Transgender Issue in Indian Society from Viewpoint of Arundhati Roy's Novel, " The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'

Transgender Issue in Indian Society from Viewpoint of Arundhati Roy's Novel, " The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'

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  Transgender issue inIndian society from viewpoint of Arundhati Roy Novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
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  Name : JanviNakum Roll No : 11 Sem : 4 Pepper Coad: 207 Pepper Name : Contemporary Literature Department of English Email Id : [email protected]
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  Arundhati Roy isan Indian writer, political activist, and public intellectual, best known for her novel "The God of Small Things", which won the Booker Prize in 1997. Born on November 24, 1961, in Shillong, Meghalaya, India, Roy grew up in Kerala, where her mother, Mary Roy, was a prominent women's rights activist and founder of the Indian Christian Women's Movement. After completing her education in Delhi and working as a screenwriter and architect, Roy published "The God of Small Things" in 1997, which became a major critical and commercial success, winning the Booker Prize and being translated into over forty languages. The novel explores themes of family, love, and social inequality in Kerala, and is known for its lyrical prose and experimental narrative structure. Following the success of "The God of Small Things," Roy became involved in political activism, focusing on issues of social justice, environmentalism, and human rights. She has been a vocal critic of the Indian government's policies on Kashmir, Maoist insurgency, and economic globalization, and has called for a more equitable and sustainable world. In addition to her political activism, Roy has continued to write both fiction and nonfiction. Her other works of fiction include "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" (2017), which explores the lives of marginalized communities in India, and "The Algebra of Infinite Justice" (2001), a collection of essays and articles on social and political issues. Her nonfiction works include "Broken Republic" (2011), which examines the impact of state violence and corporate greed on tribal communities in India, and "Capitalism: A Ghost Story" (2014), which critiques the effects of neoliberal economic policies on the poor and marginalized. Roy's works have received numerous awards and honors, including the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, the Sydney Peace Prize, and the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing. Her political activism has also led to her being arrested and charged with sedition in India, although the charges were eventually dropped. About the Author
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  Transgender is anumbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female or something else; gender expression refers to the way a person communicates gender identity to others through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, voice or body characteristics. “Trans” is sometimes used as shorthand for “transgender.” While transgender is generally a good term to use, not everyone whose appearance or behavior is gender-nonconforming will identify as a transgender person. The ways that transgender people are talked about in popular culture, academia and science are constantly changing, particularly as individuals’ awareness, knowledge and openness about transgender people and their experiences grow. What does Transgender mean?
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   The Ministryof Utmost Happiness (2017) is a novel by Indian writer Arundhati Roy. The transgender issue in this novel is portrayed mainly through the transgender protagonist Anjum, who is a Hijra. When Anjum decides that she wants to become a woman, she joins the community of Hijra called “the Khwabgah,” or “the House of Dreams,” where a group of transgender people live together and strengthen their community through a historical narrative. Although “the House of Dreams” seems to be an ideal place for them, Hijras suffer from their social position as outsiders and insiders at the same time.  Moreover, Hijras have suffered from people’s negative view of them, the unethical treatment of the surgeon in sex reassignment surgery, and the power struggle and conflict between old and new generation Hijras in “the House of Dreams.”  Later, Anjum leaves “the House of Dreams” to live in the graveyard where she sets up the Jannat Guest House, or Paradise. The Jannat Guest House becomes the place where Anjum welcomes other Hijras who leave the rigid structural power of the established Hijra Gharanas. With Anjum’s desire to be liberated from heteronormative society and the hierarchical system, she comes to live within the territory of the graveyard, where she forms connections with other Hijras.  The Ministry of Utmost Happiness has been criticized for its limited portrayal of transgender people’s struggles and triumphs, and its formulaic depiction of Anjum, who is a transwoman. My research will argue against this criticism to show the transgender people’s fight against heteronormativity in three main aspects as follows. Introduction
