“Hope and grief woven together”: Consolation in a queer reading of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Abstract

This article considers the role of consolation in a biopolitical and queer reading of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017). As a critique of contemporary Indian politics, Hindu nationalism, casteism, and economic neoliberalism, the novel promises to bring hope to those marginalized and dehumanized in “New India” — the “Unconsoled”. It is argued that Ministry’s liberatory potential is best realized when approached from a combined perspective of biopolitical liminality, that of Agambenian homo sacer and Butlerian precarity, as well as the reformative and reparative practices of queer theory. When viewed through queer readings of failure and non-imperative happiness, the alternative world of Jannat Guest House becomes a queer counterpublic, whereas its inhabitants become agents of subversion, whose mere existence defies the imperative of religious, caste, cisheteronormative and capitalist hegemonies endorsed by the state. The article positively assesses the novel’s ability to bring consolation. However, it indicates that there are also limitations to that and offers suggestions as to how to reaffirm the reformatory potential of the novel.