CM Bhatia: India's Intelligence Testing Pionner

The story of the creator of the Bhatia Battery of Performance Tests of Intelligence

If you are a psychology student from India, you must have heard the term “Bhatia Battery” at least once in your undergraduate studies.

The battery of performance tests is a collection of tests designed to test a person’s IQ, especially in an Indian population.

Last week, I started trying to find out more about the person who created this battery, Chandra Mohan Bhatia. Interestingly, I could find very little about him on the internet.

So who was CM Bhatia? What made him develop an intelligence test back in 1955, a time when India had just gained independence?

Thanks to some crowdsourcing from the internet, here is what I found.

Growing up in UP

Bhatia was born in 1914 in Uttar Pradesh, at the time known as the United Provinces, one of the many territories controlled by the British.

Bhatia stood out academically throughout his schooling and college and completed his PhD in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh.

It is quite possible that his interest in intelligence grew in Edinburgh as he worked under the guidance of Godfrey Thomson - a giant in intelligence research himself.

On completing his PhD, Bhatia returned to an independent India and was made founder-director of the Bureau of Psychology.

Intelligence and National Reconstruction

Before getting into the story of how Bhatia came up with his battery of performance tests, it is important to see the kind of condition India was in in 1947.

The country had just gained independence from the British and was going through a painful partition process. Nearly 10-20 million people had just been displaced and almost a million had been killed in the religious violence that took place in its aftermath.

The future did not look that great either. The Maternal Mortality Rate in 1947 was at 2000 deaths for every 100,000 births. Children died young very often. The literacy rate was at a measly 18% while for women it was at 8.8%.

India as an independent, democratic republic was up against it. It needed a complete reconstruction from the ground up and that is where Chandra Mohan Bhatia wanted to contribute the most.

In his 1949 book, “Intelligence Testing and National Reconstruction”, Bhatia laid out a roadmap of how Intelligence testing can boost the growth of the country.

At present the situation is that there are millions of illiterate people living in the villages….[who] have never received any schooling. There does not arise any occasion for differentiating the highly intelligent from the rest. Intellects that can be used for national purpose are wasted.

- Chandra Mohan Bhatia, 1949

Bhatia’s idea was pretty clear. There are 400 million people in the country in 1947, the law of probability dictates that at least 27 million of these people have a superior IQ. (> 130). If we can identify these people, their intelligence can be used to build a better nation at a quicker rate.

Bhatia suggested the exercise of testing 400 million people would take at least 3 years, but alas, the plan never came to fruition.

Bhatia formally released his study, in his own capacity in 1955, “Performance tests of intelligence under Indian conditions.” a study conducted on 1154 boys from UP. But in hindsight, the study had many drawbacks of its own such as biased norms and an incomplete dataset.

The Story of Chandra Mohan Bhatia

It is unclear what the personal philosophies of Bhatia were. He did not write much and if he did, most of it is not available in the public domain.

What we do know is that he saw intelligence testing as a way to catapult a down-trodden nation in to an eventual superpower.

Bhatia died in 2009 at the age of 96 having served as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Allahabad.

He may not have gotten the opportunity to test the whole nation’s intelligence levels, but his name has become associated with intelligence testing for every Indian psychology student.