Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Corruption, Political Violence, and Capitalism
Resilience and Hope
Gender Identity, Social Division, and Coexistence
Social Hierarchy vs. Social Inclusivity
Religion and Power
Summary
Analysis
Back at Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services, word has spread that a “clever woman” has begun holding classes in the graveyard. Parents from neighborhoods all around are eager to enroll their children in Tilo’s new school. She teaches “arithmetic, drawing, computer graphics […] a bit of basic science, English and eccentricity.” She hasn’t been back to her old apartment since she moved into the Jannat Guest House community with Miss Jebeen the Second, even though she has received Biplab’s message through Anjum and Saddam Hussain. In all this time, Tilo still hasn’t heard from Musa, but she is less worried about the prospect of his death—not because she no longer loves him, but “because the battered angels in the graveyard that [keep] watch over their battered charges [hold] open the doors between worlds […] so that the souls of the present and the departed [can] mingle.”
Tilo’s work as a teacher for poor children demonstrates her commitment to justice and inclusion. Roy likely includes the detail that Tilo teaches “eccentricity” to highlight that Tilo understands the value of nonconformity and passes this on to her students. Indeed, if it weren’t for Tilo’s eccentricity and rejection of the mainstream capitalist values—her willingness to value access to education over money—the school likely would not exist. Tilo’s understanding of the graveyard angels even further expands the already inclusive community that Anjum has created in the graveyard. Not only are people from all social classes present there, but so are the spirits of the dead.
Themes
Since Tilo’s arrival, the Jannat Guest House community has grown more family-like. Ustad Hameed begins giving singing lessons to promising students there, which Anjum attends (although she refuses to sing). Zainab comes around often to help Anjum and Tilo look after Miss Jebeen the Second, and, when she’s not busy with that, nurses a full-fledged romance with Saddam Hussain. What’s more, the Guest House is not only full of human life, but also full of animals. Zainab and Saddam Hussain have collected cows, an injured peacock, birds, a small tortoise, and a whole slew of other creatures, bringing them all to find a home in the Jannat graveyard. Behind the house, the tenants grow a vegetable garden that, although few of them actually enjoy eating vegetables, provides them with legumes, tomatoes, and gourds. Some of the addicts in the graveyard help with the garden and with caring for the animals.
Here, the many forms of life that flourish in the graveyard serve as yet another example of resilience. Like the mustard flowers that grow from between the fingers of the corpse, vegetables, injured animals, and human life flourishes in the midst of a graveyard, which traditionally is a place where people go only to die. What’s more, Anjum has created the opportunity for the addicts who live in the graveyard to reinvent themselves. Society has given up on them, abandoning them to die by their own substance addiction. The addicts, though, demonstrate resilience by managing to live productive lives in spite of the condition they live with.
Themes
Anjum even arranges for Jannat Guest House to have a swimming pool—“Why should only rich people have swimming pools?” she says, indignantly. There is no water, but the poor know how to appreciate the pool all the same. And, “all in all, with a People’s Pool, a People’s Zoo, and a People’s School, things [are] going well in the old graveyard. The same, however, [cannot] be said of the Duniya.” Back from Baghdad, D.D. Gupta describes it to Anjum as “hell on earth,” and says he no longer has the stomach for so much violence. He has also become a regular at the Guest House, spending whole afternoons watching TV with Anjum. In other bad news, Gujarat ka Lalla, the Hindu fundamentalist, is India’s new Prime Minister.
The fact that Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services is able to flourish even while the rest of the world becomes “hell on earth” shows how distanced Anjum and her community are from the goings on of the rest of the world. D.D. Gupta’s rejection of the Duniya and its violence suggests that the more extreme the conservative government becomes, the more polarized its people are. D.D. Gupta previously was a somewhat corrupt but relatively neutral person. Now that the violence has grown so extreme, it has driven him to prefer living on the margins of society.
Themes
Encouraged by seeing a Prime Minister who aligns with their political beliefs, the “saffron parakeet” Hindu fundamentalists that Anjum so fears have infiltrated “university campuses and courtrooms” alike. Centuries of Muslim rulers are removed from history books, the poetry and art that thrived under their rule reduced only to tales of violence and subjugation. Hindu pilgrims are accompanied by armed escorts to holy sites. One day, Nimmo tells the crowd at the guest house that she saw a man beaten to death in front of his family by a mob that accused him of eating beef. She warns Anjum to be careful about having cows on her property, but Saddam Hussain disagrees. “Careful in what way?” he says, “The only way you can be careful with these bastards is by ceasing to exist!” No one has ever seen him lose his temper like this before.
