BPY-DSA01

INTRODUCTION TO INDIAN
PSYCHOLOGY

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 Learning Resources

• https://youtu.be/LM8Lyz1usx8
• https://youtu.be/PZKEGUVR3mA
• Nai talim Today - Some Issues and Possibilities

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 Methodology
• Name of the Teaching methodology used for
this session.

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 APPLYING IP TO EDUCATION
Gandhi’s Nai Talim
• Mahatma Gandhi has given his scheme of Nai Talim (New
Education) in a well formulated approach to education in
1937 in his news paper ‘Harijan’.
• It is a well developed philosophy of education based on
experiments he did right from 1904 when he was in
South Africa to his stay in ashrams in India at Sabarmati
(Gujarat) and Sevagram (Maharashtra).

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 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
India has always been the land of gaining enlightenment
through knowledge. If we go through history we see that
India has a rich education system. Either it is Gurukul
system or Buddhist education system, there is a high
flammable act of knowledge.
The aim of education in ancient India is to develop all
aspects of a child. It based on moral values and virtuality of
soul. Ancient education stationed on the principle of
recognizing itself which is possible by the best development
of a child. This also pointing to the moral development of
the child in a natural way.

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 BASIC PRINCIPLES
It is an approach to the total personality development of body, mind
and spirit and was based on four basic principles (Panse 2007):
i. Education or learning in mother tongue along with handicraft work,
ii. Work should be linked with most useful vocational needs of the
locality,
iii. Learning should be linked with vocational work, and
iv. Work should be socially useful and productive needed for living.

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 BASIC FORMULATION OF NAI
TALIM
The three elements of education - learning, work and locally
available technology- are linked by a cyclic process:
Education + work + Technology -> Socially Useful and
Productive Work (SUPW)
In this formulation,
• Work is assumed to be wholesome, having routine, rest, progress
and pleasure all integrated into working and using technology
(Kumarappa 1957)
-continued...

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 • Technology is either empowering and / or non-exploitative
of people and nature, and does offer wholesome work,
and does not make a human being a ‘cog in the machine’
and degrades human creative nature, or pollutes and
degrades the nature around.
• Education is the learning through working and using
technology for creating SUPW, in which quality is embedded
due to output of work (products and services) being socially
useful and helpful in raising productivity of all those involved
in using the products and services.

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 • This is the Nai or newness aspects that could be involved
in the process of working- in its inputs, throughputs and
outputs – giving freedom and autonomy to the learner and
his/her work in choosing and creating new processes and
results.

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 Samavaya between Learning and
Social Development
In Nai Talim, one of the basic concepts is Samavaya.
(Sama –equal and vaya / vyaya- expenditure),
Both learning and development are simultaneously
expended as are required for creating SUPW.
NaiTalim is highly value based, mass based and avoids
restrictive class approach- eventually a class of talented
persons gets selected by their superior performance, but
every learner and worker has an equal and open
opportunity to develop his/her innate talents.

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Linkage with Life-long Learning and
Developing
Gandhian approach in education is for learning for life,
learning from life and learning throughout life – linking
education with yoga, industry and cooperative working
(yoga, udyoga and sahayoga) (Bhave, 1959) It is a way
for learning, working, developing and transforming
continuously and rising on higher cultural and
innovation levels of modernity and post-modernity.

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 Gandhi’s vision of ideal society:

most people will live in small villages, work in agriculture or cottage

industries, either family owned or owned and managed cooperatively. All
kinds of work will have equal status. There will be high degree of village and
regional economic self sufficiency with low amount of goods being
transported over large distances.
Villages will be politically autonomous, able to take most decisions
themselves through participatory, face- to- face, democracy. There will be
large degree of equity and all kinds of domination-discrimination will be
reduced. Everyone will be eco-literate, practice the 4Rs
(reduce-reuse-recycle-regenerate) and live as per the Gandhian dictum of
‘there is sufficiency in the world for man’s need, but not for man’s greed’
and it is only with such limits to wealth along with equity that envy and
conflict will be reduced, leading to peace and truth, the two supreme
Gandhian ideals

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 Satyāgraha: A Psycho-Spiritual Tool for Conflict
Resolution (Pg.315-321 in Psy in Indian Tradition)

What is satyāgraha?
Satyāgraha, as Gandhi designed it,involves total adherence to
truth and nonviolence.

In Gandhi’s words:

“Satyāgraha is literally holding on to Truth and it means, therefore,

Truth-force. It excludes the use of violence because man is not capable of
knowing absolute truth and, therefore, not competent to punish” those
holding contrary views.

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Satyāgraha in practice is nonviolent action to resolve social
and political conflicts. It may take a number of forms such as
noncooperation, civil disobedience,and fasting depending
upon the nature of the conflict situation.
Gandhi has not prescribed a set theory to go by; and he has
repeatedly emphasized that his techniques are essentially
experimental in character.
The basic assumption underlying satyāgraha is that it is
possible to bring about personal transformation and to
generate extensive social action through the practice of
nonviolence.

