Binod Aryal
After completing two semesters of study of MPhil in English from Central Department of English in TU, we were facing a mandatory requirement of writing dissertation at the end. It was the recent challenge. We had written eight term papers; still, research stood as a strenuous job. I was ever eager to learn about the privileged and their subtle forms of oppression in society. I chose the same for my research.
For a few days, we just spent pondering on the research area. Before writing, we consulted with many teachers. One day, I went to the Department and fortunately met the then Head of Department, Prof. Dr. Anirudra Thapa who arranged meeting with Dr. Komal Phuyal in the reading room of the library. While discussing, he suggested me Arundhati Roy’s novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness to explore how the marginal people critique the polity from within in the novel.
I searched a lot of relevant and related articles and documents to realize the concept of limitation of individuals and to know how people can critique their nation. I read the document and enthusiastically started my work. My proposal was accepted with some suggestions for revision.
My paper concentrated on seeing overt forms of oppression where one group actively thwacks on another; however, I have never realized the part of the lower class in the system of oppression to create an autonomous domain. So, I began to study about the subjectivity, agency, and resistance to understand the power domination in social structure.
After a few days, we arranged a meeting with Dr. Phuyal. In the meeting, he gave us a host of issues and concepts to ponder on, decide on, and appropriate in our writing. He wanted us to think and think like matured, original people. He seemed to be obsessed with two agendas: thinking clearly and writing structured pieces. When he uttered clarity, it would come visible to my eyes. His structure haunted like a ghost around me all the time during the research.
With the aim of conducting research through acquiring skills, I brought secondary resources visiting different libraries. After amalgamating the relevant journal papers, my reading began. These articles brought two things: clarity and structure. I could see him smile through those pages with these two words.
While reading articles, I found the scholarly articles holding me tightly to themselves in their arguments. The claims were the glues: the topics stuck me there. I would keep thinking, writing, trying to find a structure, while clarity would slip off my tips of fingers. New insights developed like a flash of light and went away in a split of second. Then, I realized: the research meant life; it was complex to grasp them all in a short period of time. I doubled my effort to figure out the claim as far as possible.
Arundhati Roy is well recognized for her booker prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things: she favors small things and the natural flow of river against big dams in her writings. There are many scholarly articles on The God of Small Things but her second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a recent work. I talked to Dr. Phuyal, the supervisor assigned to me by the department. We had a solution: he sent me some and I had collected some of them. Now the number was quite sizable for such research.
We had discussed Antonio Gramsci, Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, David Arnold, Gyan Prakash, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and a few other theorists in our course. I could use them as a frame of reference to interpret what Roy wanted to say in her second novel. After reading their texts and subtexts, I had a fair understanding of their views in relation to social domination. Reading various articles and texts paved me a smooth route to uneasy world of theory.
The novel reflects on the socio-cultural and political scenario of India. The atypical social structure has engulfed the contribution of peasants and working-class people as Italian Marxist philosopher, Antonio Gramsci views in his own country. Similarly, subaltern theorists raise the issue of power domination of oppressor and the oppressed. A similar type of relationship exists in the text.
Many critics and scholars have raised the issues of homosexuality, transgender, Muslim, women, and casteism in the novel. Apart from them, I observe how the social structure and dominant ideology of the government creates an unfair society that gives space to the upper class and powerful group. This alienated system boycotts the marginal and downtrodden people from mainstream politics. So, the underdog develops a living place away from the organized society: Roy shows that a graveyard is better than the city apartments. She places her characters building a cozy space in the graveyard through which to critique the politics favoring monoreligious practices.
Roy implies that culturally secular India does not exist! To dig out the issue, I apply the theoretical concept of the subaltern theorists who problematize the process of writing history that incorporates and amplifies the contribution of elites, erasing the contribution of peasants and working-class in bringing about the social change.
Subaltern Studies primarily focuses on the peasants and the tribal rising to examine the relationship between agrarian communities and the rise of the nation-state in India. The subaltern historians have two specific agendas: firstly, they dismiss elitist historiography by exposing the biases in the past narratives; and secondly, they establish the subalterns as “subjects” in history by giving them “agency” of their own to subvert the hegemony of the power bloc.
Naturally, subaltern scholars observe peasant revolts in South Asian literature. While tracing the loopholes of colonial force, Ranajit Guha sees the fault in the historiography of India. According to him, the national elites imitate the Western dominating ideologies in writing the history. So, he emphasizes to subvert the ideology by rewriting the history from the perspective of peasants and working-class people, and in turn, it helps to create a harmonious society reverencing all caste, religion, and ethnicity empowering the subjectivity and agency to subordinate people.
