by Sudhir Kakar
Appendix I
The Giessen Test Statements
Appendix II
The Morality Interview
Nineteen Cases of Hindu-Muslim Interaction.
Normal Time Interactions
A Muslim (M) has many Hindu (H) friends.
A (M) regularly eats dinner at his (H) friend’s house.
A (M) rents his house to a (H).
A (M) works in a factory where most of the workers are (H).
A (M) boy marries a (H) girl.
A (M) girl goes to a movie with a (H) boy.
A (M) goes to a pandit to learn the Gita.
A (M) is converted to Hinduism.
A (M) girl elopes with a (H) boy.
Some (M) boys beat up a (H) boy who was whistling at (M) girls.
A (M) throws a dead cow in front of a temple.
Some (Ms) attack some (Hs) who were making fun of Allah.
Riot Time Interactions
Some (Ms) beat up a (H) walking through the alley.
Some (Ms) rape a (H) girl.
Some (Ms) set fire to a (H) house in their area.
Some (Ms) loot (H) shops.
A (M) man kills a (H) woman.
Some (Ms) stab and kill two (H) men.
A (M) family gives shelter to some (Hs).
The informant’s understanding of each case is sought to be elicited through a standard set of interview questions. The questions are designed to assess different features of the respondent’s understanding of the morality of a particular situation.
The Standard Interview
1. Is the behaviour wrong?
2. How serious is the violence?
Not a violation.
A minor offence.
A somewhat serious offence.
A very serious offence.
3. Is it a sin?
4. What if no one knew this had been done? It was done in private or secretly. Would it be wrong then?
5. In (another city) people do (the opposite of the practice endorsed by the informant) all the time. Would (name of the city) be a better place, if they stopped doing that?
6. What if (name of informant’s society) wanted to change the practice? Would it be okay to change it?
7. Do you think a person who does (the practice) should be stopped from doing that? Should he or she be punished? How?
The first question asks about the existence or nonexistence of a transgression. The second and third questions assess the perceived seriousness of the violation, should one exist. The fourth question, concerning self-regulation in absence of external monitors, tells us whether the violation is regarded as being of a moral order or a matter of convention. Questions five through seven tap the perceived universality (versus relativity) and unalterability (versus alterability) of the moral code being violated. The eighth question concerns sanctions and identifies cases where the informant believes the individual has a right to freedom of choice. In addition, the answers to this question give further clues as to the seriousness of one violation as compared to others.
Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation which made long periods of fieldwork in Hyderabad and other cities possible. A National Fellowship of the Indian Council of Social Science Research enabled me to work on the preliminary aspects of study. Most of all, I am grateful to my friend Vikram Lal for his support when it mattered the most.
I am thankful to Sujata Patil for her assistance in collecting the materials on the Pardis and for the many discussions on the project. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Sahba Hussain for her interviews with the Muslims of Karwan. Without her deep involvement and courage in locating and arranging interviews with the ‘killers’, this study would have lost an essential intimacy with the violence of the conflict. I am also grateful for the assistance of my dear friend Ali Baquer and the help given by Mehdi Arslam and Javed Alam.
Institutionally, the Committee on Human Development and the Divinity School at the University of Chicago have been generous hosts for an academic quarter each year for many years, and that is where the plans for this work first took shape. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin where a fellowship allowed me to complete the writing of the book. Colleagues at the Institute, especially George Lowenstein and Aziz al-Azmeh, were generous with their time and helpful with their comments and criticisms. Chapter Six was first prepared for K. Basu and S. Subhramanyan (eds.) Nationalism and Communalism and is reprinted with the permission of the publishers, Penguin, India.
SCENES FROM MARRIAGES
a The line drawn by Lakshmana around Sita within which no harm could befall her.
HUSBANDS AND OTHERS
a The groom’s carrying away of the bride from her father’s home in a ritual procession.
GANDHI AND WOMEN
a The good and evil protagonists of the Indian epic, Ramayana.
b By remaining inactive and eating well, passions are born in the body.
c Son of Vyasa, Shukadeva is the mythical reciter of the Bhagavatapurana. In spite of having married and lived the life of a householder (like Gandhi, he was the father of four sons), in later life he succeeded in conquering his senses to an extent that he rose up to the Heavens and shone there like a second sun.
d Kapila is the legendary expounder of the Samkhya system of Hindu philosophy. Devahuti is Kapila’s mother.
A NEW HINDU IDENTITY
a Mandai refers to the reservation policy announced by the government of V.P. Singh at the height of the temple agitation. The policy sought to increase reservations in federal and state employment and admission to educational institutions for the backward castes at the expense of the upper castes.
b The sage Valmiki. reputedly a hunter belonging to a low caste gave asylum to Sita in his forest abode after she was banished by Rama. Shabri was a poor untouchable who fed berries to Rama during his exile.
c All of them belong to the lowest castes.
d Widely regarded as two of the leaders of Muslim fundamentalism in India.
e Popular embodiments of Hindu resistance to Mughal rule.
f The reference is to a comparison between the maps of India before and after Partition.
g The best known Indian mosque, located in Delhi.
h The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
i The symbol of political power in India.
