Introduction: Mrs. A. and Dev Satya Nand

Abstract

In the middle of World War II and at the end of colonial rule, a young woman in Punjab met with family friend Dev Satya Nand as a willing participant in his new method of dream analysis. This chapter introduces Mrs. A., Satya Nand, and the outlines of the case, which began with a discussion of bringing “Hindu Socialism” to Indian peasants and turned into an exploration of love, sexuality, ambition, and life after marriage. The case appeared early in the career of Satya Nand, a prolific but little remembered figure in twentieth-century Indian psychiatry, who theorized complex connections between the mind and the social world, casting the psyche as an organic vehicle for ethical imagination. This introduction also introduces Draupadi, Shakuntala, and Ahalya, central mythic figures who entered Mrs. A.’s musings and Satya Nand’s science. It asks what it means to begin a conversation about ethics from elsewhere than the usual sources in European myth and philosophy, and wonders at how we might consider this narrative in and beyond its place and time, Punjab on the eve of Partition, considering what it demands of us as readers of and alongside Mrs. A., an anonymous yet intimate voice.