Modern Psychology in India: Reminiscences and Reflections

Abstract

Lest we feel tempted to regard the development of psychology in India as a recent phenomenon, it is important to look at the contributions of early workers in the field. A generation stands on the shoulders of its predecessor. Against this brief backdrop, this survey examines the contributions of early Indian psychologists. They were drawn chiefly from philosophy and education. However, it may be interesting to see how scholars from almost all parts of the country, who moved places contributing in varying measures, promoted the growth of the discipline. There was no narrow specialization as obtains today; they worked and researched in various fields of psychology at different times. The discipline followed generally the course it took in the West emphases on “behavior” did provide objective subject matter but by banishing consciousness and mental life the Anglo-American psychology has become impoverished. Recent efforts to retrieve the study of consciousness and indigenization hold potential for non-positivistic mode of understanding.

Editorial Note: This article was originally published with the same title in Psychological Studies, 2008(53). 1–6. It is reproduced here with the permission from National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India.

Written at the suggestion of the Editor of the Journal. Author was asked to write because the author spent five years with the founder of modern psychology in India N. N. Sen Gupta, Ph.D. (Harvard) prior to the demise of the founder in June 1944, and the author started his study of psychology early (1937), one of his instructors teaching in Lockean (tabula rasa) tradition when the country was under British rule, the other a missionary trained under EL. Thorndike (connectionism).

This brief survey is in the nature of going down the memory lane, covers only the non-living pioneers, with most of whom the author had met and those associated with generally institutions of higher learning.

The beginning of modern psychology is traced officially to 1879¹ with the founding of the experimental psychology laboratory² by Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig.³ In Asia, Japan `was the first country to start the psychology program.⁴ In the unpartitioned India, the University of Calcutta began the teaching of psychology in 1916 when Sir Asuotosh Mukerji appointed N. N. Sen Gupta a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy then chaired by Sir S. Radhakrishnan and rose to professorship and chairman of the Department of Psychology. Sen Gupta had returned the previous year from Harvard University with a doctorate. He was charged with developing psychology teaching program and a laboratory. In 1921, Haridas Bhattacharya, Professor of Philosophy, University of Dacca (Dhaka in Bangladesh), in the undivided India borrowed S. K. Bose from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to set up a psychology laboratory in his department. It was, however, only in 1965 that the university established an independent department of psychology.⁵ The University of Mysore has the distinction of being the second university in the country to have instituted psychology program in 1925. In 1930, Lahore (now in Pakistan) got a psychology department with M. Aslarn (author of Religious Experiences of Muhammad) and I. Latif (interested in psychoanalysis and literature). With the partition of the country, S. M. Moghni, then working at Aligarh Muslim University in the Philosophy Department, moved over to Pakistan. Latter, he established Psychology Department at Rajashahi University⁶ (then East Pakistan) in 1955, but with the creation of Bangladesh, he returned to Pakistan. It was after Calcutta and Mysore that several universities and colleges began offering teaching and research facilities in India.⁷

As mentioned earlier, modem (Western) psychology took roots initially at Calcutta University in Bengal. N. N. Sen Gupta who had taken his doctorate from Harvard on anti-intellectualism in philosophy had the opportunity of studying under Hugo Munsterberg (invited by William James to chair psychology, while he himself moved over to philosophy) and taking training with Yearkes and Holt in psychology. He visited Cornell Psychology Laboratory before returning. Though exposed to the structuralist Zeitgeist, Munsterberg’s influence made him more catholic in outlook. In social psychology, he challenged the concept of “group mind,” and in general psychology, he was against the reduction of mind to brain. Investigating the influence of groups on work with C. P. N. Singh, he anticipated some aspects of the “Hawthorne Studies.”⁸ Along with Radhakamal Mukherji, he published one of the first few books on social psychology in 1929. He also wrote on “race psychology.” He founded Indian Psychological Association and its official organ Indian Journal of Psychology and managed to have a Section of Psychology and Educational Science instituted in the Indian Science Congress Association. He moved over to Lucknow University in 1929. Girindrasekhar Bose is a physician succeeded him to the Chair of the Department of Psychology. Bose was the founder of the psychoanalytic movement in India, the Indian Psychoanalytical Society, and its official publication Samiksha. He made important contributions to the concepts of “wish,” repression “and the unconscious.” He worked in experimental psychology devising apparatuses and wrote on “Yoga Psychology.” S. C. Mitra, the only Indian trained at Leipzig, worked in many areas particularly on a theory of “emotion.”⁹ Some of the other senior psychologists who worked in various fields were: M. N. Bannerji, K. C. Mukherji, S. K. Bose, A. Dutta. D. Ganguly (social and industrial), R. Haider (literature and psychoanalysis), and G. Pal (psychophysics).

In Bihar H. P. Maiti worked on memory using experimental method. Jamuna Prasad worked in social psychology. But psychological measurement and testing involved many like S. M. Mohsin, Zain-ul-Abdeen, and B. B. Chatterji, and Mohsin in his later years moved over to social psychology. Patna University also established an Institute of Psychological Services.

