Kumar, M. (2006) ‘Rethinking Psychology in India: Debating Pasts and Futures’, Annual
Review of Critical Psychology, 5, pp. 236-256 www.discourseunit.com/arcp/5
Manasi Kumar1
Rethinking Psychology in India: Debating Pasts and Futures
Revisitations
Is there a practice of ‘critical psychology’ in India? If there exists a critical psychology
tradition that attends to concerns of Indian society, its cultural history, politics and their
interpenetration in both individual and social lives, then why are such discourses not so easily
visible? How does this critical thinking manifest itself (assuming that such a thing exists) in
the work of psychologists in the country and what are its key features? The paper tries to
pursue some of these questions. I rest my observations on a review of recent psychological
literature where the prevalent psychological discourse in the country can be summarized by a
simple visualization of two parallel lines running past each other. The parallel lines signify a
disjunction between Indian mainstream psychological works on the one hand and existence of
those alternative, or at times, radical and dissenting voices and perspectives on the other hand.
I reckon in some ways the emergence of the bigger picture depends on which direction we fix
our gaze. However, the trouble begins right there. Awareness of one direction without any
awareness of the other has restricted psychology from exploring its full potential at least in
this country.
The bulwark of mainstream psychological and alternative viewpoints run parallel to each
other (in fact run amok at times), therefore neither approach have been able to inform,
influence or interrogate the other in a real or an enduring manner. As a result, very few
psychological writings in India tend to be aware of the presence of varied epistemic apertures
through which human psychological and its attendant problematics associated with theory,
subjectivity and culture, can be engaged with. It leaves by and large, a considerable numbers
of writings and modes of practising psychology where these sensitivities are conspicuous by
their absence. This is not a new grievance being made here; others have also pointed to
similar concerns (Bhatia, 2002; Kakar, 1989, 2000; Misra & Gergen, 1993; Nandy, 1974,
1995; Seshadri-Crooks, 1997; and Sinha, 1984, 1998).
In this paper I attempt to look at these questions from a position which some readers might
deem as a disadvantaged or less-generalizable one; few others may agree or welcome that this
is a commentary based on my own experience of studying psychology in India and later with
a brief teaching experience in an undergraduate department of psychology. The intention is
not to build-up a (repetitive) bibliography of ideas and researches but to search critically, and
explicate the reasons behind discontentment with psychology in India (that the author
distinctly feels). The paper points to certain problematic areas such as: beginnings of the
discipline as embedded in a colonial project, its history and reception in the academia in India
and attendant politics and dynamics that have maintained this discipline in its ‘absent’
presence2. Certain institutional factors are also discussed which have escalated political and
1
Contact: manni_3in@hotmail.com
For more scholarly reflections other sources such as the 2000-04 Sage publications’ trilogy on Psychology in
India Revisited edited by Janak Pandey (and now another set in progress under the direction of Girishwar
2
236
often un-reflexive decisions with preponderance of selfish motivations over choosing
excellence as a criteria for teaching and research. This has only added more woes to an
already dwindling rigour and vitality of the discipline in the country. Some other questions
about the organization and general contribution of the discipline also crop-up in the context of
India. Has the enterprise of psychology been useful to (the future of) the common man in
India or whether it is needed and used to intervene, address or ameliorate some of the burning
socio-economic problems in India3, is one big question (see, Kleinman et al, 1997 & Vahali,
2002). Whether some of these questions trouble the fraternity of psychologists today and how
psychologists in India respond (if they respond at all) to these issues is another domain that
needs to be explored (see, Kakar, 1985; Misra & Gergen, 1993). My intention is not to
simplify some of these questions by setting out to resolving these dilemmas and dichotomies
but to point to problematics that need to be actively engaged-in by psychologists in the
country so that some of these questions become intelligible and more compelling.
Opening ground for Critical Psychology
One of the more familiar ways of reviewing the state of any discipline in academic research is
by gauging the quality of literature that circulates in its academic journals and books.
Publications in the ordinary parlance are like academic currencies which decide the fate of
academicians by rating their performance. However publication rate may not always be
desirable or wisest of procedures to ascertain disciplinary development, but it continues to be
the most commonly used yardstick of progress (for details on the previous ICSSR Indian
psychology reviews, see Pandey, 2004: 342-370) . There are then some other mediums of
reviewing the state, progress, and chief concerns of a discipline that entail conducting surveys
with practitioners and researchers from the concerned discipline, inviting experts or wisemen/women for reflections and critical appraisal. Besides undertaking process-outcome
analysis, meta- analysis of research findings, models or theories based on leading concepts
and appraisals of goals set, achieved and other similar mechanics, are commonly employed to
map and ‘measure’ the growth of a discipline.
In the case of a mammoth country like India, such detailed analysis of institutions and people
within these can prove to be a very daunting exercise4. It is daunting not only because there
are far too many Universities and people to be considered. But its difficult on account of sheer
Mishra) would enable sampling a broad sweep of researches in different areas of psychology in the country.
However in later sections I have tried to critically examine some of the review chapters from 2001and 2004
Psychology in India review series.
3
Problems such as high illiteracy rates in rural India, rather prevalence of culpable practices such as female
infanticide, low girl-child education rates, violence against women, rampant dowry harassment, child labour,
discriminatory caste politics, poor coverage & impact of rural education & development programmes,
marginalization and exploitation of backward castes, tribes, minority groups etc are just the first ones that strike
my mind. The list is endless though. One of the reviewers rightly pointed to me that these practices are also
embedded with a socio-cultural matrix where mere condemnation of these practices may not suffice. One needs
to review what individual –societal needs these practices serve.
4
I am sure even the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Indian Council of Social
Sciences Research (ICSSR), and related initiatives from the Ministry of Education, or even various Indian
Psychology Associations have not been able to perform consistent and coherent review exercises including
revamping UG and PG course-curricula, setting clear guidelines for practice, ethics and research, satisfactorily.
It is only recently that Data Protection and (Right to) Information Acts are been taken note of seriously. With
new and functional websites (I am sure many would now chuckle at the sight of telephones in working state in
these otherwise dilapidated non-functional government departments!), these institutions have only now begun to
modify their old feudal mannerism and character.
237
impoverishment and abject condition of the discipline in the country5, a despairing condition
that is simultaneously marked by unequal spread and differential progress of departments of
psychology in the region, all these make a review exercise extremely problematic. I have
decided to focus on a limited set of published literature that I could have access to and have
examined it at some length. I have surveyed a review series called ‘Psychology in India
Revisited’ (IV ICSSR survey available in three volumes, see the bibliography) published by
Sage India in years 2000, 2001 & 2004. These three review volumes comprise of various
Indian research findings and engage in a discussion of the plausibility and validity of these
researches by invited subject experts. This is the prism through which existent literature has
been surveyed in this paper. The paper thus attempts a review of review. In some ways, this
might seem an inchoate process of locating research activities and output without accessing
primary sources directly. However, such revisitations might allow one to grasp various
positions and attitudes adopted by the researchers as well as ‘subject experts’ of a discipline at
the same time. Two interrogations remain central in my mind in reviewing this literature: how
have psychologists ‘used’ psychological methods and theories and what ‘use’ have they put
their findings, research enterprises or methods in contributing to the larger knowledge pool.
The State of the Art?
