Renowned psychoanalyst, Sudhir Kakar is a prolific writer with sixteen books of non-fiction and four of fiction published to his credit. His books have been translated into twenty languages around the world. His latest book, Mad and Divine: Spirit and Psyche in the Modern World will be published by Penguin-Viking in India and C.H. Beck Verlag in Germany in Spring 2008. In an exclusive interview to Oxfordbookstore.com, he spoke on the themes discussed in his book, The Indians: Portrait of a People (Penguin-Viking 2007).

What according to you makes the Indian identity so unique to the rest of the world?

It is not unique as much as it is different. The difference lies in a combination of various elements that go into the constitution of Indian-ness: an ideology around personal relationships that derives from the institution of the joint family, a view of social relations profoundly instituted by caste, a shared cultural imagination teeming with myths and legends from the epics, a cast to the mind that emphasizes a relativistic, context-sensitive way of thinking and so on.

What is the fundamental idea of Indian-ness according to you?

That there is also an invisible, underlying unity in all the apparent diversity that we see among India’s peoples. It is a cultural-psychological unity, not in the sense of uniformity but in the sense of ‘family resemblances’ among the different population groups.

How do you see Indian-ness evolving in the future?

It will become more and more important because of two factors. One is internal: India’s diversity is a source of great cultural riches but the question arises whether this diversity does not need a framework—of Indian-ness—to prevent centrifugal forces inherent in diversity breaking up the country. The other factor is external: the need to articulate a civilizational identity in response to others, such as the Chinese or the Europeans, who too are embarked on such a venture.

How do view individualism in Indians vis-à-vis countries like US, UK, Japan and China?

Individualism in India is more similar to that of the Chinese than to individualism in the West. In India, the emphasis is on individual obligations and does not share the Western emphasis on individual rights.

Is hierarchy a multi-layered phenomenon in Indian society? Can we ever do away with it in this democratic country?

It is multi-layered but it is changing under the gale force of egalitarian ideologies and it will change at even a faster pace in the future

What behavioural aspects of Indians will never change?

“Never” is not a word I will ever use. The behavioural aspect that will be perhaps most resistant to change will be the Indian’s relativistic way of viewing the world.

What do you think is the adaptability or flexibility index of Indians across the world?

It is perhaps the highest among all the other communities because of the Indian’s high context-sensitivity, which enables him to adapt to whatever circumstances - material or cultural - in which he finds himself.

And finally, how was your experience during the interactive session at Oxford Bookstore at Kolkata?

I thoroughly enjoyed it because of the high level of discussion, reflecting, of course, Kolkata’s long tradition of interest in creative and intellectual pursuits.

A well-known figure in the fields of cultural psychology and the psychology of religion, as well as a novelist, Dr. Kakar’s person and work have been profiled in some of world’s leading newspapers such as The New York Times, Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Neue Zuricher Zeitung, Die Zeit and Le Nouvel Observateur, which listed him one of 25 major thinkers of the world. His many honors include the Kardiner Award of Columbia University, Boyer Prize for Psychological Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association, Germany’s Goethe Medal, the Bhabha and Nehru Fellowships and the National Fellowship in Psychology of the Indian Council of Social Science Research.. He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, International Psychoanalytical Association and the Academie Universelle des Cultures in Paris.

Sudhir Kakar lives in Goa and is married to Katharina, a writer and a scholar of comparative religions. He has two children, a son Rahul who is with SwissRe and a daughter Shveta, a lawyer, who works for Skadden, Arps, both in New York.

Courtesy: www.sudhirkakar.com

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Interviewed by Satarupa Ray
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