THE MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALIST IDENTITY
a Deoras was the chief of the RSS while Vajpayee is a prominent leader of the BJP.
b Khalid was the legendary general of the all-conquering Arab armies in the seventh century. Yazid, the first Muslim king, is the personification of evil in Islamic sacred history while Shabbir is another name for Hussain, the Prophet’s grandson and Yazid’s antagonist in the battle of Karbala.
c A hero of the India-Pakistan war of 1965.
d Billal was the black slave and a favourite of the Prophet because of his sweet singing voice.
A Note From the Author
In retrospect, Intimate Relations is a natural successor to the earlier one, Tales of Love, Sex and Danger. In the latter, while interpreting the legend of Radha and Krishna, I had fleetingly explored aspects of ancient and medieval Indian sexuality. Its playfulness and gravity was in sharp contrast to contemporary guilt and the shame-ridden relations between the sexes. What I tried to do in this book was to explore the contents and form of modem Indian sexual imagination as they were revealed through different kinds of collective mirrors, such as popular Hindi cinema.
The Analyst and the Mystic has its origins in the Haskell Lectures delivered at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in the spring of 1990. In this slim volume, I return to some of the themes of another earlier work, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors. The new book incorporates much of what I had learnt and reflected upon in one of my areas of abiding interest—the psychology of religion.
The Colours of Violence, which take
s up the theme of group identities, was perhaps the most difficult to write. Communal violence, unlike sexual love or mystical exaltations, does not allow the writer vicarious satisfaction unless, of course, he or she has highly developed sadistic impulses—which I do not. Here, the satisfaction came more from the hope of contributing a psychological perspective to one of our most important social problems. They also came from the challenge of the writing—how to maintain the psychoanalytical distance from and ironic stance on a subject which arouses so much passion.
Notes
INTIMATE RELATIONS
Chapter 1
1. Richard Shweder and N. Much, “Determination of Meaning: Discourse and Moral Socialization” (Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago, 1985, unpublished).
2. Margaret T. Egnor, “The Ideology of Love in a Tamil Family” (Hobart and Smith Colelge, 1986, unpublished).
3. Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 147.
4. Ibid., 148.
5. Robert Goldman, “The Serpent and the Rope on Stage: Popular, Literary, and Philosophical Representations of Reality in Traditional India,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 14 (1986): 149-69.
6. As the termites say to Brahma in Devi Bhagvata, “Nidrabhangah kathachedo/Dampatyoh pritibhedanam/Sisumatrivibhedasca Brahmatyasamam smrtam” (To disturb one in sleep, to internipt a story, to separate a husband and wife as also mother and child—these things are tantamount to killing a brahmin). Cited in Vettam Mani, Puranic Encyclopaedia (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1985), 183.
7. John A. Robinson and Linda Hawpe, “Narrative Thinking as Heuristic Process,” in Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct, ed. T. Sarbin (New York: Praeger, 1986), 123.
8. A. MacIntyre, After virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.; University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 201.
9. See Robert S. Wallerstein, “Psychoanalysis as a Science: A Response to New Challenges,” Pyschoanalytic Quarterly 55(1986): 414-51; M. Sherwood, The Logic of Explanation in Psychoanalysis (New York: Academic Press, 1968).
10. Donald Spence, “Psychoanalytic Competence,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 62, no. 1 (1981): 113-24.
11. For an exceptionally fine summary of object-relation view, see J.R. Weinberg and S. Mitchell, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1982).
12. Meredith Anne Skura, The Literary Use of Psychoanalytic Process (New Haven: Yale University Press), 178.
13. For an interesting new approach influenced by Lacan, see Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot (New York: Knopf, 1984).
14. Meredith Anne Skura, The Literary Use of the Psychoanalytic Process (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).
15. Dale Boesky, ‘Correspondence with Miss Joyce Carol Oates,’ International Review of Psychoanalysis 2 (1975): 482.
Chapter 2
1. Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ek Chadar Maili Si (Allahabad: Neelam Prakashan, 1961).
2. Margaret T. Egnor, “The Ideology of Love in a Tamil Family” (Hobart and Smith College, 1986, unpublished), 112-13.
3. For a collection of Indian proverbs on woman, see Bharatiya Kahawat Sangraha, vol. 2, ed. V. O. Narvane (Pune: Triven Sangam, 1979), 641-51. The translation of the folk sayings in this section are my own.
4. Rig Veda 10.145 and 10.159. Ed. F. Max Mueller (London: Oxford University Press, 1890-92).
5. Rig Veda 10.18.8.
6. Ramayana 3.57.17. Eds. G.H. Bhatt et.al. (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1960-75).
7. My clinical impressions on the actual and potential sexual intimacy of the woman and the younger brother of the husband are supported by the results of at least one empirical study. Behere and Natraj found that the sexual partner of almost half of the men who admitted to premarital relations was the wife of the elder brother. See P. B. Behere and G.S. Natraj, ‘Dhat Syndrome: The Phenomenology of a Culture-bound Syndrome, ‘Indian Journal of Psychiatry 26, no 1 (1984): 76-78.
