Religion and Myth in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome

Abstract

Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome is a richly layered narrative that intricately blends elements of science, history, religion, and myth to construct a postcolonial meditation on knowledge, identity, and power. This paper examines how Ghosh interweaves religious symbolism and mythological motifs with scientific inquiry, particularly in the context of colonial and postcolonial discourses on medicine and discovery. By embedding mythic structures within a speculative historical frame, the novel challenges linear and Eurocentric conceptions of progress, instead privileging cyclical, secretive, and localized modes of knowing. Religious undercurrents—drawn from Hindu, Islamic, and indigenous spiritual traditions—are not merely decorative but function as epistemological alternatives to Western rationalism, allowing characters to transcend conventional boundaries between fact and belief. The narrative’s engagement with myth serves as a tool for reinterpreting historical events, reconfiguring the story of Ronald Ross’s malaria research into a counter-history that privileges the voices of the marginalized. Through this fusion, Ghosh subverts the binary opposition between science and superstition, proposing instead a syncretic framework where spirituality and empirical knowledge coexist and inform one another. The paper argues that religion and myth in the novel serve both as narrative strategies and as critical interventions in debates on cultural hegemony, authority, and the politics of representation.