Indian English Literature today has become richer because of the eternal
contribution made by many prominent writers, both within India and
abroad. Narration has a very old tradition in India and the uniqueness of
Indian narrative techniques can be seen in its mythological works, like the
Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas and the Panchatantra. These
mythological works narrate many stories, in which celestial beings join
hands with humans, and conflict with evil-forces, to meet their end-goal of
managing human story. May be due to this long history of story narration
in India’s mythological works, that, the novelists out did others, with
regard to their contribution to Indian English literature. It was fiction that
contributed most, to Indian English Literature when compared to other
forms of writing. There are many types of work in fiction today, like
historical fiction, detective fiction, scientific fiction, mythological fiction
and so on.
The author of the works selected for this study is Vikram Chandra, an
Indo-American writer. He has blended history, mythology and the
metaphysics of India in his first book, Red Earth and Pouring Rain. His
second book, Love and Longing in Bombay, is a collection of stories,
named as, Dharma, Shakti, Kama, Artha, Shanti that reflect, different
aspects in Mumbai’s Culture; the material and non-material. His third
book, Sacred Games, is an investigative thriller, written after a lot of
research, on real incidents and daily life of the metropolitan of Mumbai,
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especially of the migrants‘. The thesis is titled as ‘Metaphysical and
Materialistic Elements in the Novels of Vikram Chandra”
The metaphysical elements discussed here are the metaphysical doctrines
that have guided Indians from the ancient days to the modern. Doctrines
regarding faith and religion, doctrines that are at work for the stratification
of Indian Society, the entry of English Language, the East India Company,
Christian Missionaries and British Raj to India and the
“tsunamic”transformation that has come about in the social structure of the
then Hindustan have been analyzed in detail. The materialistic elements of
Indian Culture include the invasion of a spiritual nation, India, by
materialism; migrants’ lives, growth and decay; their poverty and
prosperity; real incidents that took place in the history and those incidents
that go on in the daily life of Mumbai. Indian philosophy and Western
philosophy with main focus on metaphysics; scriptures and teachings of
Hinduism, Judaism and Catholicism have been explored for the answers,
to the research questions. The thesis is published in two books for the
preference of the reader and they are, titled as, Theism: Poly- vs. Monoand Migrants to Mumbai: Life, Growth and Decay
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