Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Each year a Hindu festival takes place in January/February at Allahabad, Northern India. Every twelve years the festival is celebrated as the famous Kumbh Mela. However, the annual festivals attract several million pilgrims, many living on the banks of the Ganges for a month. We will describe the religious, social and political significance of this event for Hindu identities. We will also explore the need for political psychology to analyse how collective ritual and public ceremony may be significant in building up a sense of community and collectivity. Although several disciplines address such issues the effects of participation are typically assumed rather than explicated.We will then discuss how political psychology could draw upon social psychological theory â?? especially as it concerns the concept of social identity. We believe that this tradition has considerable strengths but that the process of application in this context can enrich theory. First, whilst social psychologists have explored the dynamics and consequences of collective identification, much less attention has been paid to the way in which actual participation in collective events impacts upon social identity and communal interactions. Second, we believe that we have much to learn about the narrowness of our assumptions about collective identity processes through applying social psychological theory developed in the West to an Indian context. Throughout we will emphasise the importance of developing a theoretical perspective that directs our attention to cultural processes and conceives of culture as constructed, contested and dynamic.