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Psychology in India

Aditya Kailash Jain with the latest in our international series.

18 April 2005

India is one of the world’s oldest civilisations and fastest developing countries. Although it occupies only 2.4 per cent of the world’s land area, India supports over 15 per cent of the population, almost 40 per cent of whom are under 15 years of age. Over thousands of years of its history India has been invaded from the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, Arabia, Afghanistan, and the West (Britain was the last invader and ruled India for 200 years, until 15 August 1947). Indian people and culture have absorbed and shaped these influences to produce a remarkable racial and cultural synthesis. Religion, caste and language are major determinants of social and political organisation, and psychology has to attempt an understanding of behaviour in this context.

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