What makes an Indian recognizably so to the rest of the world, and, more importantly, to his or her fellow Indians?

Looking at what constitutes a common Indian identity, the authors examine in detail the predominance of family, community and caste in our everyday lives, our attitudes to sex and marriage, our prejudices, our ideas of the other (explored in a brilliant chapter on Hindu-Muslim conflict), and our understanding of health, right and wrong, and death.

Drawing upon three decades of original research and varied sources, Sudhir and Katharina Kakar have produced a rich and revealing portrait of the Indian people.

"Sudhir Kakar is our foremost psychoanalyst, who will remain indispensable to our understanding of Indian men and women."— The Hindu

"Sudhir Kakar's books have laid bare the Indian psyche, and shown how Indian culture, society and family structure condition our behaviour."—The Indian Express

About the Author

An internationally renowned psychoanalyst and writer, Sudhir Kakar has been a visiting professor at the universities of Chicago, Harvard, McGill, Melbourne, Hawaii and Vienna and a Fellow at the Institutes of Advanced Study, Princeton and Berlin.

Currently, he is Adjunct Professor of Leadership at INSEAD in Fontainbleau, France. His many honours include the Bhabha, Nehru and National Fellowships in India, the Kardiner Award of Columbia University, the Boyer Prize of the American Anthropological Association, and Germany’s Goethe Medal.

Sudhir Kakar's books have been translated into twenty languages around the world.

Katharina Kakar studied Comparative Religions, Indian Art and Anthropology at the Free University of Berlin.

She has taught at the Free University and the College of Protestant Theology, Berlin and was a Fellow at the Centre of the Study of World Religions at Harvard University.