Reading psychological literature in the popular Indian psychological journals does not make a
pleasant or tremendously illuminating reading most of the times. I have identified some
reasons behind the uncreative, repetitive appearance of the literature which at times seems to
lack sound or engaging methodology and at other instance seem to present findings built on
rather flawed arguments and methodology. Most of the published literature can be classified
into two broad categories: mainstream-validational research and oppositional-indigenous
research (or reactionary and nativist, as Crooks (1994:180) defines the second category). In
the first category are researches which attempt to replicate or validate popular Western
theories and researches without much emphasis or rigour shown in picking up contextrelevant methodology or clear theoretical-ideological considerations which guide their
research questions in the first instance. There are instances of numerous inchoate researches
found in abundance in Indian psychological journals, in projects and theses supervised in
varied departments at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels; the decay in the quality of
research in the country is at once displayed in the rigmarole of regional conferences and the
thematics chosen in such forums. Indian mainstream researches focus on domains of social,
cognitive, developmental and experimental psychology (in other words specialities that can
cover the entire rubric of psychology otherwise!) where such lacunae (i.e. gaps between
theory and methodology) can easily be spotted. The peculiarity of this literature is that it
speaks to no-one, attempts to replicate without clear logic or method, eschews subjectivity or
any engagement with researcher’s position, and fails to acknowledge how results are a direct
outcome of the process and values the researcher chooses to adopt. In such researches local
conditions and cultural-social factors are extraneous variables and any deviations from the
standard are regarded as errors. Most of the reviewers of the Psychology in India series also
pointed these problems (see, particularly chapters by Dalal: 356-411, & Naidu: 228-299, cited
in Pandey, 2001; Hutnik: 216-260, Pandey: 342-370, cited in Pandey, 2004) also others such
5
Impoverishment and abjection are used here in the context of slow pace of activity and output, as well as
limited contribution psychology in India has made to the overall discipline. This is sharply different from
disciplines such as social anthropology, sociology, political science, cultural studies or literature where India’s
contribution is enormous and well-distinguished. Some amount of impoverishment hence comes from lack of
intellectual spark while other comes from sheer lack of resources that are required for a well-functioning
psychology department.
238
as Sinha (1998), Sinha & Kumar (2004), have pointed out the problematic ways in which
psychological research in India has organized itself.
The second category comprises of writings that have essentially propagated indigenous or
Indian cultural viewpoints by virtue of arguing against the Western (Euro-American)
psychological viewpoints. This viewpoint argues that are the Western theories are mainly
ethnocentric and dismiss psychological variations without much articulation for ‘local’
realities or cultural sensitivities and psychological testing and methodology becomes a tool to
denigrate and deny presence of culture within psychic life of the individual (Hartnack, 2001;
Kakar, 1989; Misra & Gergen, 1993; Nandy, 1974; Roland, 1996; Saraswathi, 1998; & Segall
et al 1998). However sensitive this viewpoint is to culture, this extreme ‘nativist’ approach
creates barriers in transferability and expansion of knowledge as it assumes that there are no
universals6. The problem with this viewpoint comes not from its critique of Euro-American
ideas, this critique indeed offers a good diagnostics; but the trouble is inherent in the nature
and kinds of the alternatives it suggests as remedial measures (such as their call to ‘go back to
Ancient scriptures and texts’ for spiritual and intellectual enlightenment)7. In the work of
indigenous psychologists, this ‘going back to origins’ is marked with a concurrent blurring of
history, political developments and history of development of ideas. At such junctures the
characteristics displayed by this set of researches are its disregard for consistency, negation of
its ideological loadings8, and absence of adoption of convincing methodologies or procedures
in order to use these paradigms to study more complex problems and issues (See, Rao:19-162:
cited in Pandey 2001). This set of literature shows a tendency to sound too esoteric and carries
essentially an ethnocentric bias (by which I mean an absolute denial of universals), and wages
a Quixotic battle of sorts to the question of situating or generalizing its findings, as a result of
which few lessons or conclusions could be drawn from it. In character this is tritely-written,
pedantic literature that is difficult to follow because while these begin from a position of nonconformity with mainstream epistemologies and notions, these writings ends up with poor
quality literature which at best is philosophical reflection and at its worst religious discourse
of (mainly Hindu) dogmatic preconceptions. I am aware that these are sweeping
generalizations and that there are exceptions to it.
However ingenious writings on cultural and cross-cultural psychology such as Berry & others
(1992/2002), Marsella (1985), Shweder (1991) and Triandis (1994 & 1995) have not only
strengthened the locus of indigenous movement but also succeeded in adding to the
mainstream psychological frame, intense debates and psycho-politics of cultural and crosscultural comparisons. One of the significant contributions made by these efforts is its
highlighting of the difference between ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ and the importance of considering
these conceptualizations in psychological research across cultures. As a result, many crosscultural psychologists used the terms ‘etic’ and ‘emic’ to refer, respectively, to (a)
comparative, across-cultures studies, and to (b) careful, internal exploration of psychological
phenomena in local cultural terms. Whenever such ‘emic’ research succeeds, it would be
expected to provide indigenous, culturally based meanings that were most probably missed
6
A second reviewer drew my attention to somewhat of a neglect in this paper of Indian psychological
orientation. He pointed out that “the "Nativism" is more than mere orientation towards the native. It also has
components of theoretical and symbolic innovation.” I agree with his remarks. This paper has not been able to
delve into vicissitudes of Indian psychology and its theorizations on human subjectivity. In this sense this paper
has a restricted focus and coverage of issues within psychology.
7
In case of a multicultural society such as India, call for such ‘going-back to the origins’ mean not only
revisiting past historical and cultural-religious traditions, but it leads to ‘going-astray’ marked by communal
strife and psychological unrest in different pockets of society over questions of origins and beginnings.
8
Mainly based on Hindu philosophy or its variants but claiming to encompass the entire Indian reality.
239
when making the initial imposed ‘etic’ approach to psychological phenomena in various
cultures. As a result of doing these comparisons, one could emerge with what has been termed
a "derived etic" (Berry, 1969 cited in Segall et al, 1998), which is clearly to be preferred over
an "imposed etic." (ibid: 1103). Derived ‘etic’ approach works on the assumption that there
are universals but also keeps the space to incorporate cultural differences and similarities.
In order to highlight, some epistemic discords between mainstream psychology, critical
psychology and indigenous psychology approaches, I have maintained throughout this paper a
distinction between cultural and indigenous psychology which is referred to as Indian
psychology whereas psychology in India is used to denote practice of psychology in general in
the country. This is to differentiate Indian psychological viewpoints (culturally-rooted/
indigenous viewpoints) from the broader scan of psychological research in India in general.
The problematic credentials of indigenous psychology movement and practice with regards to
cultural representative-ness and cultural pluralism are another reason why this distinction is
maintained. It is between these two approaches that I have tried to find traces of a critical
approach.
Boundaries and Dislocations
My main apprehension with regard to these exceptional writings remains thus: whether the
large chunk of researchers working in the field of psychology in this country have
incorporated these viewpoints or even given these any consideration. Sadly though but many
researchers continue to be oblivious of the presence of these important writings and debates in
the country. Let us now look into why this may be the case. Several reasons can be presented
for this sloppy, un-even moratorium psychology and its professionals have lived with and
even continue to endure in reclusive settings.

The most important feature of psychology in the case of India is that its birthday can
be traced to the heyday of the colonial rule under the majestic British Empire. Like all things
British in India9, the empiricist psychology tradition was a gift to India by the colonial
masters. Again, like all British endowments to India (am aware that people might react to this
issue differently), Indians have not been able to ‘metabolize’ these fully even after 60 years of
their departure. Borrowing the words of the well-known French psychoanalysts, Nicholas
Abraham & Maria Torok (1994)10 we are living with many-a-‘phantoms’ of the past that are
the result of our colonial history, the cultural trauma that emanated as a result, its psychic
encryption and subsequent (psychic-social-political) concealment of this trauma from
collective memory. Said’s Orientalism, Fanon’s work on the psychology of the oppressed and
oppressor and later Derrida’s ingenious work on cultural mourning, and back at home
writings of Das (1989, 1996, & 1997), Nandy (1995), G. Pandey (1988), Spivak (1993) are
some examples of the post-colonial writings which have touched the heart of the culturepsyche debate. The fact that colonial psychology/ psychiatry was devised to tame the
‘natives’, curtail their madness to its ‘boundaried’ limits, while at the same time built with a
mission to ‘provide restful haven’ (like resplendent herbal saunas and spas) to tired,
melancholic British officers, set the double- standards which continue till today (Basu, 2005).
