Sudhir Kakar

portrait of a people

The Indians

Plumbing the hearts of women and men in India and exploring the relations they engage in, Sudhir Kakar gives us the first full-length study of Indian sexuality. His groundbreaking work explores India's sexual fantasies and ideals, the "unlit stage of desire where so much of our inner theater takes place." Kakar's sources are primarily textual, celebrating the primacy of the story in Indian life. He practices a cultural psychology that distills the psyches of individuals from the literary products and social institutions of Indian culture. These include examples of lurid contemporary Hindi novels; folktales; Sanskrit, Tamil, and Hindi proverbs; hits of the Indian cinema; Gandhi's autobiography; interviews with women from the slums of Delhi; and case studies from his own psychoanalytic practice. His attentive readings of these varied narratives from a vivid portrait of sexual fantasies and realities, reflecting the universality of sexuality as well as cultural nuances specific to India. Moving from genre to genre, Kakar offers a brilliant reading of verses from the Laws of Manu, the original source of Hindu religious laws, to uncover their psychological foundations—male terror of the female sexual appetite that shields itself by idealizing women's maternal role. Kakar also examines the psychosexual history of Gandhi at length, though his near-lifelong celibacy makes him an atypical subject. Gandhi's story is universal, Kakar says, because "we all wage war on our wants." In India's lore and tradition, complex symbols abound—snakes that take the shape of sensual women or handsome men, celibates sleep with naked women, gods rape their daughters, and a goddess fries a king in oil. With the analyst's "third ear," Kakar listens, decodes, and translates the psychological longings that find expression in Indian sexual relations.

Exploring Indian Sexuality

Intimate Relations

Sudhir Kakar, a psychoanalyst and scholar, brilliantly illuminates the ancient healing traditions of India embodied in the rituals of shamans, the teachings of gurus, and the precepts of the school of medicine known as Ayurveda. "With extraordinary sympathy, open-mindedness, and insight Sudhir Kakar has drawn from both his Eastern and Western backgrounds to show how the gulf that divides native healer from Western psychiatrist can be spanned."—Rosemary Dinnage, New York Review of Books "Each chapter describes the geographical and cultural context within which the healers work, their unique approach to healing mental illness, and . . . the philosophical and religious underpinnings of their theories compared with psychoanalytical theory."—Choice

A Psychological Inquiry Into India and Its Healing Traditions

Shamans, Mystics and Doctors

For decades India has been intermittently tormented by brutal outbursts of religious violence, thrusting thousands of ordinary Hindus and Muslims into bloody conflict. In this provocative work, psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar exposes the psychological roots of Hindu-Muslim violence and examines with grace and intensity the subjective experience of religious hatred in his native land. With honesty, insight, and unsparing self-reflection, Kakar confronts the profoundly enigmatic relations that link individual egos to cultural moralities and religious violence. His innovative psychological approach offers a framework for understanding the kind of ethnic-religious conflict that has so vexed social scientists in India and throughout the world. Through riveting case studies, Kakar explores cultural stereotypes, religious antagonisms, ethnocentric histories, and episodic violence to trace the development of both Hindu and Muslim psyches. He argues that in early childhood the social identity of every Indian is grounded in traditional religious identifications and communalism. Together these bring about deep-set psychological anxieties and animosities toward the other. For Hindus and Muslims alike, violence becomes morally acceptable when communally and religiously sanctioned. As the changing pressures of modernization and secularism in a multicultural society grate at this entrenched communalism, and as each group vies for power, ethnic-religious conflicts ignite. The Colors of Violence speaks with eloquence and urgency to anyone concerned with the postmodern clash of religious and cultural identities.

Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict

The Colors of Violence

As A Commentator On The Worlds Of Love And Hate , India S Foremost Psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar Has Isolated The Ambivalence, Peculiarly Indian, To Matters As Various And Connected As Sex, Spirituality And Communal Passions. In Intimate Relations, The First Of The Well-Known Books In This Edition, He Explores The Nature Of Sexuality In India, Its Politics And Its Language Of Emotions. The Analyst And The Mystic Points Out The Similarities Between Psychoanalysis And Religious Healing, And The Colours Of Violence Is His Erudite Enquiry Into The Mixed Emotions Of Rage And Desire That Inflame Communalism.

Indian Identity

Having fulfilled his destiny as a highly evolved Sadhu by undertaking mystic tribulations of monastic bliss, tantric awakening, madness, and transexuality, devout Brahmin leader Gopal develops a profound relationship near the end of his life with a young man who belongs to a very different part of India. Reprint.

Ecstasy

A Novel of the Kama Sutra

The Ascetic of Desire

A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu Childhood and Society (Oxford India Paperbacks)

The Inner World

spirit and psyche in the modern world

Mad and divine

Günter Blamberger

The concept of genius has been a subject of much speculation and debate since the eighteenth century. However, in a world obsessed with creative genius and the possibilities of the human imagination, the actual workings of the creative process and its psychological underpinnings remain a mystery. In On Creativity, a group of experts seeks to unlock this enigma.

