Who Will Think of the Children? Hindu Childrearing Practices in Psychoanalytic Theory

The preeminent Indian psychoanalyst, Sudhir Kakar, invites his readers to consider the psychological bases of Hindu childhood and society. Crucial to his project is the Hindu mother’s behavior toward her child. Kakar proposes that, because of her own psychological needs, the mother physically and emotionally indulges her child. It is this indulgence that ostensibly accounts for the central Hindu themes of dharma, karma, and moksa. Kakar equally claims that the mother-infant dynamic accounts for India's signature social institution, that is, caste. This may not be the case. One theme curiously goes unaddressed in Kakar’s work, that is, maya. Within Hindu metaphysics, maya coneys the perception of the external world as illusory, untrustworthy. Psychoanalytically, maya expresses the perception of those with insecure-anxious attachments. Maya is basic mistrust. Maya makes trouble for Kakar. Kakar’s characterization of childrearing in India is incorrect. The ethnographic record indicates a pediatric childrearing strategy, a strategy adaptive for robust infectious disease ecologies. Pediatric caregivers do not emotionally indulge their infants. They tend to nurture insecure-anxious attachments. Such attachments produce personality profiles predisposed to collectivism. Pediatric childrearing, insecure-anxious attachments, and collectivism are anti-pathogen psychologies. Maya reflects the inner world of insecure-anxious collectivists in equatorial South Asia.