9
Few other gifts given to us are the transport system particularly the railways, cricket, powerful influence and
privileged position of English language in the country. Besides the judiciary, educational and bureaucratic
systems in India which thrive as per British format; all continue to provide vital anchorage as much as each of
these continue to cause commotions of sorts in our lives.
10
Abraham, Nicolas and Maria Torok 1994. The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, Volume 1.
Edited by Nicholas T. Rand. The University of Chicago Press: US.
240
Caste and class hierarchies pervade and continue to be preserved and maintained in mental
institutions (or for that matter in most public institutions). As a result, the first rendition of
psychology in India was mainly a colonial one which eschewed local practices and beliefs in a
bid to introduce and familiarize civilized conduct and modern well-being methods to the
Indians. There are several other instructive writings on this issue, chiefly, Bhatia (2002),
Hartnack (2001), Nandy (1974, 1995) and an excellent piece devoted to the issue by Ernst
(1997) for an intensive sojourn on the colonial impact on the native self.

Other than the colonial rendition of the subject of psychology, the educated Indians
during the Raj were slow to react to some of the impositions and racist attitudes of the British.
Seeped in their ambivalence between remaining closer to the native ‘self’ or to the educated,
enlightened white man, the educated Indians subverted the role of culture, self and
subjectivity in their practice of psychology (indeed as also seen in other disciplines such as
medicine, psychiatry etc). Nandy’s work illuminates this dynamics in more details (see,
Nandy, 1995). This attitude impeded work on uniquely Indian-oriented culturalpsychological theories and praxes. Most Indian ‘babus’ chose to reject Indian practices outrightly and joined the British in denigrating the Indian value system and social customs in
order to seek membership in the British–White civilized club. Until today remnants of
colonial enterprise can be seen in the way psychology has grown in the academia. It presents
itself in form of a discipline cut-off from social reality where the researcher presents his/her
own subjectivity/ objectivity as superior to the subject of the study. Walter Ernst (1997) has
sketched a revealing psychohistory of the ‘idioms of madness’ of the native and European
mentally ill in the early nineteenth century British India. As Foucault showed in his writings
that power and a certain sociality decided the fate of madness, and appropriated the mad, his
madness and idioms associated with it to cover in its rubric all sorts of mismatched,
disadvantaged and dysfunctional men and women. Colonial psychiatry in India was an
undertaking of a similar kind which is later reinvigorated in the form of increasing
ostracization of women, lower castes, tribes and any one who dared to disconform. Ernst
refers to Foucault’s work on history of madness as special attempt towards writing the history
of both concepts and institutions in a way that blurred the distinction between the two. History
of psychiatric institutions in India would be an enterprise worth engaging in to look at how
‘madness’ was conceptualized, how it was transformed with colonial rule and what were the
ramifications of the colonial import and the current state in which Indian psychiatry and
academic psychology finds itself11. A beautiful Merchant-Ivory film, ‘Heat and Dust’ (1983)
looked at similar attitudes and was an exemplary piece of work that compared the British
attitude to healing practices predominant in India during the days of the Raj.

The third factor which affected psychology in India was its large scale intellectual
denigration carried out by social scientists from allied disciplines, particularly influences from
anthropology, political science and sociology that deemed psychology to be too
individualistic and narrow a pursuit for delving into the Indian social reality. The social
science criticism of psychology as a deterministic, mechanistic and logico-positivist enterprise
has a grain of truth in it, however the multifarious ways in which psychology has undergone
change and evolved many of its epistemic practices are not fully known to many of its Indian
Two recent projects of relevance to critical psychology are worth mentioning here: Amita Dhanda’s book
‘Legal Order and Mental Disorder’ by Sage India, 2000 and an Action Aid India project ‘Maitri’ (meaning
friendship) devoted to mental health and women in institutionalized care which has assessed the condition of
mental hospitals in India and provided guidelines and instances of serious violations in psychosocial
rehabilitation and care of mentally ill patients to the National Human Rights Commission (see,
http://actionaidindia.org/download/AAInewsletter.pdf: pp. 13-15).
11
241
(social sciences) critics (see, Kakar, 2000, in Sharma 2003). The irony here is that serious and
sustained exchanges and debates about the place of psychology in the academia never took
place and have not even begun today.

The subsequent ostracism psychology faced in the academia worsened due to the
inertia and lackadaisical stance of many psychologists towards attending to relevant social
problems, and their rigidities in exploring new epistemologies and cross-fertilizations within
and outside the discipline as they chose mere replication of outdated and a-contextual Western
psychological researches. Sitting rather too comfortably in the pigeon holes of the University
departments, which do not mirror socio-cultural realities of common man in India,
psychologists have increasingly chosen to remain insular and un-necessarily self-absorbed.
Even during the times when social sciences were revamping and scrutinizing their colonial
baggage, essentially during seventies and early eighties psychology remained far from this
self-reflexive, deconstructive enterprise that was in many ways deeply political in character
and calling. As a result both in terms of ideological and epistemological shifts, psychology in
India has chosen to live behind veils.
I have on purpose tried to stay away from delving into critical social theory or post-colonial
writings which have otherwise informed, embraced and interpenetrated the critical
psychology movement. There remains a disjunct between radical social sciences approach and
the approach taken by psychologists in India. This split in episteme and praxis becomes
blurred when discourse of the former (radical social thought) is used to explicate happenings
in the latter (within the field of psychology). I fear that any comparison between social
science discourse(s) in India and Indian psychological discourse would amount to recreating a
‘muller-lyer illusion’ of little relevance. There are writings by Gayatri C. Spivak, Veena Das,
Ranajit Guha, Homi Bhabha, Dipesh Chakravarty and many others who have been
sympathetic to critical psychological and psychoanalytic formulations 12. But their engagement
is restricted only with the use of psychological/ psychoanalytic tropes to elaborate and unravel
cultural-political thematics. While their formulations are profound and very relevant to
understanding post-coloniality, contemporary Indian social reality and its relation to human
subjectivity; most psychologists in India have remained untouched by their call for a
‘paradigm shift’. Forthcoming sections point to certain problematic areas that have
increasingly made psychology an inhibited and limited enterprise and point to recent openings
and alternatives for introducing critical thinking into psychology.
Innovations and Aporias
Can the god, being used to Calcutta, not stand the climate in Vienna?
Freud’s note in his diary about Bose, (Cited in Christiane Hartnack, 2005:10)
This section is devoted to two statesmen who worked diligently within the discipline,
developing and furthering the cause of the psychology through their incisive thinking and
writings. The sheer length and breadth of their writings in spite of the ethnocultural bias with
which they worked on ideas, gives a picture of active individuals who engaged with critical
questions associated with the discipline (in whatever their times and resources could permit).
The quote above is Freud’s note about the Bengali psychologist/ psychoanalyst,
Girindrasekhar Bose. The comment could easily be deemed Eurocentric or even worst,
12
Indian psychoanalytic history and developments associated with it would be briefly discussed later.
