Cultural Hybridity in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Abstract

Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) is a complex narrative that intertwines the lives of marginalized individuals with India’s turbulent socio-political history. This paper examines the novel through the lens of cultural hybridity, drawing on postcolonial theories articulated by Homi K. Bhabha, Edward Said, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Hybridity, in this context, functions as both a lived experience and a political strategy that resists the exclusionary ideologies of nationalism, caste, and communalism. Anjum, an intersex Hijra, epitomizes hybridity by embodying multiple intersecting identities across gender, religion, and community. Her life challenges binary categories and underscores hybridity as a space of resistance to the binary. Similarly, the Khwabgah (Hijra household) and graveyard she transforms into the Jannat Guest House emerge as hybrid spaces where marginalized individuals construct alternative forms of belonging outside the state’s rigid boundaries. These spaces demonstrate that hybridity is not merely cultural mixing but a radical reimagining of the community rooted in pluralism and survival. Furthermore, the novel situates hybridity within the broader contexts of religious syncretism, Dalit resistance, and the contested politics of Kashmir, revealing how identities in India are always hybrid, fluid, and contested. The study concludes that Roy presents hybridity as a subversive force capable of destabilizing hegemonic categories and offering inclusive alternatives. In doing so, ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ reclaims hybridity as a mode of survival, resistance, and hope in the face of violence, exclusion, and fragmentation.