In Karnataka, Mysore, as noted earlier, was the second university in the country to establish a department of psychology with M. V. Gopalaswamy as its head. He had returned after training with Charles Spearman in U.K. and set up both experimental and applied psychology programs. He worked on galvanic skin response in the former and on aptitude testing in the latter. His successor B. Kuppuswamy worked on Indian psychology and found a close correspondence between the concepts of “antarmukhi” and “vahirmukhi” in Jungian concepts of introversion and extroversion. In later years, he got involved in social psychology and in election studies. N. S. N. Shastry did much to disseminate educational psychological research and along with K. G. N. Menon published Journal of Education and Psychology. B. Krishnan succeeding Kuppuswamy at Mysore devoted himself specially to classical Indian psychology and sought to develop scales based upon Samkhya “triguna” theory.

G. D. Boaz developed the Department of Psychology at the University of Madras (now Chennai). He founded the Madras Psychological Society and started editing along with his colleagues three journals in general, experimental and applied areas, being himself in all the areas.¹⁰ At Annamalai University, Adinarayanan was one of the early workers in the area of social psychology, specially attitudes.

In the neighboring Union Territory of Pondicherry, Indra Sen, earlier at Delhi, was deeply involved in Indian psychology. He was devoted to the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and worked tirelessly on the philosopher-sage’s notion of “integral Yoga.”

In Orissa, the study of psychology began at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, before the establishment of a full-fledged department of psychology at the new university at Bhubaneswar. Adjoining state of Andhra Pradesh had two major centers of psychological studies. Osmania University at Hyderabad was the only university which published psychology literature in Urdu. Later, it organized teaching in most of the conventional areas, emphasizing experimental and organizational psychology, both the fields championed by E. G. Parmeshwaran.

Andhra University at Waltair, while offering conventional courses, specialized in researches on paranormal phenomena, on sleep, dream, and classical Indian psychology, principally psychology of Yoga and the nature of consciousness. The Journal of Indian Psychology was also founded in 1981.

In Maharashtra, H. P. Mehta and K. H. Camat took to educational psychology, while Ishwar Dayal entered industry. When the University of Bombay instituted the Department of Applied Psychology, there being a Department of Experimental Psychology at Pune, Nirodh Mukherji¹¹ joined as its chairman. Trained in U.K., he took to experimental psychology in particular. In many instances, he was his own subject as, for instance, his experiments on the psychological effects of hallucinogenic drugs, like Heinric Kluver’s study of Peyot. He also worked on the psychology of laughter. On his faculty was a physician T. R. Kulkami who was trained at Calcutta and had studied Sanskrit in the classical tradition. He spent some time at the Lonavala Yoga Center and researched on the psychological aspects of Pranayama and the psychology of Vedanta.

At the Kerala University at Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram), E. I. George developed the department of psychology organizing teaching in various areas, himself interested in general and social psychological problems.

K. G. Rama Rao joined the College of Education and Psychology at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh where S. N. Ray spent some time before he returned to Calcutta Department. As an educational psychologist, Rao introduced psychological testing and guidance in the curriculum of education and started a course in applied psychology oriented mainly to education. His successor Rao continued the tradition himself devoting to child development and creativity studies. While Bilaspur had undergraduate elective of psychology, a full-fledged postgraduate course in psychology and research activity began with the institution of a Department of Psychology at the newly established University at Raipur where S. N. Upadhyaya initiated studies in experimental psychology like those on perceptual defense.

Up north, there was a department of education in Kashmir University at Srinagar where Zargar and M. L. Lidhoo were involved in educational psychological researches.

Panjab University started a Department of Psychology, and S. K. Mitra joined as Professor only to move over to Calcutta and Delhi and was succeeded by S. Jalota who too moved out a little later. P. S. Hundal chaired the Department of Psychology when G. N. D. University came up at Amritsar. He was interested in psychology of creativity, personality, and social behavior and founded a journal on Personality and Social Behavior.

Psychology was oriented to education in Gujrat at some other places. T. N. K. Menon and LJ. Bhatt were mainly involved; they founded the Journal of Education and Psychology. Gujrat University at Ahmedabad had a department of psychology then chaired by P. H. Prablu who took to social psychology in Indian context and published a volume entitled Hindu Social Organization.