242
Freud’s lack of understanding of what Bose was struggling with in his hesitance to meet the
God-in-Question (Freud himself) and the psychoanalytic fraternity in the West. Said’s (2003)
discussion of Freud’s fraught relationship to the non-European (even worst when it happens
to be a non-European analyst) is worth attending to in which he suggests what Freud
struggled most was with the idea of ‘identity’ itself (and his own primarily) (p.79) today this
idea extends unquestionably to the identity and politics of lives in diasporas, the manifestation
of which is now more common in the non-Western parts of the world which Freud did not
visualize. Hartnack (2001) has shown in her work the patho-analysis of Indians which caught
attention of Freud, and Indo-British analysts such Daly and Berkeley-Hill. In this context,
Parker succinctly argues ‘how psychoanalysis itself became part of the disease it claims to
cure and that ‘psychoanalytic research’ becomes an analysis of contradictory pathological
experience as itself already interpreted by psychoanalysis (2003:2, my italics).
There are at least two distinct personalities in the Indian history of psychology that I regard as
having served the discipline as great innovators: G.S. Bose and D. Sinha. There are few
commonalities between the two scholars. A few of the attributes common to both are: Both
of these strong-headed men belonged to the upper class; their personalities were marked with
traditional-domineering attitudes and lifestyles13 but at the same time, they both shared a
presence of courage, foresight and creativity in the launching of new ideas; they had
encouraging attitude towards similar-minded individuals and groups which allowed the
institutions (that they created & belonged to) to thrive with their good administrative skills;
and they nurtured talents. Girindrashekhar Bose (1887-1953) was the product of the first
Psychology Department in the country, which was established in Calcutta in year 1905. He
soon became a Professor and Head of the Department of psychology at the age of 23 and
remained active for more than five decades. Interestingly, like Freud who was the first selfanalysed psychoanalyst14, Bose too was India’s first ‘self-styled’ analyst who founded the
Indian Psychoanalytic Society15, after corresponding with Freud and Ernst Jones in early
1920’s. The bustling stories of initial psychoanalytic activities in colonial India that we hear
today are entirely to his credit. Bose’s varied psychoanalytically oriented writings on Indian
cultural psyche, particularly his doctoral thesis on the concept of repression, and interpretation
of many religious texts, are examples of exemplary efforts16. Many commentators discovered
later on that in the Bose-Freud correspondence, there was much to be read between the lines:
implications for non-western psychoanalysis, identity of Indian (non-western) psychoanalyst
in the Western psychoanalysis, and incorporation of more relational strand of psychoanalysis
(the kind now seen in Inter-subjective, Object-relational and Kohutian brands that have
revolutionized the practice of psychoanalysis today). There are at least three well-informed
and elaborated writings on Bose which the reader is recommended to read -Sudhir Kakar’s
work on Stories from Indian Psychoanalysis (1985, 1989, & 1990), Ashis Nandy’s work on
Caricatures of the Babus from the days of the Raj (they were indeed working as ‘babus’ during the British
rule!).
14
These days when many new stories are coming out about his life and relationships this is no longer such an
amusing fact about Freud. However it is the first truism to remember about Freud when encountering any
rebuttal or fancy appreciation of Freudianism today. See, Adam Phillips’s (2000) Promises, Promises. Faber &
Faber: UK, for further elaboration on this theme.
15
Four years back, I visited the Society’s office in a ram shackled Parsibagan Lane building of Calcutta out of
my sheer curiosity and naïve enthusiasm. I was shocked to see the dilapidated and archaic condition in which the
Society’s office ran and the plight of its journal Samiksa which publishes old, unannotated articles of little
relevance to current developments within psychoanalysis or Indian society for that manner.
16
Sadly many of his unpublished and even published books and papers have either disappeared or are
unavailable or out of print today (see, Nandy (1995) particularly chpt.4 titled-‘The savage Freud’, pp.81-144).
13
243
The Savage Freud (1995)17, and the scholarly project on psychoanalysis in colonial India by
Hartnack (2001, 2005) and more recently in Akhtar (2005). My concern here is not to sketch a
psychobiography of Bose but to point to the nature of his innovations and ideas and
suggestions to invigorate some of his efforts. The second figure more predominant in the
history of psychology in India is Durganand Sinha (1922-1998). Trained in Britain with
Frederick Bartlett in a postgraduate course with no PhD as such, but a man of tremendous
energy and foresight, Sinha focused on multifarious issues within psychology. He founded the
Psychology Department of Allahabad that subsequently acquired the name of Centre for
Advanced Study in Psychology. Girishwar Mishra (1998) in an obituary note on Sinha in the
IACCP bulletin enumerates his significant contributions as: his continued struggle for
culturally appropriate psychology, incorporation of Indian tradition within Western social
science, deep emphases on problem-oriented psychology (his papers related to poverty,
environmental issues and other social problems are instructive writings), decolonizing
psychology by the emphasis on India-oriented lexicon also by working on relational model of
man-environment transaction. In this exercise, Sinha contributed by constantly searching for
alternatives to Western Academic Scientific Psychology (WASP)18.
Both these men with a rigor and penchant for writing and developing new and bold ideas had
much in common. They were institution-builders who set trends, offered and practiced a
science of psychology that was an amalgam of ideas informed by cultural history, practices
and politics, and social issues of the times. The contributions made by them can be
summarized into three distinct kinds: (a) a strong emphases towards culturally-based practice
of psychology is shown in their writing, (b) the exemplary courage and fortitude both
displayed in speaking against the popular (mainstream) trend (subverting the centrality of
Oedipus complex in Bose’s case in his communication to Freud and articulation of clear
culturally-informed research agendas in case of British educated Sinha), (c) and their
organizational capabilities enabled institution-building at a time when psychology had hardly
taken grips in the country (efforts of Bose are particularly exemplary in this regard) 19. Today
however the institutions and agendas set by these two innovators appear to be on the verge of
becoming obsolete (with the Centre at Allahabad being a slight exception) and from their time
to now, the vision of founding psychology imbued with Indian cultural reality seems to have
blurred considerably.
Over the Edge: New and Innovative Spaces
More original, socially relevant and astute researches in the country range from critical
reflections and serious interrogations in areas of cultural psychology (Misra & Gergen, 1993),
indigenous social psychology (Sinha, D. 1986; 1997; Sinha, J., 1984), cultural psychoanalysis
(Kakar, 1989, 1995) and the consequent development of social sciences hermeneutic
A compendium of Nandy’s recent writings can be found in Exiled at Home [Omnibus Volume], 1998, Delhi:
Oxford University Press and Dissenting Knowledges, Open Futures: The Multiple Selves and Strange
Destinations of Ashis Nandy2000, edited by Vinay Lal, Delhi: OUP.
18
Curiously enough, Mishra refers to this Western Academic Scientific Psychology as WASP. The term WASP
can easily present an imagery of the infectious impact of Western psychology on East which Sinha has eminently
highlighted. The dictionary provides two meanings of ‘Wasp’, first refers to the more commonly known: ‘any of
numerous social or solitary winged insects with a slender smooth body with the abdomen attached by a narrow
stalk, well-developed wings, biting mouthparts and are largely carnivorous’, a second allusion is to ‘a white
Protestant of Anglo-Saxon ancestry’! I am not sure if either Sinha or Mishra were aware of these two
connotations of their abbreviation WASP.
19
See, Akhtar (2005) in Freud along the Ganges & Basu’s paper (1999) devoted to Bose’s life and work
context.
