J Hist Behav Sci. 2014;50(4):359-75. doi: 10.1002/jhbs.21692. Epub 2014 Sep 02.
Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Shivrang Setlur
PMID: 25183435 DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.21692
This paper describes the introduction and development of intelligence testing in British India. Between 1919 and 1940 experimenters such as C. Herbert Rice, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, and Venkatrao Vithal Kamat imported a number of intelligence tests, adapting them to suit a variety of South Asian languages and contexts. Charting South Asian psychometry's gradual move from American missionary efforts toward the state, this paper argues that political reforms in the 1920s and 1930s affected how psychometry was "indigenized" in South Asia. Describing how approaches to race and caste shifted across instruments and over time, this paper charts the gradual recession, within South Asian psychometry, of a "race" theory of caste. Describing some of the ways in which this "late colonial" period affected the postcolonial landscape, the paper concludes by suggesting potential lines for further inquiry into the later career of intelligence testing in India and Pakistan.
© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
