Psychology, Law and Society in India

"What happens when the consulting room meets the courtroom and both face the street? Rakesh Shukla brings half a century of democratic politics, forty-five years in the Indian legal profession and a lifetime’s engagement with psychoanalysis to bear on the urgent questions of our times. Moving between tribal district magistrates’ courts and the Supreme Court of India, between the clinic and the protest site, this stunning book asks what Freud’s boldest ambitions so long buried under professional respectability might still offer a society riven by communal violence, caste oppression, gender crime and the creeping advance of authoritarian nationalism. Drawing on Klein and Bion, on Reich and Marcuse, on Sanskrit love poetry and Hindi cinema, on the myths of Ravana and the trauma of Partition, Shukla illuminates the unconscious forces at work in courtroom judgments, in intimate violence, in the manufactured hatred of designated “enemy” communities and in the psychic roots of fascism. He brings a psychoanalytic lens to honour killings and public lynching, to the biases of judges trained to believe themselves impartial, to the devastating mismatch between trauma’s effects on memory and the law’s demand for coherent narrative. This is a book is a tour de force about the cost of keeping psychoanalysis insular and the extraordinary possibilities that open up when it is not. Bravo!"

- David Morgan, Chair of Political Mind , Training Analyst and Supervisor , British Psychoanalytic Association, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society., Ed: The Role of the Unconscious in Social and Political Life

"Rakesh Shukla is a lawyer and a psychoanalyst of rare distinction, with a professional experience in Courts of several cities in India, which includes long time discussions with judges and studies of potential influences of human unconscious in the usual practice of Law. With his solid contributions as a consultant to the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) Committee of Psychoanalysis and Law of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Mr. Shukla also carries this question to a global stage, enriching it with his vast professional experience. Out of decades of practice across multiple instances of the Indian judiciary, and his intimacy to the courtrooms, corridors , chambers where Law is lived, his work with judges, besides his psychoanalytical understanding of human mind, working also with judges, he invites us in this book to a groundbreaking journey across the multiple intersections between Law and the unconscious , between objectivity and the subjective bias that can inhabit Law round the world, particularly, of course, in India. Courageous as well as sensible, The Unconscious Republic is a book for our times, exploring forces that pulse beneath the surface of human beings, also delving into the inner world of judges and confronting authoritarianism and the very foundations of democracy. It is a seminal work. A necessary voice. It is a must read for professionals and lay people who want a closer understanding of the relation between law, the human soul and society."

- Plinio Montagna, Author, Professor, Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, Former President, Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of São Paulo, Former President, Psychodrama Society of São Paulo , Former Editor, Brazilian Journal of Psychoanalysis., Professor, Euro-Latin America Psychosomatics School, Professor, Psychoanalytic Psychosomatics Group of Moscow, Russia, Former Chair and present consultant International Psychoanalytical Committee on Psychoanalysis and Law

"In Psychology, Law, and Society in India: The Unconscious Republic, Rakesh Shukla offers a penetrating exploration of the hidden psychological forces that shape Indian society, its laws, and its institutions. Moving from intimate relationships to communal conflict, from the courtroom to the inner world of judges, this book reveals how love, rage, trauma, prejudice, masculinity, and authority continue to influence public life in ways often unrecognized. Bringing psychoanalysis into conversation with law, politics, and everyday experience, Shukla asks difficult but urgent questions: What drives ordinary people toward violence? How do memory and trauma enter legal testimony? Why do societies create divisions between “us” and “them”? And what unconscious impulses lie behind the making and interpretation of law? Provocative, interdisciplinary, and deeply relevant to contemporary India, this book invites readers to confront the unseen republic within."

- Dr Ronald Doctor, Training Analyst and Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society,Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists,Chair of the IPA Psychoanalysis and Law Committee and Hon. Lecturer, University College London

"Psychoanalysis in India has been like the elephant in the room. We know it is there but few engage with it. The opinions and prejudices that we carry within us influenced by our social position and experience colours our understanding. The combination of the Author’s training as a lawyer and as a psychoanalyst, buttressed also by his social activism has resulted in this creditable work. His engagement with social and political movements brings special insights into the subject. Mass psychology has remained an under-studied aspect of psychology in India. The Author believes that psychoanalysis can contribute meaningfully to the understanding present times in India. The turning of civil industrial disputes into “law and order” problems and the alignment and predilections of the legal system including the law-and-order machinery are examined from a psychoanalytical view point. The author explores succinctly the human yearning for binaries of “Good”, “Evil”, “God” and “Satan”. The book offers invaluable insights into gender relations in India. Much of the author’s psychoanalytical experience is based on his courtroom experience, apart from the insights from the couch."

Ms. Sumita Hazarika; Advocate-on-record, Supreme Court of India

"Psychology, Law and Society in India: The Unconscious Republic will speak to lawyers, judges, psychoanalysts, social scientists and activists who sense that something vital is missing from purely doctrinal or purely sociological accounts of law’s violence and law’s promise. Drawing on Freud and Kakar as much as on constitutional jurisprudence, human rights reports and case law, Rakesh Shukla offers a rare, genre-defying work that is at once memoir, theoretical reflection and a call to reimagine how societies might confront their own unconscious."

Justice S. Ravindra Bhat (Retired), Supreme Court of India, Chair, National Task Force on Student Mental Health and Suicide Prevention in Higher Educational Institutions, Chair Professor M.K. Nambiar Centre for SAARC Comparative Law Centre, NALSAR Hyderabad

"One welcomes, especially in times of global turbulence, this slender but extremely significant work—a guide to sanity (which must be described as abnormal normality). The subtitle—The Unconscious Republic—speaks volumes, especially at the time of celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Constitution of India. The learned author prompts further a constitutional quest for a more equitable world, free from prejudices and illusions, and always geared to the freedom, justice, equality, and fellow feeling implicit, and at times explicit, in a democratic, republican, and socialist constitution."

Upendra Baxi,Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Warwick and Delhi