Social Authorization of Third Gender in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Resistance through writing is a non-traditional space for social and political confrontation. The real problems of society need a serious writer. In their writings, such writers tend to show their doubts against social and political trends of a particular set-up. Arundhati Roy is one such writer who writes with passion against marginalization. Her writing can be seen as a resistance against the oppressive social, and moral codes. The present chapter is concerned mainly with her discussion of the Hijra realities as presented in her second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017). In this novel, Roy purposefully takes a Hijra, a Muslim, a Malayalee Christian, and a Kashmiri to be the protagonists of her novel to explore and expose the limitlessness of marginality. Roy’s description of trans is not just a reading experience, rather it becomes a part of the reader’s experience. This is an atypical field to attempt since growing up as Hijra is a rare point of discussion and description. The present chapter analyzes the different dimensions of challenges that a hijra can face by living in a so-called normal world in the context of the novel, The Ministry of Happiness.