In 1929, N. N. Sen Gupta had moved over to the University of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh from Calcutta joining as Professor of Philosophy. A year later, he introduced psychology in the philosophy curricula. He had brought the tradition of experimental psychology from Calcutta, and by mid-1930s, he started training Maurice Hakim (who later moved over to St. John’s College, Agra), Rajnarain (who stayed at Lucknow till his retirement) in experimental psychology, and the present author¹² (who moved to Sagar two decades later). At Lucknow, he published on “heredity and mental traits” and on “mental growth and decline.”¹³ On his sudden demise in 1944, Kali Prasad took charge of the department. He published on the Psychology of Meaning, he had earlier published in Mind, industrialization and social change, attitudes and international images, and international behavior.¹⁴ S. K. Saksena trained in London and having published on The Nature of Consciousness in Indian Thought joined for a brief spell and handing over to Rajnarain who worked in the areas of social psychology, championed for political psychology and on psychological theory. Others to follow were R. M. Loomba (general psychology), Sri Chandra (social), Vimla Agarwal (social and political), and Prabha Gupta (psychology of peace). Elsewhere P. S. Naidu propagated hormic psychology.¹⁵ B. L. Atreya published on psychology in Yoga Vashistha. He was assisted by S. Jalota (psychological measurement) and M. M. Sinha (experimental and comparative/animal). At Meerut, S. D. Singh trained in U.K. and at Harlow’s laboratory set up animal laboratory performing stereotaxic experiments on rats, and undertook and trained students and publishing on social behavior of rhesus monkeys by studies at Ayodhya and in Dehradun forests, where he died of food poisoning. At the University of Allahabad, Durganand Sinha trained at Patna and at Cambridge founded the Psychology Department, got an independent building for it, developed a rich library, established a center for Study of National Development and Social Change, initiated cross-cultural studies, championed indigenization, and joined efforts to put the psychology of developing countries on the international scene.

Though Delhi University started the Department of Psychology a little later, the Ministry of Defense, Government of India, had made psychological screening of officers in the three branches of the services as a part of the Second World War effort, under charge of the psychiatrist in the Services Selection Boards. (Colonel) Sohan Lal, trained in U.K., a psychometrician, was the first Indian to take charge of the psychological testing program. Later M. Adiseshiah, trained at the Cambridge University Psychology Laboratory, took over and initiated work on vigilance function as related to defense requirements, besides looking after the selection program. Elsewhere in Delhi at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), S. K. Mitra, a psychologist trained at Chicago and as the director, organized and supervised educational psychological research and counselling and guidance programs. He was assisted by N. N. Sen trained in Lucknow and in U.K. who set up an experimental laboratory to undertake psycho-physiological studies of cognitive and motor functions and organized courses on behavior modification.

It will be noted that, as observed in the beginning, almost all parts of the country had workers who engaged in the promotion of teaching and research in psychology. We have, however, limited ourselves primarily to universities; there were other psychologists, institutes, and agencies which were involved in the application of psychology.

Reminiscing, the author admits wearing power lenses magnifying some events while attenuating others, and when reflecting, he would naturally be betraying his own idiosyncrasies.

Psychology in India inherited the Lockean tradition of the colonial masters, and this entered via courses in education till the introduction of the Titchenerian model when the University of Calcutta started teaching of psychology in 1916. Early workers were mainly drawn from education and philosophy. This tribe is gradually vanishing as the later generations are getting groomed into Anglo-American psychology which is predominantly positivistic and utilitarian. Access to literature is mostly via English language and whatever is filtered and made available from other language publications.

The growth of the discipline has followed generally the course it took in the West—the same paradigms (“schools”), their methods, and problems of study.¹⁶ Much research, therefore, has been replicated.¹⁷ Slowly, this scenario has been changing as problems of national concerns that had to be addressed. With the partition of the country into India and Pakistan, social scientists, including psychologists, engaged in studies of social tensions then obtaining in the country (riots, migration of population from one country to the other). Likewise, after World War II, a bid to industrialize and modernize focused interest on the problems of social change. Presently, problems relating to globalization, market economy, emerging knowledge society, rejection of pluralism, and looming threat of uni-culture stare in the face and seek examination.

Research funding is scarce. Unlike the developed countries where business, industries, corporations, and government departments are major sources of funding research, state financial support is drying up because the sources of the state are yet to come up and state does not require the institutions to generate their own funds by floating professionally oriented teaching programs. Basic and fundamental research is at discount therefore. Applied psychology (e.g., mental health, counseling, human relations in business and industry, etc.) is attractive for utilitarian and pecuniary reasons. Psychology of “mentality” caters to behavior manipulation in the best sense of the term, whereas the psychology of “mind” has few takers.¹⁸ One wonders how healthy this trend may be for the growth of the discipline.

Emphasis on “behavior” originally born of the need to be “objective” and “scientific” owing to the prevailing Zeitgeist (its philosophy of science) made John Watson change the very subject matter of psychology¹⁹ from the study of “mental life”²⁰ to the study of “behavior,” placing “mind,” as if, on the back burner and later grudgingly admitting it in the form of “verbal report.”²¹ This has kept successive generations of psychologists busy and happy for having to deal with something tangible rather than try dealing with something elusive and ephemeral like “mind.” It seems that by banishing consciousness and mental life the Anglo-American psychology has impoverished itself.

The emergence of cognitive psychology/science as a equal to the information processing paradigm could not exclude mental events (e.g., attending, images, memory, thinking, etc.) from consideration though it did so in terms of the positivistic approach.²² In this context, it is reassuring to note that some psychologists in the country are trying to retrieve the study of consciousness once again as a legitimate subject of psychological study.²³ It is here, in our opinion, that something unique and original could be discovered about mental phenomena in the true sense of indigenization.²⁴ For, it does not seem necessary to restrict oneself to the current positivistic thinking after the challenge posed by Karl Popper, T. Khun, and Feyerabend. Consciousness and mental life could be explored in alternative ways.²⁵