G. S.

Ghurye
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G. S. Ghurye.

Born 12 December 1893

Malwan, Maharashtra, India.

Died 28 December 1983(aged 90)[1]

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.[2]

Residence Mumbai.

Nationality Indian.

Citizenship Indian.

Alma mater University of Cambridge.

Spouse(s) Sajubai Ghurye.

Scientific career
 Fields Sociology, Anthropology.

Institutions University of Mumbai.

Doctoral advisor W. H. R. Rivers & A. C. Haddon.

Influences W. H. R. Rivers.

Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (12 December 1893 – 28 December 1983) was an Indian professor of
sociology.[3] In 1924, he became the second person to head the Department of Sociology in
the University of Mumbai.[4]

Contents

 1Education
 2Personal life
 3Career
 4Publications
 5References
 6Further reading
 7External links

Education[edit]
Ghurye was born on 12 December 1893, at Malwan, in Maharashtra.[2] His early schooling was at
the Aryan Education Society's High School, Girgaum, in Mumbai and then at Bahadur Khanji High
School, Junagadh, in Gujarat.[2] He joined Bahauddin college at Junagarh, in 1912, but moved on
to Elphinstone College, Mumbai, after a year, and received his B. A. (Sanskrit) and M. A. (Sanskrit)
degrees from there.[5] He earned the Bhau Daji prize with his B. A., and the Chancellor's gold medal
with his M. A. degree.[5] After completing his M. A., Ghurye received a scholarship for further studies
in England, and earned his PhD from Cambridge University in 1922.[2] Ghurye was deeply influenced
by W. H. R. Rivers, who was his PhD guide.[6] After Rivers' untimely death in 1922, he completed his
thesis under A. C. Haddon.[6]

Personal life[edit]
Ghurye was married to Sajubai of Vengurla, a town near Malwan. [2] His son, Sudhish Ghurye is a
Mathematician and Statistician, and daughter Kumud G. Ghurye was a barrister. [7]

Career[edit]
Ghurye was appointed as Head of Department of the Department of Sociology in Mumbai University
in 1924, and retired in 1959.[8] The department was founded by Patrick Geddes in 1919.[9] However,
when Ghurye took it over, it was on the verge of closure. The department came alive once again
with Ghurye, and now, Ghurye is regarded as the real founder [10] and "shaped" the study of sociology
there from then on.[11] He also founded the Indian Sociological Society and its newsletter, Sociological
Bulletin, and served as head for both.[12] He also headed the Bombay Anthropological Society for
some years.[13] After retirement, he served as Professor Emeritus for Mumbai University and at least
three festschrifts were produced in his honour, of which two were during his lifetime. [14] He guided a
total of 80 research theses and authored 32 books and a number of other papers. [15] Later, at least
two theses were written on him.[16] Among his students were personalities like noted social reformer
and intellectual Dr. Uttamrao K. Jadhav,[17] A. J. Agarkar, Y. M. Rege, L. N. Chapekar, M. G.
Kulkarni, M. S. A. Rao, Iravati Karve, Y. B. Damle, M.N. Srinivas, A. R. Desai, D. Narain, I. P. Desai,
M. S. Gore, Suma Chitnis and Victor D'Souza.[18] He also had the opportunity to see the "Dr. G. S.
Ghurye Award" being instituted in his honour.[19] His book Caste and race in India is regarded as a
classic in the field.[20]

Publications[edit]
 G.S. Ghurye (2008) [1932]. Caste and race in India. Popular Prakashan. ISBN 978-81-7154-205-5.[20]
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1943). The aborigines -"so-called" – and their future. Pub. by D.R. Gadgil for the
economics.
 G. S. Ghurye (1951). Indian costume, bhāratīya veṣabhūsā,. the Popular book depot.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1952). Race relations in Negro Africa. Asia Pub. House.

 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1995) [1953]. Indian Sadhus. Puopular Prakashan, Bombay.

 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1956). Sexual Behaviour of the American Female. Current Book House.

