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In Vikram Chandra's new novel, "Sacred Games" (HarperCollins; $27.95), Ganesh Gaitonde, a sort of Bombay Al Capone, expresses his contempt for the English-speaking classes, people oblivious of the rampant criminality underpinning their serene existence: "These Englishwallahs were always superior, as if the world they lived in was some other one, far from my barrack, my streets, my home." Describing the exploits of Gaitonde and his determined pursuer, Sartaj Singh, a Bombay cop, Chandra's intensely ambitious nine-hundred-page work seems, at times, an attempt to make amends for the ignorance of Englishwallahs. Gaitonde not only relishes murder and destruction but also ...