Gender Identity, Social Division, and Coexistence Theme Analysis

The first half of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is told through the point of view of Anjum, a transgender woman and former sex worker who was born intersex—with both female and male genitalia. (Her mother gendered Anjum a boy and named him Aftab, and he/him/his pronouns are used to refer to Aftab at the beginning of his life before he starts identifying as a trans woman.) Through Anjum’s eyes, readers are exposed to the various inequalities and forms of violence that plague the city in which she lives. The Urdu word for transwoman is Hijra, an identity that is very important to Anjum and the other trans women she lives with. Through exploring the ways in which Anjum navigates gender identity and by portraying her trans identity in a positive and nuanced light, Roy challenges not only the idea of a gender binary, but also other artificial forms of social division—particularly nationality and religion.

Although Anjum lives in a highly sexist society that privileges the masculine over the feminine, her identity as a Hijra grants her a special social status that sometimes protects her. Traveling to a popular Muslim shrine, Anjum and a host of other pilgrims are attacked by Hindu terrorists seeking justice for Hindus recently killed by Muslim militants. Every Muslim in the area is massacred, except for Anjum, who is spared because, as one of the extremists observes, “killing Hijras brings bad luck.” In this instance, Anjum’s marginalized identity literally saves her life. Although she suffers discrimination in her society for being a Hijra, in instances like this, the folklore surrounding Hijras—that they are “holy souls trapped in bodies”—protects her. While Roy in no way seems to argue that being a Hijra is a privilege, she does highlight some ways in which Anjum’s inability to participate in the gender binary has special, positive effects.

One of the characters, Nimmo, another Hijra with whom Anjum lives, relates the experience of being a Hijra to the conflict between India and Pakistan, linking the gender binary to the violent partition of the two countries. Before Aftab has moved in to the Khwabgah, the brothel where he will live with other trans sex workers, he idealizes the place. But Nimmo, who already lives there, tells the young Aftab that “No one’s happy here […] The war is inside us. Indo-Pak is inside us. It will never settle down.” Here, Nimmo equates the conflict between the two new countries with the perceived conflict between masculine and feminine genders that occurs in Hijras. This analogy is interesting, because throughout the novel, the India-Pakistan conflict is portrayed as senseless violence, a war between two peoples that had forgotten they were once neighbors, who “had been to each other’s weddings.” By paralleling this needless conflict with a perceived conflict between genders in Hijras, then, Roy implies that perhaps just as Indians and Pakistanis are not really separate from one another, the masculine and feminine genders are not necessarily opposites that are in conflict with each other. Aftab disagrees with Nimmo’s pessimistic outlook, thinking to himself that he was “happier than he had ever been.” This suggests that he himself might also have an understanding that the gender binary is artificial, and a recognition that multiple genders can coexist within the same being.

In both of the above instances, Anjum’s lived experience defies the logic of the gender binary. Anjum seems to embrace that both genders live within her—indeed, she changes her gender presentation several times over the course of the novel, demonstrating that, although she does have a preference for feminine presentation, she is able to acknowledge and work with the masculine that she has inside of her. Through presenting us with a character who defies the gender binary, Roy invites readers to see past not only the strict, artificial categories that separate masculine and feminine—but also, by extension, those that separate Hindu from Muslim, Indian from Pakistani. In a way, Anjum embodies the concept of coexistence, by allowing two genders considered to be fundamentally opposite to coexist within her. By characterizing this as a special, and even sacred, identity, Roy demonstrates the power that comes from embracing difference rather than seeking to destroy it.