 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1957). Caste and class in India. Popular Book Depot.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1958). Bhāratanāṭya and its costume. Popular Book Depot.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1960). After a century and a quarter: Lonikand then and now. Popular Book Depot.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1962). Cities and civilization. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1962). Gods and men, by G. S. Ghurye.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1962). Family and kin in Indo-European culture. Popular Book Depot.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1963). The Mahadev Kolis. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1963). Anatomy of a rururban community. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1963). Anthropo-sociological papers. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1965). Religious consciousness. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1968). Social tensions in India. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1973). I and other explorations. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1974). Whither India?. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye; S. Devadas Pillai (1976). Aspects of changing India: studies in honour of Prof. G. S.
Ghurye. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1977). Indian acculturation: Agastya and Skanda. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1978). India recreates democracy. Popular Prakashan.
 G. S. Ghurye (December 1979). Legacy of the Ramayana. South Asia Books. ISBN 978-0-8364-5760-5.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1979). Vedic India. Popular Prakashan.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1 January 1980) [1963]. The scheduled tribes of India. Transaction Publishers.
pp. 1–. ISBN 978-0-87855-692-2.
 Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1980). The burning caldron of north-east India. Popular Prakashan.
 G.S. Ghurye (1 January 2005). Rajput Architecture. Popular Prakashan. ISBN 978-81-7154-446-2.

References[edit]
Notes

1. Pillai, S. Devadas. Indian sociology through Ghurye, a dictionary, "Bhau Daji Lad was a scholar and reform-
activist, a nationalist of Bombay [Mumbai] in the second half of the 19th cent." [2]
 2. Dhirendra Narain, The legacy of G.S. Ghurye: a centennial festschrift, "Mrs. Sajubai Ghurye is one of the early
authors on cookery, a little too flourishing and profitable a branch of writing these days. Her book in Marathi, my
wife tells me, is very good—very accurate in measurement and very systematic in its directions." [21]
3. Pillai, S. Devadas. Indian sociology through Ghurye, a dictionary, "The Bombay Univ instituted an annual Ghurye
Award (qv), during his lifetime, to encourage authors in sociology and anthropology." [22]

Govind Sadashiv Guhurye : Biography and Contribution to

Indian Sociology!
Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (1893-1984) is a towering figure in intellectual
and academic circles for his unique contribution in the field of Indian
sociology. He has often been acclaimed as the ‘father of Indian sociology’,
‘the doyen of Indian sociologists’ or ‘the symbol of sociological
creativeness’. Ghurye had been engaged in building up; almost single
handedly, the entire first generation of Indian sociologists in post-
independence period.

M.N. Srinivas has rightly said, “Nothing disguises the fact that Ghurye was
giant”. Efforts of individuals, who have variously been regarded as the
‘founding fathers’, ‘pioneers’ ‘first-generation sociologists’ etc., constituted
the most important factor in the growth of Indian sociology. These pioneers
provided direction to shape the future of sociology in India. And, of all
these, none did as much for sociology in India as Ghurye.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Two aspects of Ghurye’s work are worth inquiring into:

a. First, his role in promoting and directing the course of research in
diverse fields of Indian society (as a teacher, as an institution builder and as
a scholar); and
b. Second, his own substantive writings, his theoretical postulates, his
vision of the role of sociology, etc.

Ghurye excelled in both of them.

Background:
ADVERTISEMENTS:

Ghurye was born on 12th December, 1893 in a Saraswat Brahmin family in

Malavan, Maharashtra, and the West Coast of India. He died on 28th
December, 1983 at the age of 91 in Bombay. Sociology was not a school or
college subject when Ghurye was a student. From the very early years,
Ghurye showed a flair for Sanskrit.

After passing the matriculation examination, Ghurye got himself admitted

to the Elphinstone College, Bombay with Honours. He had a brilliant
academic career throughout. He stood first class second at the BA
examination and was awarded the Bahu Dazi prize – the blue ribbon of
Sanskrit competence in the university.

