A Theory of Hindu Neurosis

Lecture by Professor Guy Cowley at the Asiatic Society in Bombay, September 1921
[Fiction]

Parashar Kulkarni

‘Before I begin, let me undertake the pleasant task of expressing my deepest gratitude to the Royal Asiatic Society of which I have been a beneficiary for the past several months. Undoubtedly, the Society holds a wealth of information on these parts of the empire that is unparalleled. I am indebted to my friends present here. I earnestly hope my lecture will not disappoint you. My title, A Theory of Hindu Neurosis, might have encouraged curiosity among those of you familiar with my earlier work. This work inaugurates my engagement with a new field of inquiry – psychoanalysis – which has not received the attention it deserves in our country. We have left it to our cousins in Germany to contribute to it. In this lecture, I will only provide a summary of my analysis and shall make no pretence of it being complete. Nevertheless, this lecture is exhaustive in its ideas, for letters to me, including by those in position of the highest responsibility in the government, have indicated sufficient interest in my findings. 

‘Now, let me introduce the subject of my study. This young man, about thirty years old, was introduced to me here in this very library. So, I owe the Asiatic Society another debt. He intended to discuss cows with me. He had spent many years in their company. His adult life is typical. He moved to Bombay for education. He was employed by a goshala which we all know is the Hindi name for a cow shelter. He admitted that he did not possess any veterinary qualification. Despite that, he looked after cows. At the shelter, he believed that he could understand cows. This belief is not unique. It is characteristic of the Hindus. After spending two years at the cow shelter, the subject became unemployed. He is currently working with the Bombay City Police, helping them in investigating the riot that led to the burning of the British Chewing Gum Company, which, undoubtedly, is one of the most important cases in recent history. The subject decided to offer his services gratis despite not having the means to do so. This reflects his obsession. The police, surprisingly, accepted. The subject spent considerable time with the cow at the temple. When he began conversing with me, hesitantly at first, I diagnosed that the man suffered from an abnormal enthusiasm for cows, an acute form of mania, a cow mania. Since then, for about six months, I have been conducting sessions with the subject. 

‘Prior to discussing the case, it will be suitable to outline the mythic structure that informs the Hindu mind and his relationship with the cow. Such a contextualisation will allow me to generalise my conclusions beyond the subject. Cows and bulls are ubiquitous in Hindu mythology. It is most useful to begin with Shiva, the Destroyer, one of the gods in the Hindu pantheon, a part of the Hindu trinity, believed in many circles to be derivative of the Catholic tradition. Shiva’s vehicle is the bull. Most Hindu gods have animals as vehicles, they don’t like to walk. One can imagine, the desire to not have one’s feet touch the ground in this country [laughter in the audience]. Shiva has two bulls, Nandi, the Joyful, and Bhringi, the Wanderer. Nandi is white. His body is large. His eyes are brown and soft. His horns are sharp and hard. He is seated outside the gates of most Hindu temples. Devotees are expected to touch his testicles while entering the temple. Nevertheless, he is castrated, domesticated. Bhringi, on the other hand, is not domesticated. He is a wanderer, in search of a mate. He is an embodiment of sex, like Shiva himself. Shiva is believed to be a wild god. In one of the Hindu myths, the world is not created. It is waiting for Shiva’s seed. The goddess Shakti asks Shiva to marry her. Shiva refuses. Finally, he submits. He agrees to father children but refuses to be a householder. Shakti becomes the head of the household. Rely on the Hindus to burden the weaker sex with all responsibility [laughter in the audience]. The other gods in the trinity have their own cows. Vishnu or Krishna, the preserver, is the keeper of Kamadhenu, the wish-fulfilling cow. She lives in his house in Vrindavan. In the mythology, she rises when gods and demons churn the cosmic ocean for the elixir of life. The third god in the trinity, Brahma, the creator, has an incestuous relationship with the cow. He creates the goddess Saraswati and falls in love with her. She transforms into a cow to escape him. He transforms into a bull and follows her. It is possible to locate in these animal myths a form of collective repression of the Hindu sexual impulse that transcends both gender and mankind. 

‘In comparison, consider our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. Despite being born in a barn, the Christians have not resorted to divinising the sheep, the way the Hindus have done with their cow. Abraham sacrifices a ram at the altar, that is the end of the animal. An animal is of a lower order, meant for human use. With one divine thunderbolt, Christianity got rid of paganism. 