After a weeklong tiresome reading and collection of notes, I embarked on framing dissertation. My supervisor, Dr. Phuyal assigned me to write the paper under the title “Critique of Polity from Within.” When I started reading theories, I got an insight of exploitation and domination of powerful groups to the powerless and process of subordination of Dalit, Muslim, women, and other minorities in the texts. At the same time, the reading provided me an abundance of knowledge of self, agency, subjectivity, and resistance to fight against all sorts of prevailing discrimination. The existing social-economic structures control and command the minorities.
I faced the realities of Hijras and other minorities in the text. The central transgender character, Anjum leaves going to school after facing critical remarks from his colleagues. The mother gets upset when she recognizes her baby as a hermaphrodite: she thinks the society only accepts either male or female, not the third sex. While reading the related articles, I learned more and more sufferings of the third sex in Indian society unwilling to give new identity to the third sex. The novel gives critical view to the hegemonic power structure of society and nation to deal with marginal people and securing the rights of subordinate people guaranteed by the constitution. After the rise of the right-wing Hindu group in the political system, the downtrodden, religious minorities, and social outcastes feel threatened and the nation treats them as social outcaste. The principle of domination prevails in the society.
The casteism is deeply rooted in India where upper classes Hindus behave Dalits as an untouchable object. Similarly, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness evokes the painful narratives of Dalits and social outcasts. The more I delved into study casteism, the more unprecedented realities came up before me. I was amazed by the killings of Dalits in the false charge of killing a cow by the Hindu mob called by the police authority.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness exhibits growing intolerance in India. The Indian society stirs towards the religious nation, according to critics, withdrawing the constitutional notion of secularism where a particular religious ideology blankets the political system of the country and shares prejudices and impairments towards other marginal groups and ethnicity in the novel. Subaltern theorists see the root cause of domination in the historiography of India as it reproduces the ideology of colonial power. As a resolution of subverting the vertical axis of social mobility, they place a solution of writing history from the perspective of the working class and peasants. In fact, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness deals with the socio-political obstacle of Indian society that pushes the misfits and weirdoes to the edge. They are the subject of discrimination and dissidence. I took the insight from the critics and my supervisor’s guidance to show the limitation of a person where people are discriminated on the basis of caste, religion, ethnicity, region, and culture.
Arundhati Roy’s writing speaks on behalf of the suppressed and manifests their plights living in a secular and democratic nation. The monopoly and hegemony of the Hindu government subjugate and subordinate other marginal groups and as a consequence, it annihilates the self in the minorities, leaving no possibility of emergence of agency from them. Polity in the shadow of mono religion lacks the conceptualization of citizen in the system of government and regards the underclass people as an object. This maltreatment to its citizens as non-citizens circulates the discourse of domination explicitly and implicitly in the society and in turn cultivates unjust behavior in the society and country.
In a colonial country like India, the critics trace the root cause of discriminatory behavior in the historiography of India. They view that national elites and rulers share the common view to that of colonial power to govern in the country creating binary oppositions. Colonial power regards peasants, working-class people, and minorities as an object by denying in them any prospect of birth of agency. The act of extermination of agency limits the individual’s potential. To subvert the hierarchies and to promote the subjectivity of the people of margin, the subaltern theorists mingle their effort to overturn the power structure. For this, they develop the theoretical concept of rewriting the history from the bottom which brings the subjectivity of sub-ordinate people in front. The realization of active subjects and agency help the transformation of the society and in turn brings social harmony.
Anjum develops a living place in the graveyard, and the place shelters the poor and helpless in a secular manner Roy’s novel. The development of a secular place engulfs their wish of formation of the secular community revealing their agency. The self-awakening in the character teases the mainstream politics and its policy of favoritism.
After approval of the draft from my supervisor, Dr. Phuyal, I was extremely delighted. While reflecting on the experience of writing a thesis, I realized that I really enjoyed the writing process I have gone so far. I realize deep changes percolating within me to contemplate and interpret the social phenomena: I am aware of different facets of discriminations, and power politics of social and political institutions. Roy’s critique of nation built a concept of viewing limits of polity in the modern times as she presents in her second novel.
[Binod Aryal has recently earned a degree of Master of Philosophy from Tribhuwan University, Central Campus, Kirtipur. He has keen interests in studying marginal communities and hegemonic social power structures of a society. His articles are been published in The Rising Nepal.]