Controlling Multiplicity: Hindu Mythologies in the Works of Amish Tripathi and Devdutt Pattanaik

This essay examines the emerging genre of mythological fiction through the works of two popular Indian authors, Amish Tripathi and Devdutt Pattanaik. Combining Hindu mythology with global speculative genres, mythological fiction instantiates new discursive spaces for the negotiation of Hindu identity and nationalism. Reading Tripathi’s Shiva Trilogy and Pattanaik’s Jaya and Sita, this essay argues that despite producing works that are formally and ideologically distinct, both authors position themselves as interlocutors who interpret Hinduism for common, middle-class citizens. Drawing on genre theory, studies of the Indian English novel and research on Hindu mythology, this essay suggests that Tripathi and Pattanaik draw on a combination of local and global modes to restrict the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the Hindu narrative tradition. Though they are located at different ends of the Hindu nationalist spectrum, both authors help English-speaking, upwardly mobile Indians to navigate their public identities as Hindus in an increasingly ethnocentric nation.