Hazrat Sarmad Shaheed is a holy man in the Indian Islamic tradition. As The Ministry of Utmost Happiness explains, he was originally an Armenian Jew, but he travelled to India in pursuit of a Hindu man he had fallen in love with, converting to Islam in the process. However, he was executed for apostasy because he had begun to have religious doubts and refused to recite the Kalima (a declaration of faith) when asked by the emperor. Roy notes that most of the visitors to Hazrat Sarmad Shaheed’s shrine are not aware of all these details, but suggests that this is unimportant:

Inside the dargah, Sarmad’s insubordinate spirit, intense, palpable and truer than any accumulation of historical facts could be, appeared to those who sought his blessings. It celebrated (but never preached) the virtue of spirituality over sacrament, simplicity over opulence and stubborn, ecstatic love even when faced with the prospect of annihilation. Sarmad’s spirit permitted those who came to him to take his story and turn it into whatever they needed it to be (14).

Sarmad and his shrine are symbols of the kind of love that the novel celebrates: one that embraces diversity and even stems from one’s own differences.