The Handbook of Indian Psychology is a collection of thirty one articles specially written for this volume by scholars scattered around the globe on a subject little known among the students of psychology. Psychology in the Indian tradition has a wider and more inclusive perspective than in the West. It draws from a variety of sources and permits multiple interpretations. It contains meta-theoretic postulates as well as simple practical recipes for good behaviour. In between there is a wealth of psychological wisdom, at once provocative and challenging to the students of human nature. Indian psychology is holistic and inclusive, glossing over dichotomies such as subject and object, natural and supernatural, secular and sacred. One can find in it innovative ideas, interesting in some ways and controversial in some other respects, as well as perplexing methodological manoeuvers to overcome paradoxes by a method of magical synthesis that provides for the coexistence of contraries like science and spirituality. Consequently, Indian psychology may be seen as profound or plain irrelevant to current psychological concerns, depending on how one looks at it. This volume is a modest attempt intended to focus on the profound, calling attention to some of the significant psychological insights contained in the classical Indian wisdom.

The authors contributing to this volume are from multiple disciplines that include academic psychology, classical Indian philosophy, religious studies, management science, psychotherapeutic practice and pedagogic disciplines. They all have interest in Indian psychology as an up-and-coming discipline that has important implications for their own subjects and occupations. A majority of them are Hindus, but several authors belong to other religious and cultural traditions.

This chapter reviews the history, aims, and treatment methods of Western psychotherapy, and attempts to assimilate the clinical practise of psychotherapy into the worldview of Indian psychology. After integrating psychotherapy and Indian psychology at the level of theory and mythology, the author proceeds to describe the practical concerns of psychotherapy and suggests ways in which the consciousness perspective of Indian psychology could expand the scope of psychotherapy. Two types of psychotherapy (psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural) are described in greater detail for readers who may not be familiar with the actual methods and content of clinical practise. Some of the potential dangers of psycho-spiritual practise are discussed as well, including the controversial issue of hostile possession. Finally, existing Indian contributions to psychotherapy are noted and important issues in acclimatizing psychotherapy to Indian culture are highlighted.

Before describing the relationship between Indian psychology and psychotherapy, we must first address some common stereotypes that surround both disciplines.

In India, psychology as a science, is a century old. Since its inception in 1905, considerable research has taken place. However, the volume of research is not comparable to the amount of research conducted in developed countries. Lack of state and private funding for research in psychology, inadequate avenues for publishing research data, reduced motivation of psychology graduates and mentors may have led to low research publication from India (Manickam, 2003). When the volume of published psychological research literature is evaluated, it is seen that the number of research studies conducted in India focusing on Indian concepts by Indian researchers is considerably low (Manickam, 2002). In this chapter some of the obstacles in conducting research on Indian concepts, the conflicts that have struck the researchers and the means to overcome these obstacles are delineated and guidelines for future action are discussed.

Indian Concepts and the Research Scenario

In psychology, from the time of James (1902) and Jung (1933) onwards, there were references to concepts from Indian thought. Since that period, some of the concepts have been kept alive in some way or the other in the development of psychological science. Kilby (1968) made valuable observations regarding the potential of the Indian concepts, which he termed as the “philosophical psychology in India”. Walsh (1988) focused on some of the important concepts in Indian thought that have significant role in developing a comprehensive psychological science. These writings inspired many researchers to explore Indian concepts from a Western psychological perspective. Indeed, published research literature on Indian concepts in relation to psychology and mental health are more from developed nations than from India.

There are three terms that are used in the early discourses which can explain the fundamental aspects of the psychological speculations of the Buddha. They are the fundamental aspects because hundreds of other psychological concepts in the early discourses can be brought under one or the other of these three categories. These three categories thus explain the entirety of original Buddhist psychology. They are thought (citta), mind (mano) and consciousness (viññana). The Saṁyutta-nikāya contains two short discourses (2, 94–97) which outline the nature of these three psychological phenomena and the manner in which they should be treated in order to be free from the suffering associated with human life. They are also wrongly interpreted in order to justify some form of metaphysical idealism. Considering the enormous significance of these two discourses, we propose to begin our discussion with a complete translation of the first of these.