17
244
enterprise (Sharma, 2000; Bhatia, 2002). Such researches have continued to interrogate and
debate the existent straight-jacketed conceptualizations of psychological research and practice
in India. Researches such as Nandy (1974, 1995), Vahali (1999, 2000 & 2004) have added
more depth to the cultural repertoire of psychological research as well as encompassed
sensitive socio-political positions in their theorization. There are a series of methodological
and theoretical innovations that are due to some of these exceptional researchers from the
field. Beginning with, two prominent players such as Girindrasekhar Bose (1929/1999, 1937)
and Durganand Sinha who are known for their pioneering efforts in the field of psychology,
to significant contributions of A.K. Ramanujan (1990), Girishwar Misra at the University of
Delhi (1993 with Kenneth Gergen), Janak Pandey (1994 with Sinha & others, 2001, 2004),
R.C. Tripathi (1994 with D. Sinha) and others in what is now also referred to as the Allahabad
School20 of psychology), JBP Sinha in Patna (1984, 1993, 2001, & 2004), Dinesh Sharma
(2000) have contributed towards furthering critical cultural and social constructionist research
foci within psychology. Women researchers such as T. S. Saraswathi (1998, 1999a & 1999b),
Bhargavi Davar (1999 & 2000), U. Vindhya (2001 & 2003), Jyoti Verma (1999, with others)
and Nandita Chaudhary (2003) have attempted to engage with questions of suffering;
identity-politics and self-processes in situations of massive trauma; and the attendant
existential concerns of women’s lives. Furthermore, they popularizing ethnographies based on
women’s struggles, mental health issues and psychosexuality in the Indian context. Apart
from, researchers such as Sudhir Kakar who is perhaps the first Indian psychoanalyst to have
extensively written and deliberated so poignantly and thoughtfully on wide sociopsychological forays, Ashis Nandy who continues to offer a distinctive albeit subversive
flavour to the enterprise of political psychology, informed by postcolonial theory, cultural &
literary theory and psychoanalysis. There are several others who have contributed similarly.
Psychology within Indian Academia: Still debating old or new?
The colonized state of mind marked by a refusal to own up one’s cultural and historical past is
the hallmark of psychology in the academia today. There are two prisms through which I
interrogate their presence. One is through a brief (it may seem like a cursory view) review of
the 2001 & 2004 ICSSR Review Series titled ‘Psychology in India Revisited’. The other lens
is academic psychology’s working and functioning style that has not only informed their
writing but also seems to have inter-generationally transmitted a work culture of
‘apositionality’ seeped in a certain refusal to mentate on the ‘psychology’ and ‘identity’ of the
academic psychologist as such. Such a work culture yields most notably in dead-pan
theorizations, narrow conceptualization of practice and psychological skills with
discriminatory ways in which these skills are disseminated across generations of students. In
all of this, the most problematic part is the authoritarian and hegemonic relationship that is
formed between learner-learned, or practitioner-patient, researcher-participant, professorstudent, or a senior colleague-junior colleague, thus the loop of vicious hierarchies continues
unrelentingly. This loop as I argue in the first section is a continuation of our colonial past as
well as maintenance of hierarchical social stratifications such as caste and religious
discrimination which pervades our academic lives.
Curse of Medusa’s Hair: Dead-Pan Psychological theorization. There have been several
reviews of psychological literature in the last four decades. The more recently done review
namely Psychology in India revisited published in 2001-2004, suffers from a major fallacy.
The compendium works with the assumption that the origins and practices of particular
20
Allahabad University is amongst the oldest and prestigious of the Universities in India and the academic
psychology department has had the privilege of hosting original thinking and sensitive minds.
245
psychological traditions guiding and informing Indian research studies are sufficiently known
or elaborated upon. Often this assumption creates problems in understanding the locus of the
research and the assessment yardstick of the reviewer. For instance, to begin with the broad
thematics under which the review organizes itself seems problematic. The thematic chapters
appeared to have been straight out of Euro-American textbooks and consequently the review
comprised of several categories in which scattered Indian researches were later jotted down.
Even while authors differentiated between ‘forerunners’ and the rest, as ‘bulk’ (Naidu: 270271 cited in Pandey, 2004), there was no engagement with meta-psychology or usefulness of
the constructs widely studied (irrespective of who undertook it- the forerunners or the bulk). It
was amusing to see a simple and discriminatory generalization that ‘forerunners’ were doing
good work, and the ‘bulk’ were not (Naidu even says somewhere in his chapter that the bulk
are mainly the college teachers and University teachers! (p.270)) and offers this as a highpoint in his review-findings. However, whether psychological research in India was going
anywhere (with or without forerunners) was not sufficiently deliberated upon.
On the question of the content of the review, I am not sure if experimental evidence on
motivation, attitudes, social cognition, personality, life events etc were even clearly
contextualized in the Indian reality by some of these reviewers. Or for that matter why did the
reviewers not devote some time towards elaborating on their understanding of the thematics
under which the review was organized. For example, in the chapter on Self, Personality and
Life-Events, the author presents ‘soaring into the indigenous expanse’ as a flight towards
culturally-congruous and sensitive medium of engagement with psychological research. In
spite of presenting evidence on the utmost relevance of Indigenous theorization on personality
and consciousness, the author uses constructs such as ‘self-disclosure’, ‘locus of control’,
‘individualism-collectivism’, or ‘achievement motivation’ under which he classifies various
research literature found in India. Do these not become problematic Western categories that
need to be deconstructed in light of the indigenous psychology findings or principles? If
indigenous or cultural theorization does not give credence to self-disclosure, or achievement
motivation or locus of control in the way Western theorization does, then what is the value of
presenting the categories and a critique of this paradigm alongside without really any critical
reflection on restructuring of some of these meta-psychological concepts.
In my reading of this trilogy ‘Psychology in India revisited’, the dead-pan quality of the
narrative depicted in both what was being reviewed and many-a-times in the language in
which it was reviewed, is very striking. It is no doubt that assimilating and reviewing at times
fractured, out-dated, conventional, and drab pieces of work, in the name of ‘empirical
research’ is not an easy mission to undertake. What appeared even more frightening was this
attitude of many reviewers of taking many methodological quandaries for granted and
creating more methodological or presentational errors in-turn in reporting results and in the
ensuing discussion of these research findings (such as incoherent tabular analysis, unclear
discussion or reporting of results, tardy usage of unknown abbreviations are some examples
of glaring mistakes made). Besides the often noticed smoothening of the results along with
ignorance shown in the wider ethical or epistemic implications of many research findings in
light of the chosen methodology, assumptions and principles (used to study a particular
phenomena or a group of participants), were again easily identifiable anomalies.
Another observation, an equally compelling one, I hope would make my point clearer. The
attempt in some of the review chapters was restricted to collation (not even detailed
examination) of large pool of researches taking place in different parts of the country in
different conditions and state of progress. It is in this aspect that the Review Series achieves an
246
impossible feat and does a commendable job. But whether the authors of different review
chapters had well-deliberated guidelines, pointed methodological and theoretical questions, or
concerns directed towards the reception, state, or even suggestions for more comprehensive
research practices within the sub-specialties or broad thematics under which they surveyed
various literature, is not very clearly evident. It is a cluttered state of affairs especially in areas
such as child development; psychological research in adolescence and youth: psychology of
gender; indigenous social psychology; research methods; and most importantly, areas such as
psychology of self, self-growth and personality particularly in, studies on consciousness21.
