Resistance to Hindu civilizational populism from the margins in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

This article analyzes Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness to explore how her novel depicts Hindu civilizational populism and how marginalized people resist injustices associated with it, which previous studies have not discussed much. This study uses a qualitative textual analysis method and draws on Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony, along with Yilmaz and Morison’s notions of civilizational populism to analyze Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. The analysis uncovers that Roy’s novel depicts Hindu civilizational populism as a hegemonic social system by showing the supremacy of Hindutva ideology and the victimization of marginalized people based on their non-Hindu religious background through state-led injustices motivated by Hindutva ideology. However, marginalized people resist injustices rooted in Hindu civilizational populism by establishing counter-hegemonic solidarity among diverse oppressed and ignored people. These marginalized people construct alternative social systems that counter the hegemonic social order established by Hindu civilizational populism. This analysis contributes to scholarship on marginalized people and their resistance to injustice by revealing the complex social and political realities shaped by Hindu civilizational populism and showing how victimized people resist hegemonic Hindu civilizational populism to maintain inclusivity and social justice in Roy’s novel and in society.