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The Indians: Portrait of a People
Authors: Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages: 226
Price: Rs 395

Indians are perhaps the worlds most undemocratic people, living in the worlds largest and most plural democracy where a persons self-worth is almost exclusively determined by the rank he occupies, says a new book.

A profoundly hierarchical society, in India the determination of relative rank (Is this person superior or inferior to me?) remains very near the top of subconscious questions evoked in an interpersonal encounter, says the book The Indians: Portrait of a People by psychoanalyst and culture commentator Sudhir Kakkar and anthropologist Katherina Kakkar.

The gratification of the 300 million middle-class consumers, the new Brahmins, does not lie in their being consumers in a global marketplace but in being somebody in a profoundly hierarchical society, the authors say. You must be somebody to survive with dignity, since rank is the only substitute for money. Thus retired judges, ex-ambassadors and other sundry officials who are no longer in service are never caught without calling cards prominently displaying who they once were, authors say.

Irrespective of his educational status and more than in any other culture in the world, an Indian is a homo hierarchicus, the book says.

Although at first glance the notion of Indian-ness among the one billion population speaking 14 major languages with pronounced regional differences may seem far-fetched, yet from ancient times European, Chinese and Arab travellers have identified common features among Indias peoples, it says.

Second only to the family as a pervasive social dimension of Indian identity is the institution of caste, the authors say. The ancient divisions of Hindu society - into the priest (Brahmin), warrior (Kshtriya), tradesman (Vaishya) and servant (Shudra) classes (in that order of ranking) - is still used to locate a person in the wider social space, the book says and quotes an example political commentators speaking of mobilising the Brahmin, Vaishya or the backward classes (as the Shudras are called now) during elections.

The authors also say that although the cliché relationship between an overpowering mother-in-law and a silently suffering daughter-in-law is a bitter reality for many young women, the changes that are taking place in the power structure of the educated middle class have made many a mother-in-law viewing herself as a loser on the board. She feels bitter and short-changed that although she suffered under the whims and moods of older family members when she was young bride, now, when it is her turn to reap the fruits of being the family matriarch, she can neither take the respect of her better educated daughter-in-law or the loyalty of her son for granted.

The book also says that working wives who express satisfaction with their career still rank the raising of children as the highest goal of a woman's life. It quotes a 15-year-old study in Bangalore where most wives ranked the traditional purposes of marriage - children, love and affection, fulfilment of the husband's sexual needs - very, high.

On sexuality, the book says between the land of the Kamasutra and contemporary India lie many centuries during which Indian society managed to enter the dark ages of sexuality. Many observers wonder as to what could have happened to the same people who produced the Kamasutra to turn contemporary Indian eroticism into a sexual wasteland, the authors say, while wondering about the demands to ban on kissing in films.

Although outwardly indistinguishable from any other trendy citizen of the world, an Indian has an intuitive relationship with the Divine, the book says. Visits to important temples and pilgrimage places, regular ritual fasting and turning to traditional religious practices or gurus have not declined with globalisation and its worldly temptations. In fact, these have increased since the 1980s most conspicuously in the new middle class, the authors say.

Gurus such as SatyaSai Baba or Sri Sri Ravi Shankar are better attuned to the religious feeling of the flexible Hindu since they, too, orientate themselves on the two great themes of Hinduism: tolerance and universality, the authors say.

The flexible Hindus response to modernity is not turning away from his religious heritage but giving it a new form and adapting it to his changed life circumstances, the book says.