India’s Collectivism Is More Complex Than We Think

India is often seen as a community-focused collectivist culture to the outside world. Indian culture is known for its close, tight-knit communities and strong family values. Although India has a community-oriented culture, it also has a more hierarchical form of collectivism rather than an egalitarian one. A collectivist culture is one where a person’s identity, decisions, and obligations are defined primarily by their membership in a larger group, usually family, rather than by their own individual preferences or wellbeing. In the Indian context specifically, this looks like: your choices around marriage, career, money, and even emotional expression are expected to serve the family unit and its standing, not just your own needs. The “collective” isn’t just, “we take care of each other.” It’s, “we protect the family’s position and reputation, and elders hold the authority to decide what that requires.” So loyalty is owed less to the group’s actual welfare and more to its hierarchy and its image in the eyes of others.

There are different types of collectivism, and India is included in the “vertical collectivism" and “honor/face collectivism.” Vertical and horizontal collectivism is a part of Triandis’s framework, where horizontal collectivism is when group members see each other as equals, cooperation and interdependence are valued, but without a strong status hierarchy. Vertical collectivism is when the group is valued, but so is hierarchy within it. Status, seniority, and authority matter a lot. Obeying elders or superiors is part of serving the group. Moreover, cross-cultural psychology divides this concept into dignity cultures, honor cultures, and face cultures. Dignity culture is where worth is seen as inherent to the individual, not dependent on others' opinions. This is more common in individualist Western contexts. Honor cultures are when worth is tied to reputation and must be actively defended, often through visible actions, especially by men protecting family or group standing. This overlaps with face cultures where worth is tied to social standing within a network, and maintaining smooth appearances and avoiding shame is paramount.

Now, I am not here to argue that one type of cultural model is better than the other. But I do want to point out the benefits and the harm of our society being shaped like this. I also want to point out that India is an incredibly diverse country with various regional, cultural, societal, and religious differences, and this article is written from my perspective alone as a psychotherapist who has lived and worked in India for the last three years and grew up in India as a child. Having lived in multiple countries, I believe this also allows me a perspective that I would not have had otherwise. And being of Indian origin, I grew up with Indian culture and practices that gave me insight into the nuances and complexities of growing up Indian.

Before we get into the critiques of vertical and honor/face collectivism, it would be worth diving into the supportive qualities of the community and culture in India, because this topic is truly so layered and complex. Within many Indian cultures, it is common for multiple generations to live under the same roof, allowing for support from grandparents towards grandchildren, and parents caring for the grandparents as they get older. It is often the case that aging grandparents do not go to senior living homes, and are supported by the larger family instead. Additionally, childcare is taken care of by the multiple family members living in the home. Festivals across religions and cultures within the country are group events, where many families work together to cook, prepare, and plan for these events. Weddings are also multi-family endeavors, and no one family does all the work to organize the wedding, in most cases. There is often an open-door policy where neighbors and friends come unannounced, and children are fed and disciplined by multiple families.

Living in the US for 9 years, I did not get to experience this level of community and support very often because the culture there was very individualized in the big cities and many people were simply too busy and stressed about their own lives and socioeconomic factors to have the capacity to relate in these ways. So when I moved to India in 2023, I experienced a significant culture shock when suddenly I was surrounded by so many people after living alone for so long. It took me some time to adjust, and I live in a multigenerational household now, where there is an attempt for all generations to be cared for and supported by each other. Having many (supportive) people around is a huge protective factor in alleviating loneliness. Isolation especially can often lead to a myriad of mental health issues in the long-run when not addressed, and in India it has been my experience that it’s less common for people to be left alone and isolated, compared to the US where I would consider there to be a loneliness epidemic.

Although there are many protective factors associated with the collectivism in India, there are also specific qualities about the type of collectivism that I have found to be damaging to the individual and to the group’s internal wellbeing. Because India adopts a more hierarchal societal structure where there is a patriarchy, common in vertical cultures, there is usually a head of the household who is also the “breadwinner.” Although society has changed in the last couple of decades and double-income households are more common, it is still a culture where men hold more power and elders of the family are especially revered. When authority is granted by age, gender, or status rather than by demonstrated wisdom or consent, it protects harmful elders as much as it protects good ones. There's no built-in mechanism for a younger or lower-status family member to challenge decisions, even abusive ones, without being cast as disrespectful or disloyal. This is harmful because this structure concentrates power without accountability. Across the board, I’ve seen men, especially elder men, dominate decision-making and demand respect and obedience without earning it. Of course, this is more of a norm and there are many exceptions, but society itself is structured in a way that men do have more power, as is the case in most modern cultures.

Additionally, vertical cultures suppress individual autonomy in ways linked to poorer mental health. Self-determination theory research consistently finds that autonomy is a basic psychological need across cultures, not just a Western preference. It is a basic human need to have the ability to make our own decisions. When major life decisions (marriage, career, where you live) are made by hierarchy rather than the person living them, it correlates with higher depression and lower life satisfaction, even when the person "goes along" with the decision. It is still incredibly common for parents to decide who their adult child gets to marry, and what career their children should have. As a therapist, I’ve seen firsthand the impact this has on young adults. Not being able to decide who to spend your entire life with, and not being able to decide what career to pursue are fundamental factors that lead to poorer mental health and poorer quality of life. Although many people make do with the life they were given, many also suffer being in environments and in relationships where they just don’t fit in or they’re experiencing harm from.

In honor cultures, honor is fundamentally external. It exists in the eyes of the community, which means it can be lost through no fault of your own (a daughter's choices, a son's failure, a rumor) and must be constantly defended rather than simply held. This type of culture ties self-worth to others’ perception rather than the reality of the internal individual and family unit. Rather than an individual’s self-worth being determined by their own qualities and achievements, it is determined by how others view the individual in society, like whether they have a reputable career, who they have chosen to marry, etc. Similarly, this also reflects on the family’s reputation and perception in society. Honor culture also promotes hiding one’s reality and identity, such as if someone in a family is living with severe mental illness. This often leads to concealment of the issue and the person themselves. Similarly, if a son comes out as gay, this could lead to strong reactions from the elders in the family to hide his sexuality and to marry a woman anyways. In terms of how this impacts women and younger members of a family, there can be excessive policing towards their clothing choices and lifestyles in a way that does not exist for men because female behavior is treated as a proxy for a family’s reputation.

Many parts of India participate in face culture, where a group or family’s image of harmony is more important than true internal harmony. Conflict avoidance becomes a go-to when there is a problem within a family, with issues brushed over and built up over time. Resolution is often sacrificed in order to be perceived as a “happy family” to the outside, because if problems are openly talked about, that would mean admitting that there is a problem at all. This is common in cases of abuse and unhealthy patterns stemming from parents to their children. It is taboo to explicitly point out an adult’s abuse towards their child to the rest of the family, as value is placed on appearing harmonious in society rather than a single individual’s suffering being alleviated or resolved. This can lead to children who often have complex trauma and have incredible difficulty adjusting to adulthood. With no one to speak to or receive support from, the child is left to cope on their own, often developing unhealthy coping mechanisms and potentially chronic mental health issues down the line.

These various subsets of collectivism are not necessarily pathological on their own. As we can see in history, they had an adaptive purpose to help the society survive. Although hierarchy and vertical collectivism were in India for quite a while before colonialism, colonialism added a second, competing hierarchy on top of the existing one. Colonialism destabilized the agrarian economic base that made joint hierarchy functional while simultaneously hardening the legal and social structures enforcing that hierarchy. During the independence movement, Indian nationalist discourse drew a distinction between the "outer" world of politics and economy, where adopting Western material practices was acceptable, and the "inner" world of home and family, which had to remain purely, traditionally Indian to preserve cultural identity against colonial domination. Women's conduct became the primary symbol of that untouched inner world. This is part of why control over women's behavior, dress, and choices got tied so tightly to family and national honor, it wasn't just old patriarchy continuing, it was patriarchy actively enlisted as a form of anti-colonial resistance. Colonialism didn't just fail to modernize these hierarchies, it actively used them as a psychological refuge and a nationalist symbol, then legally froze them in place. So what looks like "unchanged tradition" today is often not pre-colonial custom - it's a colonial-era codification of custom that got treated as timeless and authentic.

At the same time, I believe both things can be true: that India’s hierarchical society can be harmful, and that the same collectivism that harms can also support its citizens. The open door policy that feeds your kids also normalizes elders having opinions about your marriage; the multigenerational household that prevents loneliness is also the one where dissent gets read as disrespect. Many individuals with mental health issues find comfort and support in the community aspect - having people around that normalize their suffering and don’t shame them. It is easier to make friends and form smaller communities within neighborhoods, workplaces, and third spaces. India is also the world’s fastest growing major economy. The goal isn't dismantling collectivism, becoming individualist, isolated and "Western,” but decoupling collectivism from hierarchy and image. Horizontal collectivism exists as a model too: interdependence without domination, community without mandatory obedience, and closeness without concealment. Dignity culture would allow for the individual’s worth and respect to be self-defined rather than dependent on external influences. Dismantling hierarchy, patriarchy, and public image would be vital to adopting these models in India.

But how do we do that? In the therapy room, I often see clients who are trying to do exactly this kind of rewiring in real time: keep the relationships, keep the closeness, but stop needing permission or approval to make their own choices. It can be immensely difficult and complex to just “make boundaries” with family, but in my practice I see young people trying exactly that to the best of their ability where their safety and overall wellbeing remain intact. Most Indians don’t want to cut their parents out; they want the opposite - to be treated with respect and given autonomy while remaining close to the people who raised them. There is immense respect given to elders and parents, but I believe there should be equal amounts of respect given to all members of a society, regardless of age, gender, socioeconomic status, caste. I see people working to untangle these systems through unlearning patterns in their marriages and in raising their kids differently as well. In the end, I don’t have an answer to where India will go, but in my heart I believe we’re headed in a positive direction.

So, what do you think?

Is collectivism in India where it should be, and if not, what steps can we take to untangle some of these systems?