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Satyāgraha brings the one who practices it and
those against whom it is waged
closer to truth. The action engendered by
nonviolent techniques is far superior to
action involving violent means because in the
latter case the solution is attended
with undesirable consequences that are often
beyond the control of the acting agent.

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As mentioned, Gandhi believed that “there is
something in man which is superior
to the brute force in him, and that the latter always
yields to it” (Gandhi 1927, p. 369).
Consequently, social and political conflicts can be
resolved by appealing to the good
nature in people, and satyāgraha, according to
Gandhi, is the technique which
precisely serves this function.

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The effect of Satyagraha to strike with the
sympathetic chord of the tyrant

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 Satyagraha vs Passive resistance
It “is not a passive state,” Gandhi argues, “it is an intensely
active state—more active than physical resistance or
violence (CWMG 2001, Vol. 21,
p. 200).”
Passive resistance does not prohibit the use of arms on
suitable occasions.
It also entails the idea of harassing the opponent, while in
satyāgraha physical force is forbidden at all times, and
injury to the adversary under any circumstance is regarded
as a positive violation of its basic principle.

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 SATYAGRAHA IN THE POLITICAL FIELD

• The operation of satyāgraha in the political field took two

important forms—noncooperation and civil disobedience.
• Noncooperation and civil disobedience come, in fact, at a
later stage in the satyāgraha process. Only when
negotiation, arbitration, and constitutional and legal
agitation fail to resolve the conflict recourse to satyāgraha
may be taken.
• Before launching satyāgraha one must be sure that the
problem calls for it and that the participants are ready to
pursue it.
• For a miscalculation on the part of the initiators may lead,
according to Gandhi, to disastrous consequences.
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 WARS vs SATYAGRAHA
Gandhi argues that changes and solu-
tions brought about by satyāgraha are necessarily
good.
For satyāgraha involves the suffering not on the part of
the adversary but on the part of the satyāgrahi. The
extent of readiness and ability to suffer without
inflicting the same on his opponent is proportional to
the justice of the cause.

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 • For Gandhi, satyāgraha is “the moral equivalent of war”
(CWMG 2001, Vol. 54, p. 47)
• Satyāgraha, like war, presupposes a great deal of hardiness and
discipline on the part of those engaged in it. It is not something
to be used by those who lack courage.
At times of war, men know what suffering is like and how to face it.
Satyāgraha presupposes one’s ability to suffer, and suffering is
indeed the central principle of satyāgrahic action.

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Like war, satyāgraha also carries a romantic appeal for
heroism and provides an opportunity to display courage
and endure hardships.
As a social tool to preserve martial virtues without war,
satyāgraha, Gandhi believed, can be effectively
employed.
Satyāgraha is also an alternative to war because, like war,
it is a mode of social action directed toward resolution of
political and social conflicts within and between
communities.

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Solutions by war are temporary and will last only as long as
force retains its hold.

Nonviolent solutions are based on understanding truth;

therefore, they endure without disruption by extraneous
influences. Even when the satyāgrahi’s appeal is directed at
people’s emotions, action is always guided by intelligence,
reason, values and, above all, truth.

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Since its inception, satyāgraha gathered an air of mystery about it
and Gandhi furthered this aura by calling it “soul-force.” Soul-force
is, for Gandhi, truth-force. This would seem to indicate nothing but
a simple faith that truth ultimately triumphs.

The whole process of satyāgraha seems to be an attempt to expose

the opponent to the persistent demands of truth and thus try to
communicate the validity of his claims. This is a general line of thought,
consistent with common sense.

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The most effective way to preempt violence by oneself is to
cultivate its opposite, which is love. Patañjali in his Yoga Sūtras
specifically prescribes this mode to overcome the hurdles in the
way of reaching self-realization.
Violence is indeed one hurdle that Patañjali mentions as something
to be controlled by cultivating its opposite. Gandhi appears to have
been influenced by Yoga in his uncompromising advocacy of
love/nonviolence as an antidote to violence, which is considered a
vice and an impediment for self-realization and common good,
which are the very goals of human endeavor.

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Mahātma Gandhi has shown us some ways of
accomplishing this. According to him, spiritualization is
feasible and practical even in the contemporary world.
Gandhi says that intellectual force is superior to
physical force and that spiritual force is superior to
intellectual force (CWMG, Vol. 9, p. 115).
In the final analysis, the way to realize the self is to
practice nonviolence(CWMG 2001, Vol. 30, p. 425).

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Violence is the instrument of the ego. Nonviolence is the
attribute of human conscience. Suffering on one’s own person,
instead of inflicting on others, awakes conscience. The way it
works may be similar to the “magical” manifestations following
practice of Yoga.
In Yoga, ignorance (avidyā) and the ego are the two mitigating
factors that one needs to overcome in his path of
psycho-spiritual development. The same appears to hold in
Gandhi’s satyāgraha as well. Truth is the insight into the nature
of the conflict and nonviolence is the means to effect its
resolution.

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