the most trendy present liberal topic, transsexuals. But then the focus widens. The famous pogrom in Gurjurat after 9/11
affects Anjum, and reference is made to the chief minister of Gujurat, who was
directing the pogrom. That would be Narenda Modi, but in this story, unnamed. Modi is now the Hindu supremist and
neo-liberal Prime Minster of India
and a welcome guest to the U.S.
Anjum ends up leaving a home of hijras and going to
live in a graveyard in Delhi. From sleeping on a rug there she builds huts
around graves of those she knows, and starts to run a mortuary with help from
other surplus people. Ultimately many
outcasts come to live in the graveyard, which is certainly a metaphor for
something.
The occupation of Kashmir
by the Indian Army forms the political heart of the story. The occupation has been going on since
Partition in 1947. As Roy
puts it:
“I
would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing happens there’s lots
to write about. That can’t be done in Kashmir. It’s not sophisticated.” Notice the slam against post-modernist fiction - excessively detailed stories
about nothing.
The activities of Islamic terrorist groups allows the
Indian Army to apply its own form of state terrorism to the population of Kashmir, mostly Muslims.
It is to be an occupation that never ends, as the Indian Army supplies
some terrorist groups with ammunition to keep the pot boiling. Unsurprisingly many police in India
are brutal thugs – a characteristic of police all over the world and not a
secret at this point.
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| Kashmir - India's Palestine |
A quartet of characters revolve around the situation
in Kashmir, who all first met in school. One is now a reporter who is also a
collaborator, Naga. One part of the
quartet, 'Garson Hobart', is a lovelorn secret police officer and gets to
narrate for a time. One is a Kashmiri Muslim nationalist leader, Musa. One is a woman who loves him and begins to
understand the situation in Kashmir, Tilo. Their
blood-thirsty enemy is a secret police commander in Kashmir,
Amrik Singh. Ultimately Kashmir needs self-determination, but that word never
reaches these pages, although its meaning does.
Both Anjum and Tilo are searching for babies, as they
are unable to have them normally. Roy seems to think the
babies are the optimistic future. I'm
not so sure. Nothing guarantees a baby
growing up to be anything but a copy of what already exists.
In the process, Roy
describes many corrupt, absurd or sad facts of Indian life. An ‘artist’ walks around with shit attached
to his clothes as an artistic statement.
Heartless young and rich Indians find caste status a key in their treatment of
the world. A security guard not allowed
to wear sunglasses, whose eyes are burned by watching over a stainless steel
statute that catches the blazing sun. A
former leftist journalist who condemns aspects of Indian rule in Kashmir while secretly working for the military and
police. A profusion of fake products in
the whole economy, including even the animals in the Delhi zoo.
Clothes taken off dead bodies and re-sold. 'Anti-corruption' campaigns ultimately run by
the corrupters. The idiotic Indian media
- not much different than our own. And
on and on.
As to the writing, Roy makes up some great words like
‘smallwigs.’ She comments how stories of
misery never go anywhere in the "international supermarkets of grief.” 'Telling your story' is ultimately not
enough... She writes almost surreal
sections that are sometimes funny, acid or beautiful. This is Roy
describing the ‘modernization’ of India:
“Skyscrapers and steel factories sprang
up where forests used to be, rivers were bottled and sold in supermarkets, fish
were tinned, mountains mined and turned into shining missiles. Massive dams lit up the cities like Christmas
trees. Everyone was happy.”
Then several times Roy transcribes long sections of
dictated notes full of random thoughts by various characters that do not cohere. I frankly skipped them. The book has no plot really. It focuses on the characters interweaving
around their fate of being outsiders and the parallel cruel occupation of Kashmir. This
occupation is another unknown
story. Bringing it's reality to readers
attention is the most progressive part of this book.
Other books on India reviewed below. Use blog search box, upper left. "Annihilation of Caste," “The Last
Man in the Tower,” "The God Market,” “Behind
the Beautiful Forevers,” "The Story of My Assassins" and various
earlier books by Roy – “Walking with the Comrades,” “Notes on
Democracy,” and "Capitalism - A Ghost Story."
Red Frog
August 8, 2017
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