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Postcolonial Indian society appears to have achieved political freedom but has yet to get social freedom. The modern, democratic Indian society is not yet free as for as the caste system, the unequal distribution of wealth, the safety and security of women, minorities and children, and so on are concerned. The term social exclusion or social marginalisation means ostracization or alienation of an individual or a community as a whole on the base of wealth, social status, caste, class, religion, gender etc. This paper offers a critique of Arundhati Roy’s second published novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness in 2017 to understand the integration of the theme of social exclusion and subalternation in the novel. The novel is fundamentally a painful story of everyone and everything oppressed and suppressed and drifting to the margins of society by the powerful class. The narrative is dedicated to ‘The Unconsoled’ such as the Hijras, the outcasts, women, the Kashmiris, the disappeared, the displaced so on and so forth.  The novel transports us on a journey that spans many years, from the claustrophobic Old Delhi neighbourhoods to the escalating new metropolis and beyond, to the Kashmir Valley and the forests of central India, where war is concord and concord is war, and where, occasionally, normality is avowed.

Postcolonial Indian society appears to have achieved political freedom but has yet to get social freedom. The modern, democratic Indian society is not yet free as for as the caste system, the unequal distribution of wealth, the safety and security of women, minorities and children, and so on are concerned. The term social exclusion or social marginalisation means ostracization or alienation of an individual or a community as a whole on the base of wealth, social status, caste, class, religion, gender etc. This paper offers a critique of Arundhati Roy’s second published novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness in 2017 to understand the integration of the theme of social exclusion and subalternation in the novel. The novel is fundamentally a painful story of everyone and everything oppressed and suppressed and drifting to the margins of society by the powerful class. The narrative is dedicated to ‘The Unconsoled’ such as the Hijras, the outcasts, women, the Kashmiris, the disappeared, the displaced so on and so forth.  The novel transports us on a journey that spans many years, from the claustrophobic Old Delhi neighbourhoods to the escalating new metropolis and beyond, to the Kashmir Valley and the forests of central India, where war is concord and concord is war, and where, occasionally, normality is avowed.

This paper seeks to examine the relegation of women under body politics in Cathy Song’s “Girl Powdering Her Neck” and Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” By taking recourse to the idea of “body politics” advanced by Susan Bordo along with “objectification theory “of Julie Rodgers and Fredrickson Roberts, this paper problematizes that women are trapped by body politics exerted by men and are engaged in self-scrutiny of their bodies to draw the attention of men or are likely to valorise beauty at the cost of brain. The girl in Cathy Song’s poem has become the victim of body politics, which drives her to be more obsessive towards her appearance rather than ability. The beloved in Andrew Marvell’s poem, by the same token, undergoes objectifying gaze of her lover through the politics of exaggeration executed by the speaker, which is likely to drive her to be more conscious of her body rather than other dimensions of her personality. The whole exaggeration is solely guided by utilitarian purpose of female body. The paper contributes by bringing the female subjects of the poems to the purview of critical analysis. It also contributes by showing how women are relegated under the body politics exercised by men, and sensitizing women not to fall prey to body politics and underrate themselves.