1. Thus has been heard by me. Once the Fortunate One was living in Sāavatthi, at Jeta's garden, in the monastery of Anāthapiṇḍika. Then the Fortunate One addressed the monks: “Monks!” “Yes, Fortunate One,” responded the monks. The Fortunate One said thus:

2. “Monks, an individualist without learning (assutavā puthujjano) should be disgusted with, dispassionate toward and released from this body made of the four great elements.

3. What is the reason for this? Monks, seen is the accumulation, also the dissipation, also the grasping and also the abandoning of this body made of the four great elements. Therefore, therein an individualist without learning should be disgusted with, dispassionate toward and released from this body made of the four great elements.

4. […]

Indian psychology is a complex subject variously viewed as esoteric and spiritual, philosophical and speculative, practical and ritualistic, and of course, as we believe, systematic and scientific understanding of human nature. There is truth in all these characterizations.

Handbook of Indian Psychology is an attempt to frame the treasures of Indian psychology in the form of a book. It is the first in a continuing series of books of the Indian Psychology Book Project (IPBP). This project was conceived by a group of eminent psychologists in India that includes Dr Matthijs Cornelissen of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry; Dr Sangeetha Menon of the National Institute of Advanced Study, Bangalore; Professor Janak Pandey of Allahabad University and Professor Girishwar Misra of Delhi University in addition to the three editors of this volume. The IPBP came into being in 2003 following a special meeting convened by the Institute for Human Science and Service in Visakhapatnam.

The IPBP is intended to help rejuvenate Indian psychology. We believe the time is ripe for a renaissance of Indian psychology because of a number of reasons. First, psychology in India is in such a sorry state that it is widely felt that it needs to take a round about turn and look back into its own tradition and learn from it. It need not march mindlessly in a “catch up with the West” game in an uneven field, with mismatched tools. There is an increasing realization on the part of young scholars as well as senior professionals that the key concepts and core categories used in past psychological studies in India are simply inappropriate.

The aestheticians of ancient India such as Mammaṭa, Ānadavardhana, Abhinavagupta expressed the opinion that creative achievement can be enhanced or made more probable through the orchestration of many forces. These forces include personality traits and motives, mental capabilities, and some expertise relevant to the field in which creativity is attempted. The right combination of personality traits, creative intelligence, etc. can greatly increase creative potential. Besides these factors, a comprehensive view of life lies at the centre of creative imagination, which illumines or reinforces the particular experiences gathered by the poets and artists from their own lives. A poet or artist has to learn consciously or unconsciously, through reading or otherwise, the art of previous works in the particular genre and choose the elements he considers essential for his own form. He may learn the ways of telling a story or drawing a character if he is a fiction writer or may learn how to paint or draw a line artistically if he is an artist. In this sense he is concerned with the quality of creative imagination in previous works of art. If he is ambitious or curious, he would try to learn from similar works of art not only of the particular place to which he belongs, but also from classical works of art in the world. This re-creative capacity is an element of creative imagination, which indicates the manner in which poets like Kālidāsa, Bānabhaṭṭa, Bhāvabhūti and others assimilated the elements of tradition in their own milieu for using them in their works.

Psychology was quite established as an empirical science in the West, both in the USA and in Europe, by 1950. However, in India it was still a part of the discipline of philosophy. Organizational psychology was even slower to start since the economy was primarily driven by the public sector, which lacked the motivation to be profitable and efficient. Organizational psychology has been driven by efficiency and improvement of work performance in the West, and in the absence of these drivers it is not surprising that organizational psychology did not grow as much in India. Sinha (1972) presented the early history of organizational psychology, and suffice to say that much like other areas of psychology, organizational psychology jumped on the bandwagon of “mindless” copying of the West. In the 1950s, the Zeitgeist was filled with the spirit of national development, and Western countries offered the gold standard for development.

Western analytic philosophers who interpret William James tend to ignore his tripartite metaphysics of pragmatism, pluralism, and radical empiricism and focus instead on just his pragmatism (Taylor, 2005). Further, they tend to interpret James through the pragmatism of Peirce and Dewey instead of dealing with James in his own context. So it is no wonder that they would remain incredulous that any of James's ideas could have been somehow influenced by non-Western sources, such as the Hindu Darśana, since the philosophers might not be in full possession of what James actually meant in the first place. While we have no actual smoking gun on the matter, there is compelling circumstantial evidence to suggest that James's doctrine of pure experience, the heart of his metaphysic of radical empiricism, was influenced by his knowledge of Sāṃkhya philosophy.