8. Krishna Sobti, Mitro Marjani (New Delhi: Raj Kamal Prakashan, 1967).
9. Sigmund Freud, ‘A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men’ (1910), Standard Edition of the Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1952), vol. 2, 163-76 Hereafter referred to as Standard Edition.
10. The Laws of Manu, 3.56, ed. F. Max Mueller, trans G. Buehler (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1886), 85.
11. Ibid, 9.26, 332.
12. Ibid., 9.3, 328.
13. Ibid., 9.11, 329.
14. Ibid., 9.12.
15. Ibid., 9.14, 330.
16. Ibid., 9.15.
17. Ibid., 9.17.
18. Ibid., 9.20.
19. Bharatiya Kahawat Sangraha, vol 2.
20. D.W. Winnicott, The Family and Individual Development (London: Tavistock, 1965), 40. The original insight is, of course, by John Stuart Mill in his 1869 essay, ‘The Subjection of. Woman.’
22. G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
Chapter 3
1. On the influence of film values on Indian culture, see Satish Bahadur, The Context of Indian Film Culture (Poona: National Film Archives of India, n.d.). See also the various contributions in Indian Popular Cinema: Myth, Meaning, and Metaphor, special ussue of the India International Quarterly 8, no. 1 (1980).
2. Robert J. Stoller, Perversion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 55.
3. Sudhir Kakar, The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), chap. 3.
4. Aijun Appadurai and Carol Breckenndge, “Public Culture in Late Twentieth-Century India” (Department of Anthropology, Pittsburgh: University of Pennsylvania, July 1986, unpublished).
5. See Bruno Bettleheim, The Uses of Enchantment (New York: Knopf, 1976).
6. Some of these films are Junglee, Bees Saal Baad, Sangam, Dosti, Upkaar, Pakeeza, Bobby, Aradhana, Johnny Mera Nam, Roti Kapda aur Makan, Deewar, Zanjeer, Sholay, Karz, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, and Ram Teri Ganga Mali.
7. Wendy O’Flaherty, “The Mythological in Disguise: An analysis of Karz,” in Indian Popular Cinema, note 1 above, 23-30.
8. Sudhir Kakar and John M. Ross, Tales of Love, Sex, and Danger (London: Unwin Hyman, 1987), chap. 3.
9. Mahabharata, 5, 144.5-10. The English translation is taken from J.A.B. von Buitenen, ed. and trans., The Mahabharata (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 453.
10. The psychological effects of modernization have been discussed in E. James Anthony and C. Chiland, eds., The Child in His Family .Children and Their Parents in a Changing World (New York: Johy Wiley, 1978).
11. Martha Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites, Movies: A Psychological Study (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1950).
12. Joyce McDougall, Theatres of the Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
Chapter 4
1. These are the types of tales which come closest to what Luthi described as ‘one-dimensional.’ See Max Luthi European Folktale: Form and Nature (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1982), 4-10. See also Kamil V. Zvelebil, Two Tamil Folktales (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1987), i.vii, for an exhaustive discussion of the formal characteristics of a similar Tamil narrative. The translations of the stories from Kissa Tota Myna are mine.
2. In this sense they are also what Arthur Deikman has called ‘teaching stories.’ See Arthur Deikman, The Observing Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982), 153.
3. Sudhir Kakar, The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), 87 ff.
4. Robert P. Goldman, ‘Fathers, Sons and Gurus: Oedipal Conflict in Sanskrit Epics,’ Journal of Indian Philosophy 8 (1978): 325-92
5. Mahabharata Virataparva 2:14. Translated by P.D. Roy (Calcutta: Oriental Publishing, n.d.)
6. Zvelebil, Two Tamil Folktales, 131-36. A.K. Ramanujan has collected a folktale, ‘The Serpent Lover,’ from Karnataka, which is identical with the second part of the adventures of Princess Standing
Lamp.
7. See David Will, ‘Psychoanalysis and the New Philosophy of Science,’ International Review of Psychoanalysis 13(1986): 163-74.
8. See Manfred Lurker, Adler und Schlange: Tiersymbolik in Glauben und Weltbild der Volker (Tubingen: 1983) and Balaji Mundkur, The Cult of the Serpent: An Interdisciplinary Survey of its Manifestations and Origins (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983).
9. For a summary discussion of oedipal and preoedipal meanings of the snake symbolism, see Philip Slater, The Glory of Hera (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 88ff.
10. B.E.F. Beck and Peter J. Claus, eds., Folktales of India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 27.
11. Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment (New York: Knopf, 1976), 282-310.
12. Stuart Blackburn and A.K. Ramanujan, eds., Another Harmony: New Essays in the Folklore of India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 14.
Chapter 5
1. Oscar Lewis, La Vida (New York: Vintage Books, (1968), xlii.
2. B. Bernstein, Soziale Struktur und Sprachverhalten (Amsterdam: 1970).
3. Mahabharata: Anusasana Parva, translated by P.D. Roy (Calcutta: Oriental Publishing, n.d.), 325.
4. For a discussion of Jungian notions, see R.M. Stein, ‘Coupling-Uncoupling: Bindung und Freiheit,’ in Analytische Psychologie (14 (1983): 1-14.
5. Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1971).