He stood first class first at the MA examination in English and Sanskrit in

1918 and was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal. None before that time
had obtained a first class at the MA with Sanskrit. With this type of
background in Sanskrit, Ghurye finally came to sociology, which profoundly
influenced later Ghurye’s own writings and the course of research made in
the field of sociology under his leadership.

While teaching at the Elphinstone College, Ghurye submitted an essay to

Patrick Geddes on “Bombay as an Urban Centre”. It won him a foreign
scholarship. The scholarship was instituted by the University of Bombay to
train promising young men in sociology. Ghurye went to London School of
Economics where he briefly worked with L.T. Hobhouse.

He later moved to Cambridge where he worked with W.H.R. Rivers. Rivers

died in 1922 before Ghurye completed his doctoral work. In 1923, he
completed his PhD under A.C. Hadden on Caste and Race in India. His
work was published by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1932 in C.K. Ogden’s
History of Civilization Series. It immediately established Ghurye’s
reputation.

Sociology in Bombay developed under the leadership of G.S. Ghurye.

Patrick Geddes was invited by the University of Bombay to start a
Department of Sociology in 1919. Ghurye succeeded Geddes as head and as
a Reader, took charge of the Department of Sociology at Bombay University
in 1924.

He was appointed as Professor in 1934 and retired in 1959. When he retired

in 1959, the University of Bombay made him an Emeritus Professor.
Ghurye was the first Emeritus Professor in Bombay University. He did not
cease to be academically active after retirement from service. His last
research student submitted thesis in 1971. During these about fifty years’
span, he supervised as many as eighty theses. Of these, forty have been
published as books.

As a teacher, Ghurye was very serious and meticulous in preparing his

lectures notes. Many of his students have testified that his lectures were
heavily documented. As a research guide, he was more impressive and
more successful. He created a ‘sociological awareness’.

The ‘second generation’ of Indian sociologists was largely his creation. They
include M.N. Srinivas, K.M. Kapadia, I. Karve, K.T. Merchant, I.P. Desai,
A.R. Desai, Y.B. Damle, D. Narain, M.S.A. Rao, K.N. Venkatarayappa, A.
Bopegamage, M.G. Kulkarni, K.C. Panchnadikar, M.L. Sharma, D.B.
Unwalla and many others.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

As an institution-builder, deservedly, the most profound impact on Indian

sociology was made by Ghurye. Ghurye was the principal architect of the
Department of Sociology of Bombay University and produced a batch of
renowned scholars including M.N. Srinivas, who is now internationally
known. His students headed (and many of them are still heading) the
departments of sociology in many universities in India.

Ghurye was the prime mover in the formation of Indian Sociological Society
in 1952 and was also instrumental in the publication of its mouthpiece,
Sociological Bulletin, as its official bi-annual journal. However, the first
sociological journal in India, The Indian Journal of Sociology, was started
in January 1920 under the editorship of Alban G. Widgery of Baroda
College in Baroda.

Ghurye was elected the president of the anthropological section of the

Indian Science Congress in 1934. In the same year, he was also elected as
the nominee to the Royal Asiatic Society and continued to hold this position
till 1948. During his lifetime, he won several top honours accorded to any
intellectual in India.

As a scholar, in fact, throughout his life, Ghurye has been active from the
academic standpoint. His 16 books, out of a total of 31 books, published
during his lifetime. His output is indeed prodigious by any standard.
Several of them are noteworthy as pioneering contributions to the sociology
field.
Even so, Ghurye is most likely to be remembered by Caste and Race in
India (titled Caste and Class in India in subsequent editions). His persistent
research endeavor, wide ranging interest and upholding of the base of
academic tradition made him the centre of sociological creativity and
research for several generations of Indian sociologists.

Ghurye’s broad area of interest was general process of evolution of culture

in different civilizations in general, and in Indian (Hindu) civilization in
particular. The origin and subsequent proliferation of the different varieties
of Indo-European civilization constitute the range of Ghurye’s study.