In contrast to some chapters that appeared stylistically shallow and drab; and inconclusive in
terms of the implications drawn, few chapters of this Review series were extraordinary, in
their attempts to highlight rather compelling issues also in the sheer range of material
sensitively knitted together. The chapters on ‘Psychological dimensions on human poverty
and deprivation’ (Mishra & Tripathi: 118-215 cited in Pandey, 2004) and ‘An intergroup
perspective on Ethnic Minority Identity’ (Hutnik: 216-260 cited in Pandey, 2004) were
interesting exercises in cross-disciplinary analysis at the same time. While the first review
paper attempted to bring together pertinent findings from well-researched areas of
development economics in which the definition of poverty remains a crucial debate until
today (such as detailed explication of work of Dreze & Sen 1989 & work on human capability
approach), Indian sociology, social anthropology (and its deliberations on who decides who is
poor, how ‘poor’ is poor and whether ‘poor’ think that they are ‘poor’ remain critical
questions), and social policy issues into psychological ‘construction’ and engagement with
poverty and deprivation. The other paper attempted to elaborate on socio-political events such
as the Mandal Commission Report22 and student agitation in the aftermath of it, Ayodhaya
Ram Janmabhoomi23 issue and ensuing violence, without any fear or apparent anxiety of
The issues covered in the chapter on ‘consciousness studies’ (p. 19-162 in Pandey, 2001) has the potential to
confuse the reader immensely. It begins with an explication of Indian psychological tradition and philosophy,
highlights the importance of consciousness in Indian philosophy with details on how consciousness is theorized
and used within this paradigm. Later, in the chapter in a bid to connect this with Western conceptualizations, the
author digresses (in my view gets confused as well) about the specificity of the issue at hand. Here allusions are
made to quite old and outdated studies on sleep, dreaming, extra-sensory perception, neuro-psychology of states
of consciousness, poltergeists, and many other topics which add to more bewilderment, and displacement of the
original idea (i.e. place of consciousness in Indian system and the state of research in India in this area) with
which the author began. The lack of new research findings and developments, presented a rather grim picture of
both Western experimentation into states of consciousness (which is a thriving field today) as well as
complicated, unclear tenor of Indian philosophical psychology. It is unclear to me as to why the author entered
into a comparison of Western and Indian (or Eastern) philosophical-psychological research endeavours as these
cannot be reconciled easily (one exception might be Western psychoanalysis even though comparisons with
psychoanalysis are not without usual problems, see, Roland, 1996; Kakar, 2003). At the end, what is presented to
us is a forced marriage of uneasy bed-fellows!
22
The Mandal Commission in India was established in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime
Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to identify the socially or educationally backward. It was headed by
Indian parliamentarian BP Mandal. The report released in 1980, was the source of great controversy, and its
implementation in 1990 was the ultimate cause of India's Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh's resignation.
There was large scale protests of upper-caste students in various Universities and self-immolation by the
protesting students were a common sight then. Incidentally, the current Government has taken affirmative action
by regularizing some of the Commission’s recommendations to encourage backward caste and tribes and it was
met with large scale unrest and protest again. (See, Hutnik, 2004: 216-260 &
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandal_commission for more information).
23
Ayodhya is an ancient city of India. Ayodhya Debate concerns two historical monuments- the Ram
Janmabhoomi temple and the Babri Mosque. The mosque was destroyed in 1992 by Kar Sevaks (Hindu
volunteers) and rioters due to the belief that the Ram Janmabhoomi existed prior to the mosque's construction
and that the temple was the birthplace of Rama. The debate and consequent violence has contributed a lot to
21
247
violation of set-psychological thinking or writing. The two papers were exemplary because of
(a) an active engagement with deconstructing ‘conceptual’ aspects of the thematic they were
looking into (This engagement made the topics more comprehensive and less definitive in its
psychological dimension, and therefore more effective, in effect makes the paper on poverty a
model paper on ‘conceptual research’ in psychology in India), (b) this theoretical pluralism
allowed the authors to venture into interdisciplinary forays for ‘second opinions’,
clarifications and in-depth analysis of issues, practices and methodologies, and (c) the
resultant open-ness in inviting ideas, also loosened ‘un-necessary narrative tightness’ (almost
anal-retentive in character!) and allowed for a relatively free and engaging exploration of the
concerned topic.
Uncritical Pedagogy: Thoughts without a Thinker? Unfortunately amongst the psychology
courses offered in India today no paper or course work is devoted specifically to reading,
thinking, critically engaging with the historical past and future directions of the discipline in
India. As a consequence, one does not get to know the founding members of discipline,
where, when it was introduced and why and how its need was felt, and how past
developments and innovations shaped or mis-shaped the destiny of the discipline in the
country. There is no time-line drawn to demarcate the evolution of the discipline (and it is no
linear best-fit line that one is talking of – it is a history of progression and movement that one
has to painstakingly evolve). It is here that explorations within the fields of cultural history,
pedagogy, philosophy, post-coloniality and sociology that are much needed today to fill in
gaps; similarly explorations within medical sciences such as epidemiology, public health and
psychiatry are required to trace antecedents of the paradigms and practices prevalent within
psychology in India. And it is no surprise today that there is as such no dominant critical
psychology discourse in the country24 as the shunning of the disciplinary history entails a
corresponding disregard and engagement with current practices.
The lackadaisical attitude towards professional work and feudal style of functioning in many
of the psychology professionals might be responsible for resisting processes of change. This
applies as such to teaching and research as much as it is seen in the way several professional
organizations and NGO’s look at psychological interventions or the use of psychology in
Indian society.
Also commonly seen are flippant and flirtatious back-and-forth between American and
English (British) philosophical viewpoints, un-thoughtful usage of textbooks and reference
books by and large at undergraduate as well as postgraduate25, research orientations which are
practiced disorganize teaching and thinking about psychology. Often, our use of
psychological tests and theoretical underpinnings of testing or experimentation also reflect
this shift in moving between different constructs, use of contesting theories underlying these
to uncritical and un-annotated explication of a single psychological process. However in the
high school-level psychology studies, text books are becoming more receptive and open to
recent political unrest amongst Hindus and Muslims (See, Hutnik, 2004: 216-260 &
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayodhya for more information).
24
Recent revivification of ideas within the Department of Psychology at the University of Delhi amongst few
other centers in India (such as NIIMHANS, JNU amongst others), seek to address some of the concerns of
critical psychology discourse. However, lack of a congruous dialogue, absence of an intellectual culture of
thinking that feeds into consistent, creative and sophisticated writing about problematics inherent in the
methodology and assumptions of psychology, makes some of the (potential) arguments made by scholars in the
field (at the University), relatively unexplored and untested so far.
25
Very naturally based on calculations of accessibility and price as well as the ease with which one first two
conditions can be met.
248
accounting for culturally-rooted issues and psychological theorization more recently26. But at
the undergraduate and postgraduate levels the textbooks continue to be mainly foreign books
with bits and pieces of Indian or indigenous material thrown in the curricula. Associated with
the issue of proper curriculum is the general paucity of grants and requisite resources to carry
out quality teaching and research work27. This is seen even in governmental policies on
mental health and its psychological needs and well-being advocacy (See, Davar, 1999 &
Dhanda, 2000 for detailed exposition on this issue).
The place of youth and young researchers in a country such as India continues to be quite
problematic. The conservative wisdom holds that knowledge, brilliance and shrewdness only
comes at a good-old ripe age (perhaps this is true or perhaps it is bunkum or a claptrap, I am
not sure!) and this makes academics more impervious for the younger lot (as one has to come
of an age to acquire the wisdom or an academic position). The issue is not to fuss over the
preference shown for seasoned academicians in University departments or to age-old
wisdom28 but the fuss here is over the unchecked and flourishing caste system like
discrimination of young people in academics. Psychology in India is no different and suffers
from this tendency to drive away people as it uses a jaundiced attitude which constantly
eschews equal participation, rights and recognition of young entrants to the academic ladder.
The problem is this fossilized mindset which at the end neither cares for wisdom nor
experience sufficiently. I have no deeper sociological knowledge of the roots of this prejudice
or how culturally-entrenched such discrimination is; or if it is meant to prepare youth to more
untoward situations but that it works on exploitation and negation of a young person’s identity
and on inequitable power relations is clearly visible.
