Book lovers around the world know the best seller book ‘The Indians’ written by Nainital-born great Indian intellectual and writer Sudhir Kakkar and his wife. Kushwant Singh had written comments on this book ‘A remarkably perceptive analysis of Indian character’. Recently, after his demise on 22nd April, the literary world across the world has expressed utmost regret. A free spirit who is difficult to categorize, this engineer turned psychoanalyst and novelist produced a body of internationally recognized work. It features contemporary theoretical studies, essays and fiction that explore the peculiarities of the Indian psyche, the relationships between cultures, the tensions between traditional heritage and modernity.
Sudhir Kakkar has spent his life as a writer and psychoanalyst personally describing and experiencing the limits that mark the possibility of knowing the other by retranslating various myths and traditions through the cultural imagination. It is an extraordinary transformative work, expanding mental and cultural space.
Using three decades of original research and sources as diverse as the Mahabharata, Kama Sutra, Mahatma Gandhi’s writings, Bollywood films and popular folklore, Sudhir and Katrina Kakkar create a rich and revealing portrait of the Indian people.
