Shilpi Rajpal

• Presentation
• Research outputs

My project traces the local, national and global histories of psychiatry in colonial and post-colonial India. The process of decolonisation of psychiatry was sluggish and unplanned in India. Given the rise of internationalism, Indian psychiatrists were influenced by the American, Soviet and West European models of psychiatry and psychiatric education. On the other hand, Western psychiatrists and psychologists (from the USA, the UK, Soviet Union, Europe and Canada) unrelentingly made scientific enquiries in India allowing it to become a model disciplinary site in South Asia. International trends such as psychoanalysis and the mental hygiene movement provided the much-needed initial impetus for India to connect with the growing movement of transcultural psychiatry. The forming of the Indian psychiatric society and the role it eventually played will be critically investigated in the dissemination of psychiatric knowledge.

This bilateral exchange of knowledge had become a hallmark of the decolonisation of psychiatry in India. This study locates India as a significant partner within the global exchange of knowledge formation of the sciences of the mind. It will be novel in terms of methodology, context and sources and will fill a major lacuna in the present historiography of the decolonisation of global mental health. The research will locate psychiatrists and psychologists as political, social and intellectual cohorts who played a significant role in redrawing the landscape and language of madness during this transition from colonialism to post-colonialism.