TRANSGRESSIVE EXISTENCE AS EMBODIED RESISTANCE THROUGH PERSONAL MEMORY MANIPULATION IN ARUNDHATI ROY'STHE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS

Abstract

Focusing on memory manipulation, the article evaluates how Arundhati Roy portrays the ‘Other’ and how the supremacy dynamic is challenged in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. She incorporates a postcolonial “Anjuman” subjectivity that defies male and female (transgender) oppression. Arundhati Roy also describes the power dynamics involved in rewriting myths to paint the marginalized as ‘the dark demons,’ and how the marginalized do not let the dominant force write off the past and erase it; instead, they rewrite it in forms such as poetry and take over forgotten spaces like graveyards to create something new. In the novel, the graveyard becomes a metaphor for silenced stories: from the guest house ‘Jannat,’ where Anjum helps the outcasts find refuge, to the mausoleum of an obscene Sufi saint, Hazrat Sarmad. Arundhati Roy maintains the idea of memory as the repressive modality that speaks and restores the power to the voiceless.