A misleading portrait

Jyotirmaya Sharma

Those of us who were students of humanities and the social sciences in the late 70s and the 80s were redeemed, literally, from the dreary desert sands of dead habit by two individuals.

Both were psychoanalysts, charismatic and provocative. Ashis Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy and Sudhir Kakar’s The Inner World emancipated us from the certitudes of a popular brand of economic determinism on the one hand, as well as well-worn nationalist pieties on the other.

Both writers came from within the margins of the academic tradition, and their effectiveness lay not merely in their positioning within the academic world, but also in their narrative styles.

Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar have now written a book titled The Indians: Portrait Of A People.

It is a book divided neatly into parts that explore caste, women, sexuality, health and healing, religious and spiritual life, the conflict between Hindus and Muslims and, finally, has something to say about the Indian mind. After reading it, one is torn between two conflicting emotions.

There are flashes in it of the vintage Kakar (the chapter on sexuality is an instance of this) while at other places it seems like a text sponsored by the “Incredible India” spin-doctors.

The problem with the book arises at the very beginning. On page 4, the authors state: “Indian-ness, then, is about similarities produced by an overarching Indic, pre-eminently Hindu civilization that has contributed the lion’s share to what we would call the ‘cultural gene pool’ of India’s peoples.” This assertion is explained, then, on page 6 by arguing that the narrative is a portrait, not a photograph, an attempt to “use realism to explore psychological depth”.

The writers believe that there is something called “Hinduism’s master narrative” (p.139) and do subscribe to the all-pervading, transcendent piety of Hindu tolerance and universality. These, in turn, are supported by the assertion that there is indeed something within this Hindu master narrative that can be identified by an “unchanging, essential core” (p. 139).

There are reservations expressed by the writers on the theme of universality of Hinduism (p. 143), but they are rationalised by saying that “(this is) the master narrative of Hinduism, with all good intentions, identifying itself with the universe of all faiths, and when this vision becomes the nationalist’s expectation of a coming triumph of the Hindu worldview in a globalised world, it is fated for disappointment” (p.143).

Equally puzzling is the assertion that a Hindu’s “self-identification as a Hindu occurs only when he talks of the Muslim; otherwise the conversation on his affiliation are more in terms of caste” (p. 157).

The last chapter, “The Indian Mind”, again intrigues. The first paragraph ends with the following assurance: “Let us begin with the Indian (here, again, primarily Hindu) view of the world.” The chapter continues on the same trajectory.

Here is an example: “Similarly, in India, there are identifiable, specific elements in the dominant, Hindu world view. Here, we are not concerned so much with the philosophical doctrines that are relevant only for religious and intellectual elites, but with the beliefs and attitudes — many of them not conscious — of a vast number of Indians that are reflected in their lives, their songs and their stories” (p. 181).

At the best of times, it is difficult, if not impossible, to speak of an identifiable core. At no point in the book is there an attempt to tell us the methodology by which the writers managed to identify this very elusive entity. Further, the projection of a ‘Hindu’ identity on all that goes in the name of the Indian past is hugely problematic and needs careful delineation. In speaking of a dominant Hindu view, the questions of power and the politics of Hinduism become central.

Given the emphasis in the book on universality and tolerance, and romantic fallacies that entered the discussion about Hinduism in the last two centuries, there is little room to engage in a critical evaluation of these terms except by rendering the so-called Hindu “core” into an apolitical, ahistorical, tolerant, all-embracing and universal entity.

All this brings me to a complex problem. When Mallikarjun Mansur sings Pratham Allah in Shivmat Bhairav, is it the tolerant Hindu universality at play in the hands of a staunch Lingayat, or is the story more complex? Neither the portrait painted in The Indians solves the issue, nor do I identify with the photograph of a family on the cover in the early to middle years of the last century.

Whatever be the case, this book will be immortalised by the pamphleteers of the Sangh Parivar for a very long time to come. 

The writer is a commentator on political affairs.