Plurality of Justice in Indian Detective Fiction: A Postmodern Study

The genre of modern detective fiction travelled to India from the West in a form ready for the consumption of the reading population. Although the lineage of detective fiction in India can be traced back to the Vedic age, this modern form of detective fiction has been a genre produced in India as late as the late nineteenth century. Traveling from west to east in a form ready for consumption by readers, this genre implemented colonial superiority over the colonized masses. However, the Indian detective fiction written during the post-modern age challenged this colonial enterprise of monopolization of justice and truth. This paper aims to deal with three short Indian detective fictions of the post-modern era, namely “The Rhythm of the Riddles” by Saradindu Bandyopadhyay, “Lethal Air by Suchitra Bhattacharya, and “A Death Considered” by Anil Menon. The post-structuralist change in the interpretation of justice in the detective fiction of the subcontinent is evident. The raging debate of “modernism” and “post-modernism” initiated by the publication of Lyotard’s “Postmodern Condition” has been inseparable from the question of the political, practical, and social experience. The post-colonial Indian detective fiction, moving away from the colonial fixed notions of justice and singular truth, portrays truth and justice through the changing perspectives. This paper aims to study this change in the notion of justice and truth through the lens of the post-modern incredulity towards metanarratives.