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  India is amultiracial and multicultural country where the concepts of gender, class and caste create a sense of discrimination among different categories of people. The gender identity impacts on hijras’ lives; they do not get gender recognition, employment, proper housing, and health-care services properly. They face discrimination and inequality so harsh that they feel that they are inferior. In Neither Man Nor Woman, Nanda (1999) states, “although cross-gender behavior in childhood is a prominent theme in hijra narratives, this behavior is not necessarily connected to a clear feminine gender identity” (p. 115). Hijras are in-between gender, and they face cross-gender situation. They are controversial community in Indian society and their existence disrupts essential ideas about sex or gender. Holmes (2004) writes, “recognition of third sexes and third genders is not equal to valuing the presence of those who were neither male nor female”. Though hijras as third genders adopt feminine identity and they are not like ordinary Indian women. Society cannot accept them as female; rather, people have negative attitudes towards them. Indians face the national identity crisis in some of the places of the country. Though people are citizens and freedom are guaranteed by the Constitution, people still feel as if they reside in a foreign land. They could not align with the ethnically diverse society. Thus, they seek independence and isolation from their own country. They are in a bind because they do not know if they belong to India. This desire for recognition contributes to defiance and contempt. In India transgender issues
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  Transgender rights underthe Constitution of India  The NALSA judgment paved the way for the recognition of transgenders with fundamental rights under the Constitution:  The judgment has allowed transgenders to have fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15, 16 & 21 under the Constitution. Articles 14, 15 & 16 protect right to equality, while Article 21 provides right to live with dignity, the right to choice and right to privacy, amongst others.  Article 21-A also provides for right to education in India as a fundamental right under Part III of the Constitution. This is applicable to those who identify themselves as a ‘third gender’ at a nascent stage, i.e., from six to fourteen years old.  The NALSA judgment explicitly clarified that all transgenders have the right to education. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 obligates educational institutes to be inclusive towards transgenders with adequate facilities.  The Madras High Court also laid down directions for educational institutes to provide for gender-neutral restrooms and additional categories of gender on important forms. However, changes and implementation of these guidelines have been poor at grassroots level.
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  Status of inheritancerights in India vis-à-vis transgenders Transgender inheritance rights remain a problem in India: Gendered inheritance laws: Inheritance laws in India are governed by personal religious laws and contain gendered terms. This makes it difficult for transgender persons to lay claim to inheritance since the law of inheritance only recognizes either male or female. Although the issue has been raised numerous times with the Law Commission of India, nothing has been done to address the writings of the law so far. Identification: Transgenders often lack the basic identification documents as ‘third gender’. Although recognized by the court of law, acquiring documents with the preferred third gender is a challenge. A lack of identification contributes to the violation of inheritance rights, as identification is necessary before possession of property and other assets. Hindu Succession Act 1956: There is no mention of anyone else other than ‘males’ and ‘females’. Section 8 defines rules of succession only in terms of succeeding males through different classes of heirs; Section 15 does the same for female class heirs. However, to avoid challenges, transgenders usually categories themselves as female for inheritance matters. There is no ground for disqualification explicitly mentioned in the Act for transgenders. Muslim Personal Laws (Shariat): Muslim laws of inheritance are mainly drafted according to the Quran – the holy book in Islam. Muslim property law is uncodified in India and all Muslims are governed by the Shariat Law for succession. There is no indication of transgender rights under Shariat law and, once again, the law is ambiguous when it comes to transgender inheritance rights in Islam. Indian Succession Act: This Act governs all those who are not Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Buddhist or Sikh. Prima facie, this statute seems gender neutral as it uses terms such as ‘kindred’ and ‘lineal’ descendants. However, the legislation still is not truly free of binaries and silence of the statute is not favorable towards the trans community. Use of Wills: Succession through Will is the safest way of ensuring that transgender persons are given a share in inheritance. A Will would always override any other mode of intestate succession. It does not depend on gender and can include all persons, regardless of their characteristics.
