Sudhir Kakar (1938-2024) | ‘Passionate analyst of Indian culture’. The psychoanalyst and writer leaves behind a rich legacy of books

Sudhir Kakar, India’s foremost psychoanalyst who helped readers understand Indian men and women like none other, passed away on April 22. Sumanta Datta, Managing Director of Oxford University Press, says the passing of Kakar will leave a void in intellectual and literary circles: “He was one of India’s foremost writers and his nuanced research on post-Independence Indian psyche will inspire generations to come, enriching global perspectives on the intricacies of cultural identity.” In 2011, OUP published The Essential Sudhir Kakar, which compiled 15 essays on psychoanalysis, culture and religion, and their confluence in Kakar’s work. ‘The idea that every individual’s svadharma is unique,’ writes Kakar in his book The Inner World, ‘enhances a deeply held belief in a pervasive equality at a personal level, among all human beings … It is more a belief that each individual has a dignified, rightful place and function in the society, a belief which transcends the formal patterns of deference to caste, class, and family hierarchies, but does not hold the promise of an egalitarian society.’ In other words, the Hindu mind has a strong inclination to subjectivize timeless mythical events as if they were personal material. ‘In India,’ affirms Kakar, ‘historical events have little immediacy in the lives of individuals; they seem to recede almost instantly into a distant past, to become immemorial legend … On the other hand, mythical figures like Rama or Hanuman are as actual and as psychologically real as recent historical characters such as Ramakrishna or Shivaji.’ Response to critics However, not all Indians agree fully with Kakar’s critical analysis of everyday Indian psychological behaviours.