Corruption, Political Violence, and Capitalism Theme Analysis

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness paints a portrait of contemporary, postcolonial Indian politics. Through the differing points of view of the story’s characters, Arundhati Roy illustrates the many ways in which various groups of the Indian population have been let down and oppressed by their political leaders after the 1947 partition between India and Pakistan. In particular, through her illustration of the ongoing Kashmir conflict between these two countries, she highlights corruption in all political groups involved: the Indian army, Indian leftists who oppose the occupation of Kashmir, and the Kashmiri locals and militants who apparently resist the military occupation. Each group claims to have a moral or religious imperative behind what they advocate for, and yet they take actions that are often selfishly motivated by monetary gain and therefore out of alignment with their alleged beliefs. In questioning the integrity of each group involved, Roy ultimately sheds light on the ways in which corrupt capitalism undermines the supposedly moral intentions of the groups involved in the Kashmir conflict.

The Indian Army receives the brunt of Roy’s criticism for their seemingly limitless corruption and unwarranted violence against Kashmiri citizens—all for the sake of profiting from the war. In one moment, Naga, a leftist Indian journalist, is questioning Aijaz, a young member of a Kashmiri militant resistance group. Aijaz shares with Naga that the militant group buys their ammunition from the army, explaining, “They don’t want the militancy to end. They are very happy with the situation as it is. Everybody on all sides is making money on the bodies of young Kashmiris.” Here, Aijaz highlights the ultimate act of corruption on the part of the army: they are fueling the very conflict that they claim to be fighting against. While Indian military officials in Kashmir claim to believe in Indian nationalism, and supposedly want to integrate Kashmir into their country, in reality they want the conflict to continue simply so that they can continue to profit from the war.

Additionally, Indian officials are prone to killing innocent Kashmiris and pretending they are dangerous terrorists, because they are rewarded for this. Biplab Dasgupta, an Indian bureaucrat who narrates part of the novel and works with the Kashmir conflict, wryly comments, “everyone [the military] picked up was always “dreaded,” seldom less than “A-category,” […] because each of those adjectives had a responding incentive,” such as a cash reward. Biplab implies that these adjectives don’t always apply to the captured Kashmiris, which means that, again, Indian soldiers are willing to undermine their own supposed mission—to win the war against Kashmir—for capital gain. Not only are they simply not doing their job; they are willfully harming Kashmiris, who are technically Indian citizens, which furthers their characterization as corrupt.

Through Roy’s characterization of Naga, a corrupt journalist who allegedly reports on human rights abuses, she also criticizes the Indian left. Naga is a journalist who claims to have radical leftist beliefs, and yet who, according to Biplab, “has a handler—though he might not see it quite that way—in the Intelligence Bureau.” Biplab later reveals that when Naga begins to collaborate with the government, he receives promotions and accolades at work because he is the first journalist to hear about special, government-related news. As a character, Naga embodies the corruption of the media: in spite of his so-called progressive values, he is ultimately willing to tell only the stories the government wants him to tell, because doing so grants him a position of power within his profession. Like the soldiers, Naga is willing to stray from his values due to the influence of capitalism.

Finally, although Roy is not as extensively critical of corrupt Kashmiris as she is of characters from mainland India, she does make sure not to exempt them from criticism of corruption. In Biplab’s narration of the Kashmir conflict, he shares, “For all their religiosity, Kashmiris are great businessmen. And all businessmen eventually, one way or another, have a stake in the status quo—or what we call the ‘Peace Process,’ which, by the way, is an entirely different kind of business opportunity from peace itself.” In this moment, again, readers are exposed to the idea that those who seem to be fighting to end a conflict often profit from its continuation. The double irony in this sentence is that Biplab refers to the “peace process” as different from peace itself. This suggests that in addition to benefitting from the conflict, Kashmiri businessmen are complicit in contributing to the myth that the selling of arms and continued fighting is an effort towards peace when they are, in reality, destined to bring unending conflict, and therefore unending profit to the businessmen who take advantage of the political situation.

By casting all groups involved as corrupt, Roy avoids aligning herself with any particular political ideology. However, she does effectively paint a portrait of the heavy influence of corrupt capitalism in modern geopolitics, and the ways in which moral or religious ideologies serve primarily to mask capitalist interests rather than as the real motivations behind war.