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  Gender is acultural construct as Michel Foucault argued that “sexuality is not a natural feature or fact of human life but a constructed category of experience which has historical, social and cultural, rather than biological, origins” (Spargo, 1999, p. 12). A person’s identity is defined by his body and sexual identity is a society which is a repressive and negative force. Therefore, power relation occurs, and it is centralized by a group of people and it includes the hierarchical divisions based on social, political, and economic practices and institutions. Roy portrayed the polarization of gender and race regarding the identity of hijras who are treated as inferior, untouchable and marginalized in Indian society. Woodward (2003) wrote, “The world was ordered by gender divisions with gender giving meaning to social divisions” (p. 109). Gender is related with the social divisions of class, race, disability, and sexuality. Hijra community is divided and segregated in society for the differences of sexuality. They are treated and discriminated as third gender in India and the recent word for hijra is transgender to the people of the world.
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  In the novel,The Khwabgah (House of Dreams) was Anjum’s place of liberation and self- expression, “Once she became a permanent resident of the Khwabgah, Anjum was finally able to dress in the clothes she longed to wear...” (p. 25). Outside, in the Duniya (World), her double voice “frightened other people” (p. 28) and even members of the Government “...like everyone else, they feared being cursed by a Hijra.” (p. 67). People alienated her because of something superficial, or lack of information, or myths, and Anjum had to fight against gender hierarchies, accepted gendered norms and, in that way, be part of the anti-colonial resistance. She sets her emotional instincts free and remained in the Khwabgah for thirty years. One day, she found a baby girl who was abandoned or lost. Anjum took her to Khwabgah and named her Zainab. After some time, she encountered a massacre in Gujrat that was the outcome of Godhra train attack. She got a traumatic shock from that incident and decided to leave Khwabgah. She took refuge in a local cemetery and transformed it into a guest house and named it ‘Jannat Guest House’. She also started funeral services for poor, isolated and subjugated people of the society.
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  Roy gave voiceto a socially outcasted community through Anjum/Aftab’s narrative and described their mental anguish with deep psychological insights. Anjum was told by Nimo Gorakhpuri, another hijra with whom she became intimate that they were created by God as an experiment. God wanted to create a living being incapable of happiness and therefore He created Hijras. “The beating husbands and cheating wives are all in us. The riot is inside us. The war is inside us… it will never settle down. It can’t” (p. 23). Roy showed that India is not a utopia for hijras, rather they are always abandoned from all social rituals. India has a long-established tradition of caste which specifies boundaries of purity and pollution between communities. Society is homophobic and hijras are not treated as human beings; they attempt to be connected with the society participating in different social celebrations as wedding, birth, and house-warming ceremonies. Roy mentioned that: they descended on ordinary people’s celebrations – weddings, births, housewarming ceremonies – dancing, singing in their wild, grating voices, offering their blessings and threatening to embarrass the hosts . . . and ruin the occasion with curses and a display of unthinkable obscenity unless they are paid a fee (p.24). Roy's creations interpret spatial encounters as dynamic dialectic mechanisms, dealing with the race, class and caste consciousness of the characters. In terms of the dialectics of gender identity and space, Roy takes the reader in the streets of Delhi, Kashmir and some other places that are special in nature. Roy does seem to comply with the statement “nowhere is the tendency to gender space as evident in colonial, postcolonial and neo-colonial spaces” . The novel also tells the stories of other people, such as R C's wife who finds space as an adhering, oppressive force. Naga gets shocked when R C told him about penalizing women by physical violence. Roy View
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  Hijras (transgendered) areisolated from the society, deprived of their basic rights and forced to lead a life without self-respect even in post globalized position. They are subjugated by male, female and even by hijras within the society. The word hijra is derived from the Persian word which means ineffective and incompetent. The alternative words for hijra are hijada, hijara, hijrah, and it is pronounced as “heejra” or “heejda”. The word hijra refers to ‘eunuchs’ or ‘third gender’ in India and some South Asian countries. Though they have combined gender identities, they adopted feminine gender roles and adorned themselves with feminine attires. The famous feminist of Indian writing in English Das (1982) in the poem “The Dance of the Eunuchs” portrayed the objectification of the eunuchs who adopted women identity and thus they were defined by the normative rules. Das (1982) mentioned that, “It was hot, so hot, before the eunuchs came to dance, wide skirts go inground and round They danced and They danced, oh, they danced till they bled” (p. 7).
