Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 22 Issue 11

Among the mother figures pictured in the novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, the most archetypical one is Jahanara Begum, the mother of Anjum. She is represented as the most submissive mother, who fulfills all the conditions of the patriarchal notion of Motherhood . She exemplifies best the term ‘Motherhood as Institution’ coined by renowned feminist scholar Adrienne Rich. In her book Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Institution and Experience, Rich has talked about Motherhood, which is reinforced by patriarchy. This notion of Motherhood doesn’t seem to treat women as an individual human being. Jahanara is showcased as the submissive wife of Mulaqat Ali, who had to conceive the fourth baby after three daughters with the guilt of not bringing any male child into this world. Jahanara keeps obliging her husband and plays the role of an ‘ideal mother’. While talking about the nature of motherhood as an institution, Rich asserts, “Institutionalized motherhood demands of women maternal ‘instinct’ rather than intelligence, selflessness rather than self- realization, relation to others rather than the creation of self. Motherhood is ‘sacred’ so long as its offspring are ‘legitimate’” ( Rich, 42 ). All these requirements of Motherhood in a heteronormative circumstance are fulfilled by Jahanara Begum, who continues to obey her husband without any self-assertion. Rich also suggests that institutional Motherhood keeps the fathers free from childcare responsibilities. In contrast, the mothers always remain under tremendous pressure to provide the best health, education, and moral well-being to their children. Thus, when the hermaphrodite child Aftab was born, she voluntarily took all the guilt and responsibilities upon herself for giving birth to an ‘abnormal’ child. Keeping the secret of Aftab’s gender, she lets Mulaqat Ali be free from all anxieties. Besides, when Mulaqat Ali decided to have Aftab a gender-changing surgery, she did not feel it essential to opine about it. When Anjum left home, as a mother, Jahanara could not claim before Mulaqat Ali for the stay of Anjum as an intersex in this house. She met Anjum secretly at Khawabgah without the knowledge of her husband. All these submissions of Jahanara Begum represent her as the best example of Motherhood as an institution. Several scholars in the post-modern era have denied the idea of mother as the primary caregiver. For de-centering emphasis on the traditional, heteronormative family and establishing the intersections of Motherhood , they put more importance on the care for the child than the biological connectivity. Sara Ruddick, in her Maternal Thinking introduced the idea of an 'ethics of care', where mothers could work for world conciliation and the preservation of the life of all the children. Ruddick tried to show mothering as a 'work or practice' and she attempted to separate it from the act of giving birth. She declared that, this would allow the biological mothers to relinquish care of the child to others, perhaps the father or adoptive parents ( Ruddick, 76-94 ). The scholarly experiment on alternative models of family and kinship leads to probing the theory and practices of non-biological, adoptive, and other non- normative forms of Motherhood , among which ‘queer mother’ is the most understudied area of research even these days. Margaret F. Gibson, in her work “Queer Mothers and the Question of Normalcy”, diverted the readers’ age-old concentration away from the presumed gender, family, and sexual relations of the dominant culture to a new ideology of Motherhood by including- i) Women ii) Who have queer sexual identities, particularly as lesbian, bisexual, and queer-identified (LBQ) women and/or women in romantic/sexual relationships with other women, and iii) Who parent children, whether as adoptive parents, foster parents, birth or "biological" parents, social or "non-biological" parents, or stepparents, either with or without legal recognition ( Gibson, 12 ). Gibson also strengthened her idea of queer motherhood by stating that, “Queering motherhood must attend, not only to motherhood as it occurs in overarching discourses and institutional restrictions, but also to everyday activities, material inequities, and embodied relationships” ( Gibson, 10 ). In the novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Anjum, the transgender, adopted the girl named Zainab and reared her as a mother. She can be considered a queer mother, who deviated from all the established social norms about Motherhood . Roy shows the possibility of re-envisioning motherhood through the lens of “trans subjectivities” by representing Anjum’s urge for being a mother. Her concern and unconditional love for Zainab serves to shed light on the oft-neglected stories of Hijra mothers in Indian society. Anjum helps all the outcasts and marginal people in the community by providing service through Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services. Hence, she turns into a universal mother figure. Her proclamation reveals her motherly instinct, “I am Anjuman. I’m a mehfil, I’m a gathering. Of everybody and nobody, of everything and nothing… Everyone’s invited” ( Ministry, 8 ). The concept of trans parenting is demonstrated by another queer mother, Saeeda, who holds the following position concerning affection for Zainab. When Anjum left for Gujarat, her vacated place as a mother of Zainab was held by Saeeda. The significance of her mother role can easily be predicted when Zainab introduced her as ‘mummy’ and Anjum as ‘Badi Mummy’. Later, Anjum consigned to Saeeda all her motherly responsibilities for Zainab and shifted to the graveyard. This collaborative parenting by this two transgender can be termed polymaternalism, which Shelley M. Park introduced as “a way of moving toward a notion of families as coalitional entities requiring practices of solidarity among and between the various © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue XI Version I 33 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 A Diversity of Maternal Image in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness