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by Sudhir Kakar


  2. For a comprehensive historical discussion of the evolution of the guru institution, on which this introductory section is based, see R.M. Steinmann, Guru-Sisya Sambandha: Das Meister-Schüler Verhältnis im Traditionell-en und Modernen Hinduismus (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1986). See further W. Cenker, A Tradition of Teachers: Sankara and the Jagadgurus Today (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1983).

  3. Cenker, Tradition of Teachers 41.

  4. Cited in D. Gold, The Lord as Guru (Delhi: oxford University Press, 1987), 104.

  5. Cited in Steinmann, Guru-Sisya Sambandha, 87.

  6. Ibid., 103.

  7. L. Babb, Redemptive Encounters (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), 218.

  8. Kulanirvana Tantra, cited in Steinmann, 103.

  9. S. Abhayananda, Jnaneshvar (Neples, FL: Atma Books, 1989), 122-23.

  10. See, for instance, Chaturvedi Badrinath, ‘Sense and Nonsense about the ‘Guru’ Concept,’ Times of India, 13 February 1990.

  11. Steinmann, Guru-Sisya Sambandha, 188-89.

  12. Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna, The Great Master, 2 vols. (Mylapore: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1983), vol. 1, 521.

  13. Jayakar, Krishnamurti, 4.

  14. Ibid., 5.

  15. Ibid., 211.

  16. See S. Kakar, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors (New York: Knopf, 1982), chap.5.

  17. S. Kakar, The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), chap. 4.

  18. See H. Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1971), and The Restoration of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1977).

  19. Ernest Wolf, Treatment of the Self (New York: Guilford, 1989), 52.

  20. See A. Deutsch, ‘Tenacity of Attachment to a Cult Leader: A Psychiatric Perspective,’ American Journal of Psychiatry 137 (1982): 1569-73. See also S. Lorand, ‘Psychoanalytic Therapy of Religious Devotees,’ International Journal of Psychoanalysis 43 (1962): 50-55.

  21. Wolf, Treatment of the Self, 100.

  22. S. Nacht, ‘Curative Factors in Psychoanalysis,’ International Journal of Psychoanalysis 43 (1962): 208. See also S.M. Abend, ‘Unconscious Fantasy and Theories of Cure,’ Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 27 (1979): 579-96.

  23. Cited in Steinmann, Guru-Sisya Sambandha, 36.

  24. Swami Satyanand Saraswati, Light on the Guru and Disciple Relationship (Munger: Bihar School of Yoga, 1983), 92.

  25. Ibid., 77.

  26. William James, The Varities of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green, 1902), 107, 195.

  27. Cited in D. Nurbaksh, ‘Sufism and Psychoanalysis,’ International Journal of Social Psychiatry 24 (1978): 208.

  28. Swami Muktananda, The Perfect Relationship (Ganesh-Puri: Gurudev Siddha Vidyapeeth, 1983), ix.

  29. Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna, 454.

  30. Muktananda, Perfect Relationship, 35.

  31. Ibid., viii.

  32. Christopher Bollas, ‘The Transformational Object.’ International Journal of Psychoanalysis 60 (1978): 97-107.

  33. Muktananda, Perfect Relationship, 4.

  34. Steinmann, Guru-Sisya Sambandha, 290.

  35. Muktananda, Perfect Relationship, 85.

  36. Babb, Redemptive Encounters, 173.

  37. Jayakar, Krishnamurti, 3.

  38. Cited in Steinmann, Guru-Sisya Sambandha, 235.

  39. Ibid., 234.

  40. M L. Moeller, ‘Self and Object in Countertransference,’ International Journal of Psychoanalysis 58 (1977): 356-76.

  41. S. Kakar, ‘Psychoanalysis and Religious Healing: Siblings or Strangers?’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 53, no. 3 (1985).

  42. Muktananda, Perfect Relationship, 37.

  43. Ibid., 109.

  44. Jayakar, Krishnamurti, 8.

  45. S.L. Bady, ‘The Voice as a Curative Factor in Psychotherapy,’ Psychoanalytic Review 72 (1989): 677-90.

  46. S. Kakar, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors, 129-30.

  47. Muktananda, Perfect Relationship, 4.

  48. Moeller, ‘Self and Object,’ 373.

  Chapter 3

  1. E.L. Meng and E. Freud, ed., Psychoanalysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 117.

  2. E. Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1957), vol. 3.

  3. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Standard Edition of the Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1953-74), vol. 21. Hereafter referred to as Standard Edition. Also Civilization and Its Discontents, Standards Edition, vol. 21.

  4. S. Freud, Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices (1907), Standard Edition, vol. 9.

  5. Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm (New York: Argone Institute, 1942).

  6. S. Freud, Obsessive Actions.

  7. Franz Alexander, ‘Buddhistic Training as an Artificial Catatonia,’ Psychoanalysis 19(1931): 129-45.

  8. J.M. Masson, The Oceanic Feeling: The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980).

  9. P. Ricouer, Freud and Philosophy, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 533.

  10. Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther (New York: Norton, 1958), 264.

  11. Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Man’s Soul (New York: Knopf, 1983).

  12. Karen Homey, Neurosis and Human Growth (New York: Norton, 1950), 55.

  13 Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950).

  14. A. Kaplan, “Maturity in Religion,’ Bulletin of the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis 13 (1963): 101-19; H. Guntrip, ‘Religion in Relation to Personal Interaction,’ British Journal of Medical Psychology 42 (1969): 232-33; Peter Homans, Theology after Freud (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).

  15. Ricouer, Freud and Phislosophy, 548-49.

  16. Jacob Arlow, ‘Ego Psychology and the Study of Mythology,’ Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 9 (1961): 371-93.

  17. Erikson, Young Man Luther, 264.

  18. Gregory Zilboorg, Freud and Religion: A Restatement (London: Chapman, 1958).

  19. Meng and E. Freud, Psychoanalysis and Faith, 133.

  20. See H.P. Jung, ‘The Prototype of Preoedipal Reconstruction,’ Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 25 (1977): 757-85; Irving B. Harrison, ‘On Freud’s View of the Infant-Mother Relationship and of the Oceanic Feeling—Some Subjective Influences,’ Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 27 (1979): 399-421.

  21. Harrison, ‘Some Subjective Influences.’

  22. S. Freud, Moses and Monotheism (1939), Standard Edition, vol. 23, 134.

  23. Harrison, ‘Some Subjective Influences.’ 420.

  24. Ibid., 402.

  25. E. Jones, Life and Work of Freud, vol. 3, 392.

  26. Harrison, ‘Some Subjective Influences,’ 418-19.

  27. Peter Homans, The Ability to Mourn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

  28. S. Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Standard Edition, vol. 6, 2.

  29. Cited in David S. Berman, ‘Stefan Zweig and His Relationship with Freud and Rolland,’ Intemtional Review of Psychoanalysis 6 (1979): 85.

  30. George Steiner, ‘A Note on Language and Psychoanalysis,’ International Review of Psychoanalysis 3 (1976): 257.

  31. Meng and E. Freud, Psychoanalysis and Faith, 126.

  32. W.R. Bion, Attention and Interpretation (London: Tavistock, 1970), 62.

  33. For a survey of the various relational theories in psychoanalysis, see J.R. Greenberg and S.A. Mitchell, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). For an important exploration of religion and religious experience from the viewpoint of relational theories, especially the work of Winnicott, see W.W. Meissner, Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).

  34. D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London. Tavistoc
k, 1971), 1-25.

  35. Ibid., 14.

  36. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 96.

  37. Erikson, Young Man Luther, 263-64.

  38. H. Kohut, Self Psychology and the Humanities (New York: Norton, 1985).

  39. S. Kakar, ‘Psychoanalysis and Religious Healing: Siblings or Strangers?’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 53, no. 3, (1985).

  40. Ava L. Siegler, ‘The Oedipus Myths and the Oedipus Complex: Intersecting Realm, Shared Structures,’ International Review of Psychoanalysis 10 (1983): 205-14.

  41. Ibid., 206.

  42. Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (New York: Harper and Row, 1987).

  43. Bion, Attention and Interpretation, See also M. Milner, ‘Some Notes on Psychoanalytic Ideas about Mysticism,’ in The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men (London: Routledge, 1989), 257-71.

  THE COLOURS OF VIOLENCE

  Chapter 1

  1. In the profession of this belief, physicists did not limit themselves to the field of natural science. In his 1929, ‘Light and Life’, Nils Bohr made an explicit analogy between quantum mechanics and psychology when he observed that the necessity of considering the interrelationship between the measuring instrument and the object of inquiry in physics paralleled the difficulty in psychology where the content of consciousness changed as soon as attention was directed to it; see Nils Bohr, ‘Light and Life’, Nature 131 (1933), 421-33 and 457-59. Wolfgang Pauli, who is regarded by many as occupying a place next only to Einstein in the hierarchy of the great modem physicists, was categorical in his conclusion that the natural sciences had taken a historically wrong turn by accepting Cartesian ideas and ways of thought engendered by Newtonian physics. The observer in modem physics, he felt, was still too separated from the phenomena observed. In so far as a content of consciousness was itself an observation, the vital question of separation of subject and object was not restricted to the narrow field of physical inquiry but was relevant for all human sciences too; Pauli, ‘Phänomen und physikalische Realität’, Dialektika 17 (1957), 36-48.

  2. For a history of the city, see S.M. Alam, The Growth of Hyderabad City—A Historical Perspective, (Hyderabad: Azad Oriental Research Institute, 1986);D. Prasad, Social and Cultural Geography of Hyderabad City (New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1986).

  3. Jean-Baptiste Tavemier, Travels in India, trans. V. Ball, ed. W. Crooke (1676; Delhi: Oriental Books, 1977), 122-24.

  4. S.C. Dube, Indian Village (New York: Harper Collophon Books, 1967), 187.

  5. Francois Martin, Memoirs of Francois Martin (1670-1694), trans L. Vardarajan, vol. 1, p. 2 (Delhi: Manohar, 1983), 761-62.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Tavemier, 127.

  8. Rama Naidu, Old Cities, New Predicaments: A Study of Hyderabad (Delhi: Sage 1991), 15.

  9. Tavemier, 140.

  10. Muzaffar Alam, ‘Competition and Coexistence: Indo-Islamic Interaction in Medieval North India’, Itinerario 13, no. 1(1989), 51.

  11. Naidu, Chap. 5.

  12. The secularist view has been articulated in a host of academic and popular publications for over 50 years. Its most sophisticated proponents are a group of historians at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. For an older formulation of the view, Nehru’s The Discovery of India is still one of the of historians at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. For an older formulation of the view, Nehru’s The Discovery of India is still one of the best introductions. For a recent summary, see Amartya Sen, ‘The Threats to Secular India’, New York Review of Books, 8 April 1993, 26-32. For the viewpoints of the activists, see Mehdi Arslam and Janaki Raj an, eds., Communalism in India: Challenge and Response (Delhi: Manohar, 1994).

  13. C.A. Bayly, ‘The Pre-history of ‘Communalism’? Religious Conflict in India 1700-1860’, Asian Studies 19, no. 2 (1985), 185-85.

  14. This view is most forcefully advocated by Marxist and neo-Marxist historians. See, e.g, Gyanendra Pandey, The Colonial Construction of Communalism in North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990).

  15. For some of the more recent versions of the Hindu nationalist viewpoint see Koenraad Elst, Ayodhya and After: Issues before Hindu society (Delhi: Voice of India, 1991), K. D. Prithipaul, ‘Reason, Law and the Limits of Indian Secularism’, International Journal of Indian Studies, July-December 1992.

  16. Marc Gaborieau, ‘From Al-Beruni to Jinnah’, Anthropology Today 1, no. 3(1985).

  17. See, e.g., Tara Chand, Influence of Islam on Indian Culture (Allahabad: The Indian Press, 1963). For more recent formulations see Rasheeduddin Khan, ed., Composite Culture of India and National Integration (Simla: IIAS, 1988). See also Gyanendra Pandey, ed., Hindus and Others (Delhi: Viking, 1993).

  18. Bayly, op. cit.

  19. Alam, 46. See also his, ‘Assimilation from a Distance: Confrontation and a Sufi Accommodation in Awadh Society’, unpublished manuscript, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 1992.

  20. Ibid., 51.

  21. Ibid., 55.

  22. Abbe J. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, ed. and trans. H. K. Beauchamp (1906; Calcutta: Rupa, 1992), 48.

  23. Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656-1668) (New Delhi: S. Chand, 1972), 33.

  24. Dubois, 134.

  25. Erik Erikson, Toys and Reasons (New York: Norton, 1977).

  26. Bayly, 192-95.

  27. Dubois, 341-42. The Hindus’ constancy to their faith in the face of Muslim oppression or blandishments is also attested to hold true in the case of north India by Alam, 48-49.