The erasure of Muslim rulers from history books is a means of disempowering and disrespecting the Muslim population in India. In order to subjugate the Muslim population to oppression, the Hindu nationalists seek to remove historical evidence of their dignity, power, and accomplishments. In refusing to be afraid of the Hindu fundamentalist mobs, Saddam Hussain shows his courage. He of all people understands how dangerous these groups can be—after all, they killed his father. But Saddam refuses to let extremist groups win by cowering before their terrorism. He insists on continuing to live his life the way he wishes to.
Themes
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Shortly after on Independence Day, Anjum and Saddam Hussain are watching TV when they hear Zainab screaming from outside. She is terrified of what she sees in front of her: a crow that seems to be frozen mid-flight, “a feathered Christ, hanging askew, on an invisible cross.” A crowd gathers to gawk at what seems to be a terrible omen. Saddam, though, doesn’t take long to realize what has happened: the crow’s wing has gotten stuck on a kite string. Innovative as ever, Saddam ties a rock to a rope and throws it over the kite string, freeing the crow. As it “magically” flies away, “normalcy [is] declared.”
Based on the conversation the characters are having in the moments preceding the arrival of the crow, the crow could represent India’s failure to make progress towards becoming a nation that treats all of its citizens with justice and respect. Nimmo has just detailed the ways in which Hindu extremist groups are rewriting India’s history to be more intolerant and religiously biased, returning to value systems that reflect more India’s caste-obsessed, intolerant past than a progressive future. In this way, India, like the crow, is immobilized.
Themes
His moment of heroism gives Saddam Hussain a boost of confidence, and he decides that night to ask Anjum for Zainab’s hand in marriage. Anjum responds sassily, asking him why Zainab should marry a man “wanting to commit a crime and then be hanged like Saddam Hussein of Iraq?” Surprisingly, Saddam swears that he is done with that phase of life, done with his revenge fantasy. He even deletes his treasured video of Saddam Hussein’s hanging from his phone to prove to Anjum that he is serious. Instead, he shows her a video of young Dalit men, contracted to remove dead cows from upper-caste properties, flinging cow carcasses into the property of the local District Collector in Gujarat. Saddam Hussain explains that because his people have risen up, he no longer needs to kill the police officers that allowed his father to be murdered.
Here, Saddam Hussain shows readers that he has changed his value system. Whereas before, he seemed to think it was necessary to fight violence with violence—he wanted to murder police officers, and he admired Saddam Hussein—he now seems to believe that social change is possible through nonviolent uprisings, like the Dalit men throwing cow carcasses on upper-caste people’s property. The latter form of justice is more conducive towards building a tolerant society. Roy seems to privilege this perspective by presenting it as one that Saddam has grown into. Nonviolence is cast as mature rather than reactionary.
Themes
Anjum, ultimately, is delighted to accept Saddam Hussain as her son-in-law, and wedding preparations are soon underway. Before the wedding, though, Saddam wants to take the entire family on a surprise outing. So he, Anjum, Tilo, Nimmo, Saeeda, Zainab, and Miss Jebeen the Second all set out together and head to a wealthy part of town, where Saddam leads them into a mall. There, the family eats at an outlet restaurant, where Nimmo and Anjum need some help, as they have never been in a restaurant before. Saddam explains that he wanted to take everyone to the mall because it is the exact spot where his father was murdered by the mob years before. “Before [the mall] came, there were villages here, surrounded by wheat fields,” Saddam explains.
In this moment, the revelation that Nimmo and Anjum have never been to a restaurant before shows readers how marginalized and impoverished the backgrounds they come from are. On the other hand, the fact that Anjum is now able to afford going to a restaurant, presumably through the many businesses she runs out of Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services, suggests that she has been able to generate wealth for herself even without subscribing to the norms or values of a capitalist society.
