Space, Purity, and the Panoptic State: A Socio-Political Reading of Prayaag Akbar’s Leila

Abstract

This article presents a socio-political reading of critical analysis of Prayaag Akbar’s debut dystopian novel, Leila (2017). Set in an unnamed, highly polarised near-future Indian metropolis in the late 2040s, the novel projects contemporary socio-political anxieties about communalism, class privilege, systemic surveillance, and environmental degradation onto a terrifyingly plausible canvas. The narrative follows Shalini, a grieving mother from an elite background, who embarks on a desperate sixteen-year quest to locate her missing daughter, Leila. Leila was forcibly abducted by a totalitarian regime known as the “Purity Council” because she was born to an interfaith couple. Using Michel Foucault’s framework of panopticism alongside contemporary Marxist and posthumanist literary theories, this study considers how urban architecture is weaponised to enforce physical and psychological segregation. This article analyses the mechanisms of state control, represented by the thuggish “Repeaters” and the looming “Purity Pyramid,” while critically unpacking the upper classes’ complicity in their own eventual subjugation. This analysis shows that Leila serves not simply as speculative fiction, but as an urgent anthropological document and a prophetic warning. It exposes the weakness of democratic institutions when confronted by an obsessive politics of exclusion, resource scarcity, and institutionalised prejudice.