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  INJUSTICE AT EVERYTURN: A REPORT OF THE NATIONAL TRANSGENDER DISCRIMINATION SURVEY Every day, transgender and gender non-conforming people bear the brunt of social and economic marginalization due to discrimination based on their gender identity or expression. Advocates confront this reality regularly working with transgender people who have lost housing, been fired from jobs, experienced mistreatment and violence, or been unable to access the health care they need. Too often, policymakers, service providers, the media and society at large have dismissed or discounted the needs of transgender and gender non-conforming people, and a lack of hard data on the scope of anti-transgender discrimination has hampered the work to make substantive policy changes to address these needs. In 2008, The National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force formed a ground- breaking research partnership to address this problem, launching the first comprehensive national transgender discrimination study. The data collected brings into clear focus the pervasiveness and overwhelming collective weight of discrimination that transgender and gender non-conforming people endure. This report provides information on discrimination in every major area of life — including housing, employment, health and health care, education, public accommodation, family life, criminal justice and government identity documents. In virtually every setting, the data underscores the urgent need for policymakers and community leaders to change their business-as-usual approach and confront the devastating consequences of antitransgender bias. Sixty-three percent (63%) of our participants experienced a serious act of discrimination—events that would have a major impact on a person’s quality of life and ability to sustain themselves financially or emotionally.
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  • Loss ofjob due to bias • Eviction due to bias • School bullying/harassment so bad the respondent had to drop out • Teacher bullying • Physical assault due to bias • Sexual assault due to bias • Homelessness because of gender identity/expression • Loss of relationship with partner or children due to gender identity/expression • Denial of medical service due to bias • Incarceration due to gender identity/expression Each of these can be devastating and have long-term consequences, as we will see in this report. Almost a quarter (23%) of our respondents experienced a catastrophic level of discrimination, having been impacted by at least three of the above major life- disrupting events due to bias. Imagine losing your home, your job and your children, or being bullied by a teacher, incarcerated because of your gender identity and sexually assaulted. These compounding acts of discrimination—due to the prejudice of others or unjust laws—exponentially increase the difficulty of bouncing back and reestablishing a stable economic and home life.
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  Work Cited “Answers toyour questions about transgender people, gender identity, and gender expression.” American Psychological Association, https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender. Accessed 7 March 2023. “Biography Of Arundhati Roy – Free PDF Download.” Study IQ, 4 January 2020, https://www.studyiq.com/articles/biography-arundhati-roy-free-pdf-download/. Accessed 7 march 2023. Grant, Jaime M., Lisa A. Mottet, Justin Tanis, Jack Harrison, Jody L. Herman, and Mara Keisling. Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Washington: National Centre for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011 Lertlaksanaporn, Tanrada. "Transgender People’s Deterritorialization in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and Trace Peterson’s “After Before and After”." Manusya: Journal of Humanities 23.1 (2020): 116-126. “Rights of Transgenders in India.” India Law Offices, 31 October 2022, https://www.indialawoffices.com/legal-articles/rights-of-transgenders-in-india. Accessed 7 March 2023. Suleman, D., & Rehman, F. binti. (2020). Transgender issues in indian society from the viewpoint of Arundhati Roy’s novel, the Ministry of Utmost Happiness. South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 01(03), 159–172. https://doi.org/10.48165/sajssh.2020.1312 Suleman, D., Mohamed, A. H., & Ahmmed, M. F. (2020, December 1). Political and gender issues in Arundhati Roy's 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'. SSRN. Retrieved March 7, 2023, from https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=488007067005081127088102086074084110058022049054 0580851080220930271050070250891220181220270441071110600370661020890750901031190060360 2501006012712206602807107511107103400502400912010012411312011207100402306511502112710 5114071029003096072069116096077073&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE