Reimagining Tradition: Colonial Legacies, Social Realities, and Genre Innovation in Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games

Abstract

This paper critically engages with Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games as a work within the Indian novel tradition. The paper analyzes the novel in relation to Indian fiction’s literary heritage, bringing in innovation that redeliberates the contours of the genre. It looks at the structure of Chandra’s narrative, the way in which he blends the myth and the history and the modernity, and how he brings forth socio-political reality within the urban space of India. Article putting Sacred Games into the framework of earlier Indian novels that has been written, juxtaposition with canonical works so to identify thematic continuities and departure helps. The reflection of how the crime fiction by Chandra has collaborated to achieve an epic style presents a form which is hybridized, therefore, reflecting Indian modernity life. This exposition helps create Sacred Games as the text transforming between the lines that integrate traditional and modern eras by making changes visible within Indian literature.