Indigenous psychology in the post-colonial context: An historical perspective

Abstract

Many psychologists in India today have accepted the characterisation of India as a "developing" country that must emulate the "advanced" countries. This position implies that technological advance is the epitome of "progress". As noted by Bury, the "idea of progress" is a product of the intellectual history of Europe. It is not only Eurocentric, but is deeply coloured by Hegel's notions of the irreversible nature of history, and of the inevitable superiority of the European civilisation in the march of history. Hegel's understanding of India was the dialectical opposite of Schopenhauer's rather naive idealisation of ancient Indian culture, and both need a corrective. Influenced by Comtean positivism, presentism, and scientism, most psychologists in India today have developed an amnesia for the long history of the exchange of ideas between India and Europe. In contemporary Western thought, positivism has been declared dead; the idea of perpetual progress through technology is questioned due to the fear of a nuclear holocaust and impending ecological disaster; and the philosophy of science has taken a hermeneutic turn. The rise of interpretive social science and hermeneutic psychology signals the prospect of a holistic understanding of alien cultures. With its own rich tradition of textual interpretation and its practical use in personal edification, India has much to offer to enrich hermeneutic and existential psychologies. With the gradual fading of the colonial mentality in both the so-called "developing" and "developed" countries, the time is ripe for psychological insights of the hermeneutic traditions of India and Europe to converge.