Matter of a genuine Identity Crisis? Or, merely Psychologist’s non-Positionality
Do psychologists in India seem more symptomatic in this regard or is the a-positionality visà-vis the object (and by implication the subject) of their research merely offset of an attitude
adopted by the profession by and large? This is a problematic question for me to understand
whether psychologists in India have increasingly isolated themselves as a result of the ‘more
empathic- non-extremist’ stance of identifying with varied subject positions and voices. Is this
sense of ‘isolation’ from active participation in larger social or political life/
movements/events, commonly encountered or as such a feature of psychologist’s general
professional identity? In which case it would be a common experience or commonly held
stance of psychologists living across the globe. I do not know if this resistance and at times
shying away from active engagement and interrogation with present practices, discourses, setknowledge forms, structures, and institutions comes from this non-positionality inherent in
the sanitized empathic, distant but vaguely in-tuned identification with subject-object stance
that psychology boasts of and considers unique to itself. Does this sanitized stance somehow
delude psychologists from making more moral, ethical or at times informed political choices,
decisions or for them to express incumbent dilemmas as the object of their attention remains
the enigmatic human subject, its agency and subjectivity?
26
In the previous BJP-led coalition government, a raucous play with Senior Secondary school History textbooks
was seen. These were attempts at tampering with historical facts associated with Partition (of India-Pakistan), or
attempt at meddling with historical dates and glorification and saffronizing (Hindu Nationalist movement) of
many Hindu historical figures. The present government took it upon itself to correct and restore the textbook
back into its original shape. There have been interesting debates consequently between left and right-wing
ideologues and historians on dissemination of knowledge.
27
This is a larger issue which is not dealt with directly in this paper.
28
Aged, aging and at times ailing!
249
Dissident Voices and New Cataclysms Exposed
The dissident voices are characteristic ones as these involve individuals who have drifted
away from the field towards clearer engagement with ‘relationality’ or ‘positionality’ as
primary to the work of a psychological researcher. I put Sudhir Kakar as one who been
increasingly preoccupied with expressions and nuances of ‘relationality’ and its peculiarities
from the psychoanalytic aperture and Ashis Nandy as another who has increasingly moved
further away from his interest in psychology to pastures where particularities of postures
adopted by human subject are debated more openly and vehemently. Both the scholars have
strayed away from discourses within academic psychology29 and somewhat purged contact
and participation within academic psychology. This has only widened the gap between theory
and practice in a discipline where epistemic aporias exceed our estimation. It is in this sense
that I refer to them as dissidents.
However there is much to learn from their respective departures and particular exegeses but it
only makes me acutely aware of the dilemma of developing a necessary stance of
‘positionality’, required in order to sustain an involvement in meaningful discourse (in
otherwords in order to do meaningful academics, the researcher has to present her position
more clearly). If it is incumbent for psychologists to traverse outside of their discipline to
gather strength in order to ‘position’ their selves closer to their subject (or object), that is,
away from their narcissistic preoccupation with this ‘a-positional’ (or one oppositional to
understanding processes of) objectification and subjectivity in their engagement with
psychological research, then perhaps many-a-psychologists (in our country) are needed to
step-out to embrace positions not easily found or located within the ambit of the psychology.
One can see a similar movement in the work of Veena Das’s (1996) work on violence and
social trauma, Gyanendra Pandey’s (1988) articulation of communal history and its otherness,
Arthur Kleinman’s (1988 & 1997) work on pain and suffering, Amartya Sen’s (with Dreze,
198930) work on poverty and its inversely proportional relationship to identity, freedom and
entitlement, are indicative of a movement in which something of the basic skin-ego (of the
disciplinary identity) was shed-off in order to embrace humanism and make social
interventions.
Two pertinent interrogations connected with dissidents and their exits often come up.
Seshadri-Crooks (1997) in a rebuttal of Kakar’s work (mainly his 1978 work titled the Inner
World), problematizes identity of a researcher who uses intersubjectivity (by implication
psychoanalysis as a tool in investigation) to elaborate on sociological, ethical and historical
discourses. Crooks raises the dual concerns of representation of postcolonial discourse within
psychoanalysis and the explication of power-relations between sexes in India (she mainly
picks on earlier criticisms of Kakar and Naipaul voiced by Spivak). In her estimation, Kakar
presents in his psychoanalytic work a self-consciousness that is not readily available to his
subjects (1994: 205) and as a result his theorization suffers from the good-old phallocentric
bias as well as uneasiness shown in engaging with a dethronement of the essentializing
discourse of psychoanalysis31. I think both comments deserve attention and are relevant
criticism. However, my second reference to Rajan’s work attempts to deconstruct s and
problematize Crooks’s position (and in many ways Spivak’s work as well). Rajeshwari Rajan
29
I will not be surprised if both these people react by saying that they were infact never psychologists by training
or leanings or for that matter, not only psychologists in the first instance!
30
Dreze’s recent effort on evaluation the rural schools mid-day meals scheme is exemplary.
31
Crooks presents detailed analogy of Freud and Kakar in their (mis-)treatment of symbol for symptom and
offers a rereading of Obeyesekere as historicizing and contextualizing gender, politics and culture more clearly.
250
(1997) in a paper on the third world academic focuses on the flourishing market of subaltern
studies and postcolonial feminism which thrives mostly in the North-American and European
ambience. She suggests that somehow it is only amidst ‘global capitalism’ that ‘the third
world academic in the first world academe’ becomes ‘the pacesetters in cultural criticism’(p.
597), she offers a contraposition to Spivak’s postcolonial feminism. Rajan points out that
postcolonial intellectuals in the two places of residence (those in India and in Euro-American
settings) are constituted differently. Her paper points to compelling cultural frames such as
‘poverty, resource distribution, state violence, human rights violations, urban sanitation,
development’ which how remain outside the explanatory frameworks of academic discourse
or that postcolonial intellectuals in the first world, are relatively less perturbed by or not
directly exposed to such concerns (p. 615)32. In Rajan’s words: “it is also my point that in the
international division of labour, making sense of this world is not a task that must necessarily
fall to the share of only of some (those who are proximate to this reality) while others are
exempt from its pressures” (p. 616)33. It is in this regard that Nandy’s oeuvre is striking34. His
writings have allowed this engagement with these frames that are otherwise relegated to ‘the
realm of unmentionable’ (as Rajan calls these, p. 615) by many postcolonial academics
situated away from their respective intellectual ‘archaeological’ sites.
To connect it with the questions raised earlier, not only do we need to begin looking at
postcoloniality and critical social-historical discourses that have remained outside of the
purview of psychology. It is equally important and imperative to bring into focus ‘how
dominant accounts of `psychology` (or knowledge per sae as Foucault showed us) operate
ideologically and in the service of power’ (whether it is power-wielding logico-positivist
discourse in mainstream psychology or ‘third world intellectuals’ churning far too elegant
theorizations in ‘the first world academe’). Also critical psychology needs give way to
explorations of the way everyday `ordinary psychology` structures academic and professional
work in psychology and how everyday activities might provide the basis for resistance to
contemporary disciplinary practices (Parker, 1999: 12-17) (as seen in the penetrating criticism
Rajan has made of some of the critical postcolonial positions).
New Interventions
Home is where we start from. Recent researches informed by psychoanalysis and qualitative
methods have tried to redress some of these issues alluded to in the above sections. The main
focus of this new genre of research is to involve contextual, thick descriptions which bolster a
theoretical and methodological pluralist stance of the researcher. These psycho-social studies
do not contest over qualitative or quantitative methodology instead these spread out their
wings to theorize about ‘psychological subject’ and its embeddedness in the social matrix and
shows interest in critique informed by ideological concerns in psychology (Frosh,
2003:1551). In past few years, the resurgence of this psychosocial perspective has brought
into its fold many prolific even vanguard research trends. The chief highlights are papers of
32
I am aware that I might also be implicated in such an accusation.
