হে প্রণম্য পিতৃদেব, তুমি তো বন্ধু নও/হও (Yayati and Babur Complex)

Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay

Indian Statistical Institute

January 10, 2009

Tepantar, Vol. VII, pp. 71-92, 2009

Abstract:
This project is on the age discrimination as it is found in the tyrant patriarchal society. It departs from the Freudian/Jungian meta-psychological project of universal Oedipus Complex and simultaneously adds something opposite to it. According to Bandyopadhyay, there is a reverse trend of castrating the younger one as well as an antithetical drive for preserving the progeny. Instead of “being father, having mother, which might be a possibility in some kowms, there is another trend of annihilating younger generation, i.e., “satisfied father with (physically or mentally) terminated sons.” Freud-Jung took their cue from Greek mythology and Bandypadhyay reiterates the so-called Hindu purana (the epic of Mahabharata that explains the repressive forces in society to primal repression by a father jealous of his male child's youth and virility), to elaborate this hypothesis. In the Mahabharata, it was told that Yayati took his youngest son’s (Puru) vitality to restore his cursed aging. This planned process (with Malthusian mindset) of termination of younger generation is observed in the domain of certain society. Thus Bandyopadhyay names it as Yayati complex. On the other hand, the caring attitude towards younger generation is named after war-monger Babur, by remembering his effort to save his child. The Babur Complex relates the popular legend of the Timurid Conqueror Babur (1483-1531), who when his son and heir apparent Humayun fell sick and was declared dying by the court physicians , circled his sick bed thrice and prayed for the ailment to be given to him and his wards life be spared to altruistic actions by patriarchal figures in society . In this case, the nexus between saving the progeny and the preservation of private property is also being observed. Bandyopadhyay questioned the Freud’s taxonomy of mind and proposed a different taxonomy by rearranging the concept of mind as it is found in sahajiya tradition. The simultaneous and overlapping operations of Yayati and Babur complex (thanatos and eros) originate from context-sensitive ego and not from the Id (Freud thought that Oedipus/Electra complex was formed from the Id), therefore there is no universal truth-claim on the part of Bandyopadhyay regarding the existence of Yayati/Babur complex as it varies in different spaces and times.

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Number of Pages in PDF File: 12

Keywords: Yayati & Babur Complex, Crippled Creativity hypothesis, Psi-properties