  28. Ibid., 343.

  29. Raymond Grew, ‘On the Prospect of Global History’, unpublished manuscript for the Conference on Global History at Bellagio, Italy, July 16-21, 1991.

  30. Ian Austin, City of Legends: The Story of Hyderabad (Delhi: Viking, 1991).

  Chapter 2

  1. Peter Marsh, ‘Rhetorics of Violence’ in P. Marsh and A. Campbell, eds., Aggression and Violence (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 102-17.

  2. See Larry Byron et al., ‘Legitimate Violence, Violence Attitudes, and Rape: A Test of the Cultural Spillover Theory’, in R. Prentky and V.L. Quinsey, eds., Human Sexual Aggression: Current Prespectives, Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 528 (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1988), 80-85.

  3. Erik Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968).

  4. See Rita R. Rogers, ‘International Exchange: Transference of Attitudes down the Generations’, in J. Howells, ed., Modem Perpectives in the Psychiatry of Infancy (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1979), 339-49.

  5. Bert N. Adams and M. Bristow, “Ugandan Asian Expulsion Experiences: Rumour and Reality,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 14(1979), 191-203.

  6. Ralph L. Rosnow, “Rumour as Communication: A Contextualist Approach,” Journal of Communication 38, no. 1 (1988), 12-28.

  7. Krishna Baldev Vaid, Guzra Hua Zamana (Delhi: Radhakrishna, 1982). 430-36; my translation.

  8. Asghar Ali Engineer, Communal Riots in Post-Independence India (New Delhi: Sangam Books, 1985).

  9. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

  10. Ashutosh Varshney, “Contested Meanings: India’s National Identity, Hindu National and the Politics of Anxiety” Daedalus 122, no. 3 (1993), 227-61. See also Ainslee T. Embree, Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in Modem India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990).

  11. Varshney, 238.

  12. Howard Schuman and J. Scott, ‘Generations and Collective Memories’, American Sociological Review 54 (1989), 380.

  13. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

  14. See John C. Turner, ‘Towards a Cognitive Re-defmition of the Social Group’, in Henri Tajfel, ed., Social Identity and Intergroup Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and Tajfel, ‘Social Psychology of Intergroup Relation,’ in W.G. Austin and S. Worchel, ed
s., Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 33, 1982.

  15. Vamik D. Volkan, ‘An Overview of Psychological Concepts’, in V. Volkan et al., eds., The Psychodynamics of International Relationships (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1990) 31-46.

  16. Howard Stein, ‘On Professional Allegiance in the Study of Politics’, Political Psychology 7 (1986), 248. See also John Mack, ‘The enemy system’ in Volkan, The Psychodynamics of International Relationships, 57-89. Wendy Doniger (personal communication) illustrates this dual nature of certain objects, places, people, by citing the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai who intervened in an argument over whether Jerusalem is a symbol or a real city inhabited by real people, with the remark that Jerusalem is a symbol—but a symbol with a sewage system.

  17. Sigmund Freud, ‘The Taboo of Virginity’ (1918), in The Standard Edition of the Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1957), 11, 191-208.

  18. See Natalie Z. Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), 152-88.

  19. Ekram Ali Malik, Hindu-Muslim Riots in the British Punjab (1849-1900) (Lahore: Gosha-i-adab, 1974), 3-5. See also Sandra Freitag, Communalism in North India, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990) For an account of the more recent riots, see M. J. Akbar, Riot after Riot (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1988).

  20. Sarah J. Moore, Rioting in Northern India (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1976), 53.

  21. Phyllis Greenacre, ‘Crowds and Crisis’, The Psychoanalytical Study of the Child 27 (1972), 147.

  22. See Stephen Reicher, ‘The Determination of Collective Behaviour,’ in Tajfel, Social Identity and Intergroup Relations, 40-82.

  23. Moore, 62.

  24. Javed Alam, ‘Riots and Recent Phase of Communal Violence in Hyderabad’, Bulletin Henry Martin Institute of Islamic Studies, Jan-March 1994.

  25. Davis shows this to be one of the implicit motivations of a crowd in the case of Catholic and Protestant violence in 16th-century France.

  26. Romesh C. Majumdar et al., eds., The History and Culture of the Indian People, vol. 5 (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, 1964), 22.

  27. Volkan, ‘An Overview of Psychological Concepts’, 44.

 

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