The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Dr. Azad Bhartiya is the last person to see the baby before she disappears. He has been on a hunger strike for 12 years, and is so thin he is “almost two-dimensional.” In explanation of his protest, he wears a grimy sign around his neck, on which is written his full name, home address, and current address—the Jantar Mantar, where he sits every day in protest. It also lists his qualifications, of which there are many: two master’s degrees, a bachelor’s in history, and a pending PhD. The doctor is also the “founder member” of the World People’s Forum and the Indian Socialist Democratic Party. Finally, below is a long list of the many things the Azad Bhartiya is protesting: “US Capitalism, Indian and American State Terrorism,” along with nuclear weapons, bad education, corruption, violence, environmental degradation, unemployment, and, in his words “all other evils.”

Next to Dr. Azad Bhartiya is a small bag from a shopping mall, that contains several typed pages in English and Hindi. The doctor has placed several copies of the document in front of him, held down by rocks, for sale—it is called “My News & Views (Update).” On it, he introduces himself by explain that Azad Bhartiya is not his given name, it means “Free/Liberated Indian,” and he has chosen it for himself. He explains that a “free Indian” shouldn’t be found starving himself to death on the street, anticipating that readers might expect that to find a truly liberated Indian “in a modern house with a car and a computer.” But he explains that he is not in a modern house with a car and computer and rather is on the street because, simply put, he is a revolutionary. It is his 12th year on hunger strike—he eats one light meal every 48 hours or so to survive. In his words, he “eat[s] only to live and [he lives] only to struggle.”

Dr. Azad Bhartiya confesses that he is not technically a doctor, as his PhD is pending. But he chooses to refer to himself with the title anyway, mostly to make people listen to him. He justifies this choice, writing, “If there were no urgency in our political situation, I would not do this because, technically speaking, it is dishonest. But sometimes, in politics, one has to cut poison with poison.”

For all 12 years of his hunger strike, Dr. Azad Bhartiya has been at Jantar Mantar, the place of protest. While he sees so many groups come and go, hopeful that finally, someone will hear them and listen to their message, the PhD hopeful is a little bit more jaded. He writes, simply, “No one listens. The police beats them, the government ignores them.” Unfortunately, most protesters, unlike him, lack the resources to go on an indefinite strike: they are poor, and have to go pay their landlords or moneylenders.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Dr. Azad Bhartiya changes the line of discourse with the rhetorical question, “What caste am I? That is your question?” The doctor states quite clearly that for him, caste doesn’t matter: he rhetorically asks his readers what castes figures such as Jesus and the Prophet Muhammed were. He has disavowed Hinduism exactly because he doesn’t believe in the caste system, as he is an advocate for the poor. Indeed, he writes, even if he were President of America—“that world-class Brahmin”—he would be on hunger strike for the poor.

Dr. Azad Bhartiya believes he is on 24-hour surveillance by the government on account of his radical politics. A staunch anti-capitalist, he believes “capitalism is like poisoned honey. People swarm to it like bees. I don’t go.” According to him, the hyper-capitalist government of India feels threatened by these politics. He has been hit by multiple cars during his hunger strike, which he believes to have been sent by politicians and businessmen whose work he protests. After being hit by a car, he broke his arm and still wears a cast. While his life as a hunger-striker is difficult, the PhD candidate has built something of a community with the other activists, many of whom have signed his cast. He concludes his letter with the declaration that all of the information written above is “true to the best of [his] knowledge and no material has been concealed therefrom.”

Dr. Azad Bhartiya has seen the baby disappear, and, in the moment that he saw this, he believes the baby “had three mothers on the pavement that night, all three stitched together by threads of light.” Because the police rely on him for information about the goings-on at Jantar Mantar, they question him about the disappearance of the baby, “[slapping] him around a little—not seriously, just from habit.” They confiscate his News & Views and other documents when the doctor refuses to give them any information, and beat him again. Still, when they go, the determined activist immediately sets about the “laborious process of documentation from scratch.”

The police have no suspects for the kidnapping of the baby, but, nonetheless, they set up a public announcement about her disappearance and register a kidnapping case—but without much hope of the investigation going anywhere. They “[have] already registered one thousand one hundred and forty-six similar cases in the city that year. And it [is] only May.”