Roots of Social Psychology in India
The branch of psychology that we label as Social Psychology has deep roots in the history of development and growth of India as a country. Our religious texts such as Shrutis, Vedas, Upanishads, smritis, puranas and Manu smriti analyses and interprets social interactions as early as 1500 BC. All these scriptures showcase beautiful day to day discourses of life highlighting social interactions, social knowledge, and behaviour. Epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata depict the social, economic, political life of that time holding similarities for present social reality. On similar lines Kautilya’s Arthshastra is a beautiful discourse on political manipulations that are very similar to present political manuvers. The Islamic heritage along with the Hindu one mentioned above also depicts various concepts of social psychology. The idea of brotherhood, importance and illustrations on community living, doctrine of Sabr, are incorporated in the teachings of all prominent Sufi saints. These ideologies provide valuable spiritual insights into manifestations of belongingness, fear, love and rejection as practices in communities.
Not just the religious text and spiritual heritage, various aspects of understanding social, emotional and spiritual human psyche, are also visible through the phases of various social movements lead by leaders such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidhyasagar, Swami Vivekanand, Mahatma Gandhi etc. Their understanding of the Indian masses and the society and the prevailing group psyche is clearly visible in the way these movements were led and handled. An example of this is the satyagraha or movement of nonviolence led by Mahatma Gandhi during the fight for independence. He used the concept of Ahinsa or non-violence to mobilize the masses of the country for both political as well as social reasons thereby giving solutions to social conflict both in India and South Africa. His understanding of social psychology at that time was far better than many in that era.
Another medium that clearly depicts the understanding of society and its norms is the literary writings in the form of poems, short stories, dohas at that time. These literary works from various prominent authors such as Kabir, Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojni Naidu, Arbindo Ghosh, Bankimchandra etc have been emphasising social order and the social norms for the society through their writings. An example of this is the writings and literary works of Shri RabindraNath Tagore through which he popularized the stories of common men, women, and children. Through his writings he envisioned a society marked with gender equality, respect for women, right to education, right to freedom. He at that time propagated and envisioned a society free of caste prejudices promoting universal harmony.
India as a country had roots of social psychology deeply embedded in the cultural aspect either through rituals, festivals, societal norms, community living, scriptures, social movements, literary writings etc. What remained to be address was a formal name and scientific work in the direction helping it attain the status at a global level. This too was address in early 1920’s with the establishment of first psychology department in 1916 in Calcutta University than in Mysore university in 1924 and in Patna University in 1946. Another milestone that deserves a mention here in the publication of first book on social psychology as early as 1920 by Indian social Psychologists R.K Mukherjee and Sengupta in 1928. A copy on Allport’s work on groups was conducted as early as 1926 to investigate group effects on performance by Sengupta and Singh. The field has progress from replicating to conducting robust experimental work ranging from rumour studies (Sinha;1952), devasting earthquake study in 1935(Prasad) etc to conducting experimental and quasi experimental field studies in the area. Establishment of Indian Council for Social Science Research as a body in 1969 was a landmark achievement in the field. Since than there has been no looking back. India as a contributor to the development of social psychology has had various dominant fields of research such as Attitudes, Prejudice, Intergroup relations, Social development, Social influence processes, social justice etc.
The current trends in the field have been to establish indigenous social psychology within the universal and global social psychology.
Read more: https://www.ncuindia.edu/programme/ba-hons-psychology
Authored By
Neha Jain
Department of Psychology
The NorthCap University Gurugram