Representation of Mental Health in Modern Indian English Fiction: Narratives, Stigma, and Socio-Cultural Contexts

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of how mental health has been represented in contemporary Indian English fiction, specifically evaluating the construction around psychological distress, psychiatric illness and emotional suffering that both novelists and short story writers have created out of the diverse milieu of Indian socio-cultural life. Evoking a corpus of texts from the 1980s to the present that includes works by Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Anita Nair, Chetan Bhagat, Shubhangi Swaroop, and others, the study scrutinises how mental illness is depicted in conjunction with caste hierarchies, gender oppression, colonial trauma and familial duty and spiritual belief systems. The paper argues that Indian English fiction holds a critical site as it contributes to challenging the ingrained stigma of mental health while reflecting on and interrogating the socio-cultural architectures producing and maintaining psychological pain. Drawing on frameworks from postcolonial studies, feminist criticism, and disability studies, this research illustrates how literary portrayals of mental health in India are far from monolithic or static, rather class- (and region-, religion-, and broader politics of modernity-) contingent. The paper finally argues that fiction is a potent diagnostic and empathetic tool, one able to humanise the mentally unwell in a society that often allows them to become invisible.