Indian society, through its long historical process of growth, presents a

picture of a vast mosaic of culture held together by religion, values and
norms of Hinduism. As a sociologist, Ghurye feels the imperative of
exploring this unifying and synthesizing process.

In spite of many diversions, exploration and analysis of the process of

cultural unity in India through ages constitutes the major thrust of
Ghurye’s writing. He moves to establish his thesis with perfect case, back
and forth, from the Vedic to the present-day India.

Theoretical Approach and Methodological Application of

Ghurye:
Ghurye’s rigour and discipline are now legendary in Indian sociological
circles. In the application of theories to empirical exercises or in the use of
methodologies for data collection that legendary rigour is not somehow
reflected. To put it differently, Ghurye was not dogmatic in the use of
theory and methodology.

He seems to have believed in practising and encouraging disciplined

eclecticism in theory and methodology. Despite his training at Cambridge
under W.H.R. Rivers and his broad acceptance of the structural-functional
approach, Ghurye did not strictly conform to the functionalist tradition
when interpreting the complex facets of Indian society and culture, which
he chose to investigate.

The pioneers were ‘armchair’ or ‘lecture-ism’ sociologists. Even Ghurye had

conducted village, town and community studies. It was said that “Ghurye
insisted on fieldwork, though he himself was an armchair scholar” (Srinivas
and Panini, 1973: 188). This was not intended as a pejorative comment
(Srinivas, 1973), but it reflected the tremendous premium placed on single-
handed ‘anthropological fieldwork’.

Therefore, it may be said that although trained in the craft of Indology,

Ghurye was not averse to the fieldwork traditions of social and cultural
anthropology. His field survey of Sex Habits of Middle Class People in
Bombay conducted in the 1930s and published in 1938 and the monograph
on the Mahadev Kolis (1963) demonstrated Ghurye was far from promoting
an armchair textual scholarship. He was an empirical field worker also.
Later generations of Indian sociologists and social anthropologists used
Ghurye’s inexhaustible themes for their researches.

It would be appropriate to characterize Ghurye as a practitioner of

‘theoretical pluralism’. Basically interested in inductive empirical exercises
and depicting Indian social reality using any source material – primarily
Indological – his theoretical position bordered on laissez-faire. Similarly,
when Ghurye conducted survey-type research involving primary data
collection, he did not conform to accepted methodological canons.

He often ventured into generalization on the basis of scanty and

unrepresentative evidence, e.g., Social Tensions in India (Ghurye, 1968). It
is also likely that Ghurye’s flexible approach to theory and methodology in
sociology and social anthropology was born of his faith in intellectual
freedom, which is reflected in the diverse theoretical and methodological
approaches that his research students pursued in i heir works. Ghurye also
used historical and comparative methods in his studies which have also
been followed by his students.

Ghurye was initially influenced by the reality of diffusionist approach of

British social anthropology but subsequently he switched on to the studies
of Indian society from indological and inthropological perspectives. He
emphasized on Indological approach in the study of social and cultural life
in India and the elsewhere. This helps in the understanding of society
through literature.

Ghurye utilized literature in sociological studies with his profound

knowledge of Sanskrit literature, extensively quoted from the Vedas,
Sbastras, epics, and poetry of Kalidasa or Bhavabhuti to shed light on the
social and cultural life in India. He made use of the literature in vernacular,
e.g., Marathi, and cited from the literature of modern writers like
Bankimchandra Chatterjee as well.

Works of Ghurye:
Ghurye’s writings have enormous diversity of themes and perspectives. The
range is very wide, indeed. As the two principal branches of the Indo-
European people subsequently prospered in India (the Indo-Aryan) and
Europe (the Anglo-Saxon), for example, he has shown wide similarities
between these two peoples as regards the two principal institutions, viz.,
the family and the caste.
Not only this, a host of other things also came with Ghurye’s range of
interests. Rajput architecture and funerary monuments, sadhus in India
and sex in America, Shakespeare and Kalidas, castes, tribes and races,
metropolitan civilization – everything was grist to his sociological mill. His
writings have been gathered from all sources – literary, historical,
archaeological, sculptural, painting and iconography. This gives an extra
dimension to his research.

