The Social Architecture of Marginality: Deconstructing Disability and Hijra Identity in Mahesh Dattani’s Seven Steps Around the Fire and Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

To understand how a society treats its most vulnerable members, researchers often look beyond the physical body to the rules that govern it. In the field of disability studies, a fundamental shift has occurred: the focus is no longer on what is "wrong" with a person's body, but on how society is built in a way that excludes them. This perspective argues that a person becomes disabled not because of their impairment, but because the world refuses to accommodate them. This idea connects deeply with the study of the hijra community in India, a group of people who do not fit the standard categories of male or female. For centuries, Indian society has viewed hijras through a lens of superstition and exclusion, often treating them as spectacles for weddings or outcasts from daily life. Recent scholarship suggests that this exclusion is not just a matter of gender or tradition, but a form of systemic disablement. By applying the tools of disability studies to literature, scholars can reveal how legal systems, medical practices, and social norms work together to render these bodies invisible, criminal, and unworthy of grief.

This approach is central to a new analysis of two major Indian literary works: Mahesh Dattani's play Seven Steps Around the Fire and Arundhati Roy's novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. The study, conducted by MD Shah Alam of Aligarh Muslim University, uses these stories to examine how the hijra experience is shaped by a society that demands everyone be able-bodied and strictly heterosexual. The researcher argues that the hijra body is not inherently broken; rather, it is socially disabled by a world that has no place for it. The analysis draws on the work of theorists who describe "compulsory able-bodiedness"—the unspoken pressure to conform to a standard physical and mental norm—and "crip theory," which looks at how non-normative bodies resist or are crushed by these pressures. By reading these texts through this lens, the paper moves beyond simple questions of gender identity to show how the hijra community faces a specific kind of structural violence that disables them from full participation in human life.

In Dattani's play, the researcher finds a stark illustration of how the legal and medical systems treat hijras as disposable. The story follows a sociologist named Uma Rao who investigates the murder of a hijra named Kamla. The play reveals that Kamla was killed simply for attempting to marry a man, an act that shattered the rigid rules of the society around her. The study highlights how the police and the courts do not treat her death as a tragedy worthy of justice. Instead, her body is described in clinical, dehumanizing terms, and her death is quickly buried, literally and figuratively, to avoid scandal. The researcher points out that the play uses a radio format, stripping away the visual element to force the audience to listen rather than stare. This choice challenges the way society usually consumes the hijra body as a visual spectacle. The play demonstrates that for these characters, the institution of marriage is not a path to happiness but a trap that leads to violence, and the legal system is a machine that manages them as problems rather than people.

Arundhati Roy's novel offers a different, though equally critical, view of the same reality. The story centers on Anjum, a transgender woman who was born with intersex traits and rejected by her family. The researcher notes that the novel shows how the medical establishment tries to "fix" her body through surgery, an attempt to force her into a binary gender box. However, Anjum refuses to disappear. Instead, she builds a home for herself and other outcasts in a graveyard in Delhi. The study interprets this graveyard not as a place of death, but as a sanctuary where a new kind of community can grow. Here, Anjum creates a "crip kinship," a family made of choice rather than biology, sheltering those whom mainstream society has discarded. The researcher argues that this space represents a form of resistance. By living among the dead, Anjum and her community survive in the margins, creating a life that defies the expectation that they must either pass as normal or cease to exist.

The paper also examines how both authors use the structure of their stories to mirror the fractured lives of their characters. Dattani's play jumps between different times and voices, refusing to give a smooth, linear narrative, which reflects the interrupted and chaotic reality of the hijra experience. Similarly, Roy's novel is digressive and complex, moving between different eras and perspectives without a neat conclusion. The researcher suggests that this "broken" storytelling is a deliberate artistic choice. It resists the idea that life must follow a straight, predictable path. Just as the bodies in the stories do not fit the standard mold, the stories themselves do not fit the standard mold of a traditional narrative. This technique forces the reader to engage with the characters on their own terms, rather than trying to force them into a familiar shape.

Despite the power of these stories, the researcher acknowledges a significant limitation: neither Dattani nor Roy is a member of the hijra community. The study emphasizes that while this author provides sympathetic and critical portraits, they are still an outsider looking in. There is a risk that they might speak for the community rather than with them, a concern raised by disability advocates who insist that marginalized people must tell their own stories. The paper notes that in Dattani's play, the hijra characters often speak through the voice of the sociologist narrator, which can sometimes dilute their own agency. However, the study concludes that this work still performs vital cultural labor. It moves the audience from simply staring at the "other" to recognizing their full humanity. By exposing the mechanisms that disable the hijra community, this text does more than tell a story; it demands that society acknowledge the injustice of a world that leaves so many people without a voice, a home, or a future.