Apocalyptic Writing in Indian English Literature: An Overview

In recent decades, global literature has witnessed a surge in apocalyptic and dystopian narratives: stories imagining collapse, catastrophe, environmental ruin, social disintegration. Often associated with Western science-fiction traditions, such “apocalyptic writing” has increasingly been adopted and reinterpreted by writers worldwide. In India too, a nascent but growing body of literature in English imagines “apocalyptic Indias”: futures shaped by environmental disaster, climate crisis, social collapse, and political dystopia. This article examines the trajectory, characteristics, and significance of apocalyptic writing in Indian English, broadly understood to include dystopian, post-apocalyptic, and climate-fictional. It traces patterns in thematic concerns, narrative strategies, and ideological orientations; it highlights challenges and tensions; and it argues for the critical importance of reading such works as part of the broader cultural and ecological imagination of contemporary India. In doing so, the essay draws on recent scholarship — especially the work of Sagnik Yadaw and Rupsa Roy Chowdhury — which examines the representation of the Anthropocene in Indian English literature.