‘Beyond mythology, the cow is a central figure in the everyday life of a Hindu, a part of his developmental process from birth to death. An infant encounters a cow’s udder in the domestic space. He sees his mother milking the cow in the same way he milks his mother. The infant associates himself with the mother, and his mother with the cow. This association leads to a substitution of udders – the infant transitions from the udders of the mother to the udders of the cow. Among the Hindus, the Oedipus complex reverses and a phobia becomes a mania – mastromania, the irrational fetish of breasts. The West is phallocentric; the East is vagocentric, or more precisely, mamocentric.  

‘One can also make a postural argument that establishes a relationship between cows and the sub-normal development of the Hindu infant. The scientifically minded will find this argument more convincing. From birth, the Hindu infant is on all fours, and rises to his feet much later than his Western counterpart. The Western infant rises quickly, looks up, dissociates himself from the animal, dissociates himself from the mother, and is perfectly sure of his sex, his gender, and his difference from other lower creatures. The Western infant tends toward castration anxiety, which is normal. He protects what he has. In the East, it is the cow that animalises the man. Hence, the native occupies this intermediate space between man and beast, what we term “savage”. The cow is on all fours. Any engagement with the cow is on all fours. Milking must be done on all fours. Picking cow dung and playing with it is done on all fours. The West gave up all these tasks as uncivilised. The negative olfactory experience contributed to this speedy dissociation. The Eastern association with the cow led to the abnormal retention of lower-order sensory perceptions such as taste, smell, and touch and prevented the emergence of vision as the dominant sense. Verticality and vision are the origins of civilisational progress. Both are lesser among the natives and the cow is indeed responsible. For this reason of perpetual horizontality, the Hindu cannot conquer. It is the cow that transforms the Hindu to docility, in contrast to the ingrained spirit of domination, vision, and verticality that forms part of the Western psyche. It is for this reason that the West in general and the Anglo-Saxons in particular, have never been a subject race. They have always commanded, conquered, and colonised. 

‘While all religions can be attributed to a collective neurosis, as Professor Sigmund Freud tells us, attachment to cows is a uniquely Hindu pathology. Here civilisation is to be blamed. In the West, our ability to move beyond the infantile urges has allowed us to treat cows in material terms. It is our fortune that great men like Descartes, so what if he is French, [laughter in the audience] have allowed us to conceive of lesser beings as lacking in the soul, and as a result, lacking consciousness. Their actions have no moral basis. Their actions are completely biological. They do not feel. So, it is they who land on our Sunday roast, not we on theirs [laughter again]. At lower orders, civilisation does not adequately constrain animality. For a Hindu, owning a cow is a matter of great pride. It is common to see fully grown men talking with their cows like they were old friends. This is a manic state. In contrast to phobias, where cows are avoided or one is impaired on seeing a cow or any other animal for that matter, the Hindu actively seeks out cows. As Professor Freud reminds us, children treat animals like siblings. Savages worship animals as their ancestors. In the West, a cow-manic person will be admitted to the sanatorium. In India, if we introduced such a policy, all Hindus would need to be admitted. We do not have resources for such wholesale admittance, despite there being a need. Of course, there are always the exceptional cases who, on account of their exposure to missionary schools, have seen the light. I also want to lend my support to native reformers who have supported English efforts in setting up institutions such as the Hindu College.   

‘Some methodological clarifications are necessary. The psychoanalytic method cannot be easily transferred from civilised to other societies. As Professor Freud says, psychoanalysis is for normal people. Naturally, the method should change when one moves away from the West. People in the East do not offer themselves to treatment as easily. The Anglo-Saxon spirit of self-improvement is entirely missing. This is not entirely their fault. Our infants also do not offer themselves easily. Informing them or persuading them will only increase their resistance. This resistance can take the shape of violence. As enlightened parents, we should treat our colonial subjects nonetheless. Professor Freud advises that psychoanalysis requires the physician to suppress his curiosity and leave the patient free to disclose what she needs to. This might be a useful prescription in Europe where time is of the essence. In the colonies, natives have no relationship with time. Anybody who has asked his servant to fetch anything from the market will understand [laughter in the audience]. When time is not important, it is impossible to expect the patient to reveal valuable information. The native mind is ever wandering and lacks precision. So, I recommend direct and specific questions. I was once told by a knowledgeable professor that a Hindu mind is a psychoanalytic black hole. So, one must be forthright.  

