Sudhir Kakar’s latest book suggests Indians can bear the pain and contempt that often creeps up with familiarity but can never bear the coldness of distance.
NEW DELHI: Sudhir Kakar’s latest book “The Indians: Portrait of a people” attempts to draw out a common identity of Indians in the current context. Kakar, a psycho-analyst, delves into ‘Indianness’ in the context of the caste system, marriage, sex, position of women in society and our approach towards subjects like birth and death.
“I feel Indians need to have a strong sense of connection. Whether it is in the context of families or work, they like to have a link. If you ask a young IIM aspirant he would often turn around and say he is doing it to make his family proud vis-à-vis an American who would say I am working hard to achieve for myself,” explains the author.
The book suggests Indians can bear the pain and contempt that often creeps up with familiarity but can never bear the coldness of distance. “The Indian system can be defined as family-ism. Indians do not like to be alienated and love to be linked up.”
Despite the modernism that accompanies the new sexual identities of Indians, Kakar mentions that some constraints will never let us be as openly hedonistic as people in the West.
“The concept of being chaste is something that will never go. Arranged marriages prevent women from experimenting as they want to preserve themselves and not acquire reputations if they want to be favoured in the marriage market. Although we give out signals that we are changing as a society, the concept of change is highly exaggerated. We cannot compare ourselves with the West in terms of sexual emancipation,” said Kakar.
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