With not an intention of defending Kakar and with an acknowledgement of some of the apparent gaps in his
psychoanalytic theorization, I feel that some of his crucial writings have allowed an engagement with the
commonplace and mundane aspects of psychic life in India than generating burgeoning complex cultural and
metapsychological theorization. In some senses, his writings offer an example of engaging ethnographies on
Indian cultural psyche.
34
A little disclaimer though about Nandy’s work which runs through several intellectual by lanes and defies
singular identification with any one episteme. There may well be use-and-abuse of these by lanes implicated in
his case. Suffice it to say however Nandy has remained outside of the ambit of some of these postcolonial/
feminist rebuttals in comparison to Kakar.
33
251
Veena Das’s (1987) mentation on the anthropology of violence and speech of the victims of
communal riots; later work with Kleinman (1997) on the theme of social suffering, Amit
Basu’s (2005) interception of the relationship between colonial history, psychiatry in its
current formation; Dinesh Sharma’s (2000) work on Childhood in India and crosscuts
between social constructionist and psychoanalytic viewpoints; Honey Oberoi’s exploration
into refugee trauma, cultural resilience and research on marginalized voices (2002, 2003);
Nagpal (2000); Sunil Bhatia’s (2002) work on cross-cultural psychology and representation of
the ‘other’ in Euro-American psychology are some examples of these renewed efforts.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Education: It the future of psychology is to be planned with a vision that comes from
revisitations of our colonial past, then psychology of the oppressed has to be pursued with
more rigor and commitment. It is important in this sense to invite those who are thrown off to
the margins because of politics of elitism and exclusion that the discipline of psychology
plays in its entrenchment in Euro-American cultural-psychic structures and explanations.
Efforts at teaching psychology in native languages have been made and in fact Indian regional
languages particularly Bengali, Kannada, and Tamil (partly due to ostracism from the NorthIndian Hindi speaking belt) have developed culturally-congruous ways of teaching
psychology (see, Raina & Srivastava, 1997). Universities have to look at translation and
adaptation as well as project of rewriting of basic textbooks and supplementary books in
regional as well as English language35. Inclusion of the voices of women, children, dalits,
marginalized communities and alternative paradigms that survive on the edge of the
psychological discourse have to be actively pursued. There are many psychological writings
covering some of these issues which have not been mapped in this paper due to paucity of
space.
Research, Advocacy and Activism: Renovations: Inside and Outside the Academia. Certain
academic and research institutions have offered interdisciplinary platform for psychologists
join and intervene in several social debates. Amongst the most notable efforts are those of
Ashis Nandy’s project titled ‘Memories of a Genocide’ based on the trauma of partition of
India and Pakistan. It is an ongoing project carried out at Centre for Study of Developing
Societies (CSDS)36, New Delhi; SARAI37 (South Asia Resource Access on the Internet)
working in co-ordination with CSDS looks various aspects of research on the city has initiated
interesting stipendiary programmes for young researchers from diverse fields and their journal
SARAI Reader is well-known for its interdisciplinary presentation; pioneering efforts at
outreach and research can also be seen in development of the Centre for Psychoanalytic
Studies (CPS), University of Delhi, at evolving course-curricula and interactive modalities to
disseminate psychoanalytic training. Similar attempts have been made by popular semiacademic journals such as Seminar38 which have devoted their editions to issues such as drug
35
Inspite of a nationalist fervour, Indians find it difficult to take positions against wide acceptance and
preference shown for English language. Part of it comes from a colonial hangover and the other impact comes
the unifying role English language has played in drawing a clear pathway amidst the massive cultural and
regional diversity representative of this country.
36
More on CSDS can be found at: www.csdsdelhi.org. Although a word of caution, this website has perhaps
never been updated since it was constructed. However for more interesting survey of Ashis Nandy’s work see,
Vinay Lal’s website (an associate Professor of History at UCLA) called Manas at
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/
37
See, www.sarai.net for more information.
38
See, www.india-seminar.com/ published by well-known woman journalist Malvika Singh.
252
abuse, rewriting history, reclaiming childhood, revitalizing science, dalit 39 perspective,
education and livelihood and many other relevant thematics. Other attempts at introducing
critical discourses in Indian psychological journals include Psychological Studies edited by
Girishwar Mishra (University of Delhi), and The Journal (Journal of the Indian Psychological
Foundation) edited by Vimala Lal and others in Delhi and the well-known journal Psychology
and the Developing Societies that is edited by AK Dalal (Allahabad University) published by
Sage.
Women’s movement in India has led to resurgence in mental health, women’s rights and
justice related issues. Psychologically nuanced and gender sensitive writings by Bhargavi
Davar (1999, 2001) and Amita Dhanda’s incisive book on ‘Legal Order and Mental Disorder’
(2000) and Anita Ghai’s work on psychological vicissitudes of disability (2002, 2003) have
set trends in the arenas of advocacy and psychological well being in a culture which eschews
gender and disability rights. Advocacy and awareness programmes have gained tremendous
momentum due to several initiatives of non-governmental organizations such as: in the arena
of child mental health, NGOs such as Samadhan, New Delhi; Sangath, Goa; Research
Society, Mumbai; Antarnad, Ahmedabad; in the area of women's mental health, IFSHA, New
Delhi; RAHI (recovering and healing from incest), Bapu Trust, Pune; in NGO’s working with
people with severe mental disorders, there is Schizophrenia Research Foundation, (SCARF),
Chennai; Swanchetan (victims of trauma) in New Delhi Medico-Pastoral Association,
Bangalore; Richmond Fellowship Society, Bangalore; Paripurnata, Calcutta; Ashagram,
Barwani, Madhya Pradesh; in the area of suicide prevention, there is Sneha, Chennai; Prerna,
Mumbai. For advocacy in prevention and intervention in substance abuse, there are NGO’s
such as TTK, Chennai; National Addiction Research Centre - NARC, Mumbai; devoted carers
of the mentally ill are organizations such as the Banyan (offers psychiatric help and
rehabilitation for homeless mentally ill), AMEND, Bangalore; Alzheimer's & Related
Disorders Society of India - ARDSI, Cochin). These are the prominently known NGO’s that
have provided a lot of thrust to mental health issues in the country along with some known
international organizations such as Action Aid (UK), SIDA (Sweden), and UN bodies such as
UNICEF, UNESCO, UNIFEM and WHO. Some of these are efforts that have allowed
psychology to be reconstructed and have opened spaces where the disciplinary boundaries can
be challenged further.
Coda
Critical social research flourished in India with incisive and thought-provoking writings in the
post-colonial context both inside and outside the academia. However, the emergence of
critical psychology approaches have been held back due to an isolationist stance adopted by
psychologists in the country. Various reasons for this isolation (forced or chosen?) and
disengagement with socio-political issues of Indian culture have been discussed. It is
important to seriously review if there is some thing inherent in the discipline which prevents
active interrogation of the social or subjective in the social domain or whether psychology in
India presented a collective repression that emanated from various structural and institutional
impositions on psychologists’ socialization as such. There is a possibility that certain
circumscription of human agency emanates from the idiosyncratic way psychology as a
discipline functions. But the non-responsiveness along with uncritical explorations and
reflections of psychological researches in India point out why bulwark of psychology in the
country appears so soulless in comparison to its adjoining social sciences in India which seem
39
In India dalit refers to people who belong to backward caste or tribe.
253
to work with missionary zeal. My plea at the end is very simple and short: in the context of
India, it is (perhaps even) more important to think and act loudly while responding to sociopolitical realities and these realities should in-turn inform, interrogate and be able to transform
the methodological and epistemological fabric of the discipline of psychology. An insular
rendezvous or ‘controlled’ experimentation with the human subject has not taken psychology
very far. And, it is time to reconsider our bearings and allegiances to the cause of human wellbeing.
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