Themes
Concerned for the ghost of Saddam’s father, Anjum suggests they give him a proper burial at Jannat Funeral Services. So the group buys a nice shirt from the mall to represent his spirit to bury in the old graveyard. Zainab, remembering the Gayatri mantra Anjum had taught her when she was a child, offers to say the only Hindu prayer she knows in memory of her deceased father-in-law. Tilo, too, chooses to participate in the impromptu funeral ceremony, and brings her mother’s ashes, which she has never disposed of, to the table. She explains that the church had refused to bury her mother, so she doesn’t need Christian prayers in particular. Instead, Tilo recites her mother’s favorite Shakespeare passage.
In this moment, the characters perform funeral ceremonies that are a grab-bag combination of various teachings and religions. This is the epitome of inclusivity: the characters all demonstrate respect for the teachings of religions or, in Tilo’s case, authors, by referencing them in this ceremonious context. However, unlike many other representations of religion in the novel, the way the characters here engage with these teachings is not with extremism or rigidity, but with flexibility.
Themes
Saddam Hussain and Zainab are soon married at a party where all of Jannat Guest House’s community members are present to celebrate. After the wedding, Anjum takes the two to the shrine of Hazrat Sarmad Shaheed, where her own mother took her 60 years ago to bless her as a baby. Anjum, in turn, asks the saint to bless the young couple. And the saint—“Hazrat of Utmost Happiness, Saint of the Unconsoled and Solace of the Indeterminate, Blasphemer among Believers and Believer among Blasphemers”—in keeping with what he had given to Anjum, blesses them.
Towards the end of Anjum’s life, Shaheed’s blessing is far more obvious than it was at the beginning of her life. In keeping with the saint’s spirit, Anjum has had the resilience to endure tremendous difficulty, and the wisdom to value love and community over anything else. This has gifted her with a rich life full of community and meaning. The implication is that Zainab and Saddam will have the same.
Themes
One morning, Dr. Azad Bhartiya comes to Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services with a letter. Anjum, Tilo, Saddam Hussain and Miss Jebeen the Second gather round to read the letter aloud. The letter is addressed to Azad Bhartiya, whom the sender of the letter observed at Jantar Mantar and judged to be of good character. The speaker is a Telugu woman and full-time activist with the Maoist Communist Party of India. She warns that when this letter will be received, she will already be dead.
In introducing a character from another ethnic group and political background, Roy exposes readers to the great diversity of political movements and ethnic backgrounds in India. This contributes to the novel’s overall message of the importance of inclusivity.
Themes
The speaker in the letter introduces herself promptly as Revathy, the mother of the baby that was abandoned at Jantar Mantar—Miss Jebeen the Second—whom she named Udaya, which, in her language, means sunrise, as the baby was born at dawn. She explains that, after a childhood full of poverty and hardship, she joined the Communist Party while she was in government school to advocate for a better future for herself and people in her community. After graduating, she became very involved in the Communist cause—so involved that she was a target for police. One day, she was captured by police, who held her captive, torturing and raping her. Catching them off guard, she escaped, although she was very ill and soon discovered she was pregnant.
Here, Roy establishes the Communist Party in India as a movement that, like the Kashmir resistance, is subject to heavy and unjust persecution from the government. In spite of Biplab’s insistence that India is a democracy, Revathy’s experience of being tortured and raped simply for her political beliefs and involvement suggests that India is not a true democracy. The novel suggests that the nation lacks the tolerance and respect for human rights necessary to qualify as democracy.
Themes
When her baby was born, Revathy remembered the captors who had raped her, and seriously considered killing the Miss Jebeen the Second. But she decided to give the baby up at Jantar Mantar, seeing many good people there. She ends the letter by sharing her plan to kill herself rather than suffer and struggle more. After finishing the letter, Anjum decides they should have a funeral for Revathy as well, and “want[s] to know what the correct rituals [are] for the funeral of a communist.” The next day, Dr. Azad Bhartiya arrives at the funeral home with a red flag, in which they wrap Revathy’s letter and, singing the Hindi version of “The Internationale,” bury. From that day forward, Miss Jebeen the Second is known as Miss Udaya Jebeen.
Anjum’s endearing belief that a communist would have specific funeral rituals reflects, in an odd way, her respect for Revathy’s life work. Revathy’s dedication to communism is such that Anjum assumes it operates like a religion. The characters’ desire to celebrate Revathy’s life reflects their respect for political difference and for those who fight for social justice. Although Revathy has decided to end her own life, her decision not to kill Miss Jebeen the Second suggests that she has at least enough hope for the future to believe that a better world is possible for her baby.
Themes
