Mothering community. Surviving the post-nation in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

If, in general, there has been a move away from the huge ambition of the average monumental postcolonial novel of the 80s and 90s (Armadeep Singh), Arundhati Roy’s much-waited-for second novel still indexes a large number of important historical events in the interest of broad, but also deep, representation. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) weaves together the stories of a whole universe of people, and follows in particular the intersecting destinies of some queer mothers and some discarded daughters, spanning across decades and locations, touching a number of the gloomiest and murkiest episodes of modern Indian history, from Bhopal gas leak disaster to Kashmir’s insurgency, from Adivasis’ displacement and dispossession on the backdrop of the Government-Maoist confrontation in Central India, to the Godhra train burning and subsequent mob killings in Gujarat. Continuing in fictional terms her life-long commitment against neo-liberal depredation of Indian ecological resources and her unrelenting critique against the threats the rise of Hindu nationalism poses to democracy, Roy confirms nonetheless a gift for storytelling which is genuinely, and almost daringly, literary. Aim of this paper is to assess not only the breadth of this novel’s capacity to tackle thorny political issues, giving voice to traditionally silenced social actors, but also to account for its quintessentially artistic devotion to stylistic expertise and original rhetorical proficiency.