“sudhir kakar”

Of the many enduring fascinations of the love story, a vehicle for the vicarious satisfaction of our hidden desires and obscure longings, is the pleasure we take in its subversion of the conventions that govern the relationship between the sexes. At least, this is true of tales about young lovers wh... More

Sudhir Kakar, India’s foremost psychoanalyst, has for long tried to infuse the pre-eminently Western discipline of psychoanalysis with ideas and views from the East in both his practice and his best-selling books. In Mad and Divine, he takes on the separation of the spirit and the body favoured by... More

‘Presents more lucidly than anything I have read so far the fears and prejudices which bedevil relations between Hindus and Muslims’— Dileep Padgaonkar, BiblioDrawing connections between history, individual development, group psychology and the cultures of specific communities, ... More

The time is the fourth century AD, the golden age of Indian history. The locale: an ashram in the woods a little outside Varanasi. Every morning, Vatsyayana, author of the Kamasutra, recounts stories from his childhood and youth to a young pupil who plans to write the great sage's biography. Litt... More

Ecstasy is a story about the making of a mystic and his astonishing experiences on the spiritual path. It is also the story of the rare relationship between two very different men brought together by a fateful meeting. The older man, steeped in the mystical mood of complete surrender and devoti... More

‘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 incident... More

In this bold, illuminating and superbly readable study, India’s foremost psychoanalyst and cultural commentator Sudhir Kakar and anthropologist Katharina Kakar investigate the nature of ‘Indian-ness’. What makes an Indian recognizably so to the rest of the world, and, more impo... More

‘[This] study of Indian sexuality provides fascinating insights into the world made famous by Masters and Johnson’—The Illustrated Weekly of IndiaIntimate Relations is a ground-breaking work that explores in detail India’s sexual fantasies and ideals, the ‘unlit sta... More

Set against the backdrop of Indias struggle for independence, this poignant historical novel re-creates the extraordinary true-life relationship between an upper-class British woman and Mahatma Gandhi.It is 1925 and India's struggle for independence is in disarray, impeded by factionalism among its ... More

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 grac... More