Sudhir Kakar (1938-2024): The Mind Reader

THOSE WHO WERE closely associated with Sudhir Kakar for long have repeatedly insisted that to say the man was a genius is an understatement. He was a polymath—and they do not make the likes of him anymore—who left a deep imprint in multiple subjects he had mastered over time and across cultures. Engineer, economist, novel­ist, and a noted psychoanalyst, Kakar wore multiple hats, because all of them fit him well. As an author, his shift from non-fiction to fiction came late, when he was in his sixties, but he did well regardless, treat­ing us to his fertile imagination. He went on to influence and inspire different people in different ways. To some of us, he may have been the ultimate explorer of sexuality in the most uninhibited fashion, break­ing taboos built around what is politically correct and what isn’t. He dug deep into history or picked up contexts from wherever he could lay his hands on to mesmerise his readers with originality.

His stellar book, Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality, had an erotic cover that was designed to sell sex. The book, as the title suggests, covered sexual hunger, women in Indian epics, Mahatma Gandhi’s “war on his wants”, and a vast range of other topics that could stir controversy at any point of time. As a scholar, he was an equal-opportunity offender who provoked everyone and left many embarrassed over holding on to pre-conceived notions about life and culture. Kakar was proud to do so because he didn’t write for the faint-hearted. He was also critical of certain political projects and the thrust certain movements had placed on violence, subjugation, and marginalisation.

A clinical practitioner, he took things in his stride and wrote books that delved into the Indian psyche in a way very few people at home did, then or now. He was, in that sense, the quintessential public intellectual who dared to speak out, forever willing to court controversies. According to Professor Rita Kothari, a bilingual author, translator and Professor of English, and the head of the Department of English at Ashoka University who has closely followed his works from his initial days, “He (Kakar) was the go-to person for psychoanalysis in India. Anyone who wants to study India’s psychic life cannot afford to ignore his works. He taught us about forms of intimacy buried in Indian literature and families. He also examined violence in the Indian context. There is nobody who comes anywhere close to him in that field. His contributions are very fundamental.”

Born in Nainital, now in Uttarakhand, Kakar completed his engineering from Gujarat University. An alumnus of Delhi’s Modern School, the University of Vienna, and the University of Frankfurt’s Sigmund Freud Institute, Kakar had taught at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Management, besides various foreign institutions, before relocating to Goa, aged 64, in 2003.

Kakar’s very first novel, The Ascetic of Desire, attracted rave reviews for its interpretation of the character Vatsyayana, the author of Kamasutra, who in the novel was born in a brothel where his mother and aunt were courtesans. He was an original. A New York Times review of the book from 2000 said, “Always an elegant stylist, Sudhir Kakar has written a sensual work that is alive with historical detail and provocative ideas about the world’s most fascinating subject.” For Kakar, it was important to write that work because he was talking about sex in its golden age in India while living in a time when any mention of sex invoked conflicted emotions of fear, guilt and longing. He proved himself to be a master in using films, myths, and literature to develop his views about intimacy and psychology in which, according to him, imagination played a crucial role – something Vatsyayana would have wholeheartedly agreed with.

Kakar had a great skill for familiarising people with dense subjects such as his interest in culture and psychoanalysis and their connection. Nothing about Kakar was one-dimensional. He was a visionary who refused to compromise on intellectual honesty. He has written extensively on how Indians view their culture and in different contexts. For instance, he has analysed how Indians thought of their culture while being in India and when they were abroad.

He leaves behind a rich legacy: his unputdownable books.

cultures. EngineerdeatheconomistnovelistobituarySudhir Kakar