The first question to address is what is James's tripartite metaphysics? Let me state in abbreviated form my conclusion that James's tripartite formula was a statement of his own unique philosophy but couched in the manner of Peirce's three categories. Aristotle had proposed a list of the basic and irreducible categories of existence; Kant, whom Peirce had studied intensely in the 1860s, had produced his own list. In 1867, Peirce himself delivered “On a new list of categories”, as one of the papers celebrating his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at the young age of 26.

Defining consciousness is notoriously difficult. Dictionaries tend to become self-referential when they try to define consciousness. The New Oxford Dictionary of English, for example, defines consciousness in terms of awareness, awareness in terms of perception and perception again in terms of consciousness. Professional dictionaries hardly fare better: the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy escapes the problem by simply omitting the term. This ostrich like behaviour is, strangely enough, not an isolated phenomenon: to ignore consciousness has been the general policy of science for much of the twentieth century, and it is only during the last 25 years or so that consciousness has again become a legitimate subject of scientific and philosophical enquiry.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of consciousness. Though some hard-core physicalists have tried to trivialize consciousness as a more or less incidental side-effect of the complexity of our brains, it is good to realize that without consciousness we would simply not exist at all, or if we somehow still would manage to exist, there would be no way for anybody to know anything about it (or to know anything about anything else, for that matter). Without consciousness there would be no point to our individual life. In fact, there would be no point to anything. After all, even the most “objective” scientific explanations exist in the end only “in the eye of the beholder”. If consciousness would not be there to support them, not only beauty, love, experience, and truth would lose their meaning, but even scientific theories would dissolve into unobserved paper, ink, and fleeting plops of brain-chemistry.

Introduction

For ecotourism development to be sustainable, it is important that it follows the directives provided in various international covenants and national policies and laws. This chapter, introduces a few crucial legal and policy frameworks at the international level, which have a bearing on the manner in which ecotourism is developed in India. There are numerous codes, guidelines, protocols and charters on ecotourism and sustainable tourism that have been formulated by different stakeholders especially governments, tourism industry and inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations. It would be beyond the scope of this book to enumerate and analyse all these covenants. Some important covenants have been analysed and presented. These are Agenda 21, 1992; Commission on Sustainable Development; Convention on Biological Diversity; International Year of Ecotourism, 2002; General Agreement on Trade in Service; the UN's Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the UNWTO Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, 2000.

Agenda 21, 1992

Agenda 21 is an outcome of the Earth Summit at the Rio de Janeiro United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992. It is a well-defined programme of action for global sustainable development. It addresses the global environment and development problems and suggests strategies, plans, policies and processes to achieve a balance between environment and development. It addresses social and economic dimensions, conservation and management of resources for development, strengthening the role of major groups and means of implementation.

Introduction

There have been successful ecotourism initiatives in the country and more are beginning to be established. These initiatives are from various parts of the country, ranging from the Trans Himalayan region of Ladakh to the tropical forests of Kerala. This chapter attempts to showcase some of them. The chapter provides an insight into how these initiatives were established along with a brief analysis of what has emerged from some of them. Initiatives in ecotourism, range from community driven ones such as the one in Ladakh, to those supported by the Forest Department as in the case from Periyar in Kerala. What is interesting to note is that each followed a rather unique methodology of planning their respective initiatives. The Dzongu endeavour used the Appreciative Participatory Planning and Action (APPA) methodology. The ecotourism planning at Korzok Lake in Ladakh used local people to impart training that they themselves had gone through. The Klionoma Village in Nagaland carried out an environmental impact assessment to first ascertain the impacts from tourism and then plan a sustainable tourism initiative. It is significant that each ecotourism effort has been supported by an NGO or in some cases even the State Government. Despite geographical and other differences, many points of commonality arise from these case studies. Primary among these is the importance of a local community institution to carry out ecotourism activities, facilitate benefit sharing and to resolve any potential conflicts.

