Mira And The Mahatma

Sudhir Kakar

Sudhir Kakar (born 25 July 1938) is an Indian psychoanalyst, novelist and author in the fields of cultural psychology and the psychology of religion. After returning to India in 1975, Sudhir Kakar set up a practice as a psychoanalyst in Delhi where he was also the Head of Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology. He has been 40th Anniversary Senior Fellow at the Centre for Study of World Religions at Harvard (2001–02), a visiting professor at the universities of Chicago (1989–93), McGill (1976–77), Melbourne (1981), Hawaii (1998) and Vienna (1974–75), INSEAD, France (1994-2013). He has been a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute of Advanced Study), Berlin, Centre for Advanced Study of Humanities, University of Cologne and is Honorary Professor, GITAM University, Visakhapatnam Kakar's was awarded the 1987 Boyer Prize for Psychological Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association.[10] He received the Order of Merit, Federal republic of Germany, Feb. 2012, Distinguished Service Award, Indo-American Psychiatric Association, 2007, Fellow, National Academy of Psychology, India, 2007, Member, Academie Universelle des Cultures, France, 2003, Abraham Kardiner Award, Columbia University, 2002,Rockefeller Residency, Bellagio. April–May 1999,Goethe Medal of Goethe Institut, Germany, 1998,Watumull Distinguished Scholar, University of Hawaii,Spring Semester, 1998,National Fellow in Psychology, Indian Council of Social Science Research, 1992–94, MacArthur Research Fellowship, 1993–94,Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow, 1986–88,Homi Bhabha Fellow, 1979-80.Karolyi Foundation Award for Young Writers, 1963. The French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur profiled Kakar as one of 25 major thinkers of the world while the German weekly Die Zeit profiled him as one of twenty one thinkers for the 21st century Oxford University Press, Delhi is in the process of publishing 4 volumes of Kakar’s essays in their series Great Thinkers of Modern Asia.