Can Philosophy Do Psychology? Indian Anticolonial Schools and the New Critical Thinking
Devika Agrawal
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The early twentieth century witnessed a blossoming of pedagogical innovations across India. In response to the zenith of British colonialism, widespread industrialization, and the exploitation of our natural ecosystems, famed liberationists like Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Aurobindo Ghose and Jiddu Krishnamurti articulated powerful counterrevolutions in the cultural sphere through a network of alternative schools across the country. In response to the speed, scale, and efficiency of capitalism – these schools were slow, intimate, and focused on quality. Rejecting the city, they romanticized the village (and even the forest). Most radically, Indian liberatory schools challenged commonsense ideas of “rationality” and “scientific thinking” and launched a movement of epistemic resistance through their curricula. Unlike the Euro-American tradition, which has historically interpreted “critical thinking” as analytical rigor, logical deduction, and argument evaluation (Siegel 2017) the Indian liberationist canon locates its foundation in psychological self-understanding. Rather than taking rationality as a single way of being or thinking, Indian philosophers argued that proper research required a sense of self-research – going inward and apprehending the subconscious attachments that color every idea, argument, and intellectual proclivity we might have. This research argues that Indian philosophy of education makes an urgent contribution to the contemporary project of “critical thinking” particularly given the rise in epistemic polarization across the globe. Figures like Tagore were fighting for Indian independence in the most profound and psychic ways – moving beyond calls for political and economic governance towards a sense of freedom rooted in an awareness of our ego, and ultimately, the dissolution of that ego.
Devika Agrawal is a Presidential Fellow and Doctoral Candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She explores Indian philosophies of education, indigenous and anti-colonial traditions, and the dynamics of epistemic reproduction and resistance. Blending philosophy and anthropology, her dissertation follows the afterlives of 20th century alternative education movements in India, asking how visions that challenge modernity continue to find expression within it. Her research is guided by a passion for ecological stewardship and planetary wellbeing.