My Secular Mentor

A rare psychologist of Indian culture, Sudhir Kakar leaves behind seminal works that will have relevance for many generations

- Shaikh Mujibur Rehman

NOTED scholar and world-renowned Indian psychologist of our times, Sudhir Kakar, who passed away recently, has left behind many seminal works that will have relevance for many generations. I first met Kakar at the South Asian Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany, where I was a student. At the time, he was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin. Professor Dietmar Rothermund, Europe’s foremost historian on South Asia, also served as my academic referee, and had invited him to deliver a talk at the Institute. Kakar spoke on the Hindu-Muslim conflict based on the research for his book, The Colors of Violence. I consider Kakar’s The Colors of Violence (first published in 1995) as his most prominent contribution to the study of ethnic violence in India. In the acknowledgements of the book, he notes that he wrote the book at the Berlin Institute, though the plan to write the book took shape when he was hosted by the Committee of Human Development and Divinity School at the University of Chicago, USA. I am so fond of the book that I possess three copies—each with a different cover! In this book, he has applied a psychological approach to examine the HinduMuslim violence. Not only is it the first book that applied this method in the study of riots in India, it also remains the most pioneering work on the subject till today.