On Creativity

the making of a genius

Young Tagore

Psychoanalysis and India

Culture and Psyche

The essential Sudhir Kakar

India analysed

The Devil Take Love

Mapping the uncharted territory at the edges of psychological knowledge, these fascinating essays explore compelling aspects of dreams and dreaming. They discuss topics as diverse as memorable dreams, lucid dreaming, the role of dreams in the evolution of human consciousness and the relationship between dreams and the waking state. In ‘The Dream and Its Embedding’, psychoanalyst Patrick Mahony demonstrates, with absorbing case studies, how dreams can become effective therapeutic tools, while dream scholar Kelly Bulkely concludes in ‘Big Dreams’ that, ultimately, the function of dreams is to make the brain grow. Luigi Zoja, dream analyst, explores the profusion of nightmares among soldiers, prisoners and other victims of war in ‘Nightmares’. And Madhu Tandan, who lived for seven years at an ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas, explains how dreams can access a level of consciousness beyond the psychological. This volume is the first in the ‘Boundaries of Consciousness’ series, which, under the leadership of Sudhir Kakar, seeks to bring together psychoanalysts, philosophers, religious studies scholars and neuroscientists in order to expand the frontiers of current psychological understanding. Subsequent volumes will spring from symposia held at Wasan Island, Canada, on the supernatural, death and dying and creativity and imagination. Edited and introduced by Sudhir Kakar, On Dreams and Dreaming will be of interest to scholars and to all who dream and seek to understand why.

On Dreams and Dreaming

Three decades into Emperor Shah Jahan's reign, while the monarch indulges in the pleasures of the flesh to divert himself from the travails of his ageing body, the country is bracing itself for the brutal-and inevitable-war of succession to the Peacock Throne. At this time of tumult, European travellers Niccolao Manucci and Francois Bernier arrive in India, and find their way into the innermost circles of the royals. While Manucci revels in his new-found fame as miracle healer to princesses and concubines, and Bernier records his cerebral interactions with the Omrah in the imperial court, they conjure up an enthralling panorama of an empire in crisis. Little escapes their discerning eye-fabled cities now spinning into decay; harems rife with gossip, lust and venereal afflictions; wily courtiers whose hearts breed malice even as they enjoy the luxuries of privilege; the tenuous ties that bind Hindu subjects to their Muslim rulers. And, most of all, the chief contenders to the throne of Hindustan: Dara Shikoh, the charismatic heir apparent with a predilection for diverse spiritual beliefs, and his younger brother, the austere Aurangzeb, self-proclaimed defender of the true Faith. Set amid the grandeur and intrigue of seventeenth-century India, The Crimson Throne masterfully probes the continuities of imperial expansion and a splintered Islam. Eloquent, richly imagined, riveting, it reaffirms Sudhir Kakar's acclaimed craftsmanship.

The Crimson Throne

In the cultural hub of 1880s' Lahore Kay Robinson has taken over as editor of the Civil and Military Gazette. Assisting him is the young and impressionable Rudyard Kipling, a lonely, impulsive man who dreams of becoming a writer. Kipling's literary pursuits have been dismissed as fanciful and foolish by his previous boss. But Robinson is different. He encourages the young 'Ruddy', allowing him greater creative freedom at the Gazette. As he becomes Ruddy's friend and confidant, Robinson gains access to intimate glimpses of the Kipling family, where he is smitten by Ruddy's sister Trix. Narrated by Robinson, The Kipling File is a moving story of doomed friendship and difficult love recounted against the powerful backdrop of Anglo-Indian life in a Punjab that has begun to stir with anti-colonial sentiment. Through his eyes unfold the turmoils that shaped the author of beloved classics like The Jungle Book and Kim. In Sudhir Kakar's luminous prose, Kipling emerges as a man of compelling contradictions-a mercurial genius whose immense talent was in pitched battle with his inner demons.

The Kipling File

A Brilliantly Woven Narrative, With Facts As The Warp And Imagination As The Weft . . . Kakar'S Is A Marvellous Effort To Peel Away The Layers Surrounding Gandhi'-Hindu It Is 1925 And India'S Struggle For Independence Is In Disarray, Impeded By Factionalism Among Its Leaders And Rising Incidents Of Communal Disharmony Across The Country. Meanwhile, Having Withdrawn Himself From Active Politics, Bapu-Mahatma Gandhi-Is In The Sabarmati Ashram In Gujarat, Immersed In The Creation Of An Ideal Community That Is Dedicated To The Highest Standards Of Self-Discipline, Tolerance And Austerity. Into This World Comes Madeleine Slade, The Daughter Of A British Admiral, Who Has Set Her Heart On Becoming Bapu'S Greatest Disciple. Bapu Embraces Her Into The Fold And, As She Becomes An Indispensable Part Of The Ashram And His Life, Renames Her Mira After Mirabai, The Legendary Devotee Of Krishna. But It Is Not Long Before Mira'S All-Consuming Desire To Serve Bapu Transforms Into A Desperate Need To Be Close To Him At All Times And Clashes Head-On With The Exacting Moral And Spiritual Codes He Has Laid Down For Himself And Those Around Him. And As The Self-Doubting Mahatma, Seeking To Distance Himself From Mira Yet Loath To Let Go Of Her Love, Wrestles With His Inner Phantoms, Mira'S Life Begins To Take Another Dramatic Turn . . .

Sudhir Kakar

Books

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