Durganand Sinha
Indian psychologist who built cross-cultural and social psychology in India
Indian psychologist trained at Patna University and Cambridge who founded the psychology department at the University of Allahabad and wrote Psychology in a Third World Country (1986). He held office in Indian and international psychology bodies.
Why this person matters
Sinha represented India and other developing countries in international psychology bodies and helped build Indian institutions, including the National Academy of Psychology. His work is a source for students who ask how psychology developed outside Europe and North America, and for the cross-cultural psychology tradition that Harry Triandis and others shaped.
Main contributions
Building departments and societies
He founded the Department of Psychology at the University of Allahabad, where he was professor from 1961. He was a founding member and adviser of the National Academy of Psychology, established in 1989, and president of the Indian Psychological Association in 1974.
International cross-cultural bodies
He was president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology in the early 1980s and a member of the executive board of the International Union of Psychological Science from 1980 to 1996.
Writing on psychology in a developing society
Psychology in a Third World Country: The Indian Experience (SAGE, 1986) is his best-known book. Psychology for India (SAGE, 2015) collects his selected writings.
Context and limits
The sources used here are a tribute and a publisher biography. They do not evaluate his research or report criticism of it. They disagree on when he joined IIT Kharagpur and on the years of his IACCP presidency (1980 to 1982 in one account, 1982 to 1984 in another), so the profile gives only the early 1980s.
In your introductory course
Culture and diversity.Appears in culture and diversity chapters on psychology outside Europe and North America and in the history of cross-cultural psychology. Students may meet him when courses discuss the limits of Western samples.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 1.3. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1949
Joined the psychology faculty at Patna University after studying at Cambridge, where he trained with F. C. Bartlett.
- 1961
Became professor and chair of the newly created Department of Psychology at Allahabad University.
- 1965
Served as president of the Psychology Section of the Indian Science Congress.
- 1986
Published Psychology in a Third World Country: The Indian Experience.
Sources
- Psychologs, D. Sinha: A Person with Academic Mission and DynamismReference work. Institutional biography inspected.
- Exotic India, Psychology for India (SAGE, 2015), author biographyPublisher. Abstract inspected.