Up to 1980, he authored thirty-one books; only five of them were written

before 1950 and thirteen up to 1959 when he retired from the university
service.

The important works of Ghurye are as follows:

1. Caste and Race in India (1932, 1969)

2. Culture and Society (1947)

3. Indian Sadhus (1953)

4. Bharatnatyam and Its Costume (1958)

5. Family and Kin in Indo-European Culture (1955, 1961)

6. Cities and Civilization (1962)

7. Gods and Men (1962)

8. Anatomy of a Rural-Urban Community (1962)

9. Scheduled Tribes (first published as The Aborigines So-called and their

Future) (1943, 1959, 1963)

10. Religious Consciousness (1965)

11. Indian Costume (1966)

12. Social Tensions in India (1968)

13. I and Other Explorations (1973)

14. Whither India (1974)

15. Indian Acculturation (1977)

16. Vedic India (1979)

17. Bringing Cauldron of North East India (1980)

The whole range of Ghurye’s works can be classified into a number of broad
themes. The classification has not always been a neat one, sometimes a
little bit of discretion had to be used but this enabled us to arrange more
systematically his ideas.

Pramanick (1994) has divided Ghurye’s writings into six broad

areas. These are:
1. Caste

2. Tribes

3. Kinship, family and marriage

4. Culture, civilization and the historical role of cities

5. Religion

6. Sociology of conflict and integration

Besides these, there are a number of important writings of Ghurye, which
could not be fitted into the above scheme. We would briefly discuss here the
important works of Ghurye.

Caste and Kinship:

We first take up Ghurye’s Caste and Race in India (1932), which cognitively
combined historical, anthropological and sociological perspectives to
understand caste and kinship system in India. He tried to analyse caste
system through textual evidences using ancient texts on the one hand and
also from both structural and cultural perspectives on the other hand.

Ghurye studied caste system from a historical, comparative and integrative

perspective. Later on he did comparative study of kinship in Indo-
European cultures.

In his study of caste and kinship, Ghurye emphasizes two

important points:
1. The kin and caste networks in India had parallels in some other societies
also.

2. The kinship and caste in India served in the past as integrative

frameworks.

The evolution of society was based on the integration of diverse, racial or

ethnic groups through these networks.

Ghurye highlights six structural features of caste system as

follows:
1. Segmental division

2. Hierarchy
3. Pollution and purity

4. Civil and religious disabilities and privileges of different sections

5. Lack of choice of occupation

6. Restrictions on marriage

Besides the above characteristics, Ghurye laid particular stress on

endogamy as the most important feature of the caste system. Any effective
unit of the caste hierarchy is marked by endogamy. Every caste had in the
past segmented into smaller sub-divisions or sub-castes. Each of these sub-
castes practised endogamy. For example, Vaishya (Baniya or Mahajan)
castes are divided into various sub-castes such as Agrawal, Maheshwari etc.

Caste is also linked with kinship through caste endogamy and also clan
(gotra) exogamy. Gotra has been treated as thoroughly exogamous unit by
the Brahmins and later by the non-Brahmins. The basic notion here is that
all the members of a gotra are related to one another, through blood, i.e.,
they have rishi (sage) as their common ancestor. Therefore, marriage
between two persons of the same gotra will lead to incestuous relationship.
It will lead the lineage of the gotra to near extinction.

The relationship between caste and kinship is very close

because:
(i) exogamy in our society is largely based on kinship, either real or
imaginary, and

(ii) the effective unit of caste, sub-caste is largely constituted of kinsmen.

To Ghurye, there are three types of marriage restrictions in our society,

which shape the relationship between caste and kinship. These are
endogamy, exogamy and hypergamy. Exogamy can be divided into two
parts:

(i) spinda or prohibited degrees of kin, and

(ii) sept or gotra exogamy.

The gotra and charna were kin