That the ancient Indian culture is intertwined with religion goes without saying. However, understood and practised as a simultaneously fixed as also changeable dharma in India, this concept befuddles the western mind and also the west-influenced Indian mind. My article analyses this concept of dharma to identify its constituent and differentiating elements like beliefs, scriptures, ethics, rituals, symbols, etc. and traces in some major texts of Indian English Fiction, from the earliest days to contemporary times, the treatment of external religious practices, texts, gurus and myths, and finally the transcendent spiritual consciousness. What this study finds is that not much focus is found on the intricacies of dharma in Indian English Fiction in which it is mostly the exotic that catches the author’s eye. Moreover, whatever deeper we find is a reductive and over-simplified view of dharma, seen through the western lens. However, the tide seems to be turning with some of the young generation writers seriously undertaking the journey of self-realization and making self-experience the basis of writing.