Tourism

Urry (1990) states, ‘Tourism is a leisure activity which presupposes its opposite, namely regulated and organised work. It is one of the manifestations of how work and leisure are organised as separate and regulated spheres of social practice in “modern” societies. Tourist relationships arise from a movement of people to, and their stay at various destinations. The journey and stay are to, and in, sites which are outside the normal places of residence and work. Periods of residences elsewhere are of a short-term and temporary nature. The places are chosen to be gazed upon because there is an anticipation, of pleasures, either on a different scale or involving different senses from those customarily encountered.’

The definition of tourism as given by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is – ‘Tourism comprises the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited.’

Tourism is the world's fastest growing industry and in recent years, has come to play an increasingly dominant role in the economies of developing countries. This is especially true for 49 of the less developed countries of the world. Many governments are in the run to garner a percentage of this voluminous 846 million strong tourist traffic (UNWTO, 2007).

Introduction

This chapter looks at the voices of dissent the world over to protest against what is happening in the name of ecotourism. It covers aspects particularly relating to the International Year of Ecotourism (IYE), 2002 and presents two case studies from the national level, of protests against what was being promoted as ecotourism before and after the IYE.

By the year 2002, when the decision to celebrate the IYE was made, it had become clear that ecotourism had many pitfalls, particularly if misinterpreted. There were serious reservations that celebrating the IYE was premature and it would only imply a greater push for thoughtless ecotourism causing more negative impacts. It was felt that advancing the IYE at this stage would mean enhancement of social, environmental and other problems for communities who are completely unprepared to take on increased tourism. There were suggestions to review the IYE and use it instead as a platform to understand risks, and offer an opportunity to address the challenges posed by tourism, development and environment. However, the IYE programmes went ahead as planned with six regional conferences the world over. The culmination of the IYE was the World Ecotourism Summit, which was also fraught with problems and several protests were registered, aimed at both the content and process of the event.

Closer to home, major tourism projects in the garb of ‘ecotourism’ were being launched in ecologically sensitive areas at the cost of local livelihoods.

Introduction

At the national level, there exists a legal and policy framework that supports or has the potential to support ecotourism. At the state level, there are several states that have developed their own ecotourism policies or tourism policies with specific reference to ecotourism. This chapter presents an analysis of some of the key national legal and policy instruments in context to ecotourism. It then goes on to analyse some selected state tourism/ecotourism policies. There are great variations in the state policies. Analysis of these policies reveals that each state seems to interpret ecotourism in its own way. This brings to the fore, the need for a common understanding of the concept and its implementation. The sections included in this chapter are Legal Framework, Policy Framework and State Tourism/Ecotourism Policies.

Legal Framework

Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, Amendment 1993 and 2002

In 1972, the Parliament enacted the Wildlife (Protection) Act pursuant to the enabling resolutions of 11 states under Article 252(1) of the Constitution. The Wildlife (Protection) Act provides for State Wildlife Advisory Boards, regulations for hunting wild animals and birds, establishment of sanctuaries and national parks, regulations for trade in wild animals, animal products and trophies, and judicially imposed penalties for violating the Act. Harming the endangered species listed in Schedule I of the Act is prohibited throughout India. Hunting other species, like those requiring special protection (Schedule II), big game (Schedule III), and small game (Schedule IV) is regulated through licensing.

It is evident that tourism is growing rapidly worldwide, providing economic, environmental and social benefits. Tourism benefits financially through its multiplier effect, creates employment and brings about regional development. It also cultivates tolerance and encourages knowledge of different cultures, while aiding in the preservation of heritage and the environment.

However, recent trends within tourism development in the country have raised several concerns about the adverse impacts of tourism. Government policies seldom acknowledge the negative fallouts of tourism development and continue to render an open invitation to tourists and investment in tourism. Tourism depends heavily on natural and human resources and its inroads into protected areas and untouched zones have often been at high costs. A market-driven model of tourism development that has privileged industry and tourists' needs over local people's interests often leads to privatisation of common property resources for exclusive use by industry and displacement of local communities to make room for tourism establishments. Low levels of participation in the formal, more lucrative tourism industry and reduced access to resources have resulted in paltry benefits to local communities.

Uncontrolled and unregulated tourism growth, often based on shortterm priorities, invariably results in unacceptable impacts that harm society and the environment. In essence, tourism development today has raised serious questions as to who its real beneficiaries are. This has led to the emergence of a more sensitive form of tourism, which aims at minimising these costs and maximising benefits.