‘The subject is an active seeker of cows. During the sessions, he said that his family always lived with cows and that his parents and grandparents would routinely talk with the cows of the house. The parents are both, as he described them, cow lovers. In the West, if one were to profess love for cows it is assumed it is love for the dead variety [laughter in the audience]. Not in the case of Hindus. This subject actively fantasises about cows. These fantasies are revealed in his conversations about Nandi and Bhringi, the castrated tame bull and the uncastrated wild bull, which, as discussed, belong to their god Shiva. He said that he prefers the uncastrated wild bull because he is more enjoyable. When I could not restrain my surprise, or should I say shock, he offered a new explanation for his statement. He said he meant “for the cow”, not for him, undoubtedly a flimsy excuse. The lusts of the Hindus have a high probability to extend beyond the sexes and toward bestiality.’ 

‘That’s perverse!’ a man whispered. He was a member of the Asiatic library which guaranteed free but hushed transmission of all his exclamations to other members and non-members alike. 

‘I can only make this statement probabilistically,’ Cowley continued, ‘As a man of science, I have to account for all possible explanations. Even if we are working in the East, we should keep our standards high. The subject also revealed explicitly sexual fantasies. This time he did not try to hide them. He was enthusiastic about masturbating next to a cow. Professor Freud tells us that masturbation during puberty is the root of all troubles. At the same time, he was interested in a young female neighbour of the human species. Such sexual fluidity is pervasive in Hinduism and the gods that they worship. In comparison, such inter-species interactions find no place in Christian traditions and morals. As discussed before, Shiva searches for sex without responsibility. Krishna is known to engage with many maidens. The texts are full of men who dress as women, from Arjuna to Krishna himself. Shiva is also called Ardhanareshwar – half man, half woman. If we are to take these ideals of Hinduism to what they truly are, what is revealed is a society with no restraint or morality whatsoever, and an extremely high degree of fluidity, unparalleled and abhorrent in any civilized society. With such fluidity, a society can never conquer, for its men are always effeminate, never masculine enough, never complete, never resolute, and never willing to scale a summit at any cost. And what they cannot conquer they turn sacred. What do they end up with? Sacred trees instead of timber. Sacred animals instead of protein. Sacred land instead of minerals. And regress instead of progress. 

‘Societies also rely on elaborate measures to hide their bestial preferences. Once, the patient told me that he touched a cow’s genitals at the temple. I curtailed my shock. To any Westerner, the idea of rubbing an animal’s genitals will be blasphemous. Then he told me that all Hindus do it. It is a custom to rub Nandi’s genitals while entering the temple. The bull is castrated to ensure that he does not become wild due to such constant stimulation. Of course, this sort of constant stimulation is exactly the reason why a real bull is never used. Imagine the bull’s state of mind. It is my hypothesis that in the earlier days, the bulls were alive. But they must have wreaked havoc in the temple due to such constant stimulation. So, they were castrated. But that was not enough. They continued to wreak havoc for no one likes to be touched on the genitals or the areas around it by complete strangers or for that matter by acquaintances, however close. As the last recourse, the real bulls were entirely done away with. In their place, stone idols arrived to permanently resolve the destruction of man and property. I observe a form of collective sexual repression and transference. Here we can locate the origins of inter-species fluidity which might be the basis for the extreme degree of Hindu universalism. 

‘In conclusion. the developmental trajectory of our Hindu subjects will only depend on the extent to which the Hindus grow out of their infantility, effeminacy, sexual fluidity, and gender ambiguity. My own contribution to this list is bestiality. My work affords us a proper understanding of the neurosis of Hindu colonial subjects. 

‘My study supports the conclusions of related research on native subjects. For instance, Owen Berkeley-Hill, in his excellent treatise on the Anal-Erotic Factor in the Religion, Philosophy and Character of the Hindus, provides a useful theoretical model of the anal-erotic tendency, common among the Hindus. This fact is widely accepted in the scholarly community so I will not spend any time discussing it. I can only highly recommend his work. Similarly, my work supports the recent treatise that links vegetarianism to latent homosexuality. However, I am resistant toward accepting the results unequivocally. To uphold our highest standards, we must be critical to a fault. I have sent a note to the author that he has not adequately ruled out bisexuality.  

‘My study has also provided a comparative perspective, so often missing in the literature. The West is individualistic, the West is independent, the West is egalitarian, the Western self is fully formed. The East is collective, the East is dependent, the East is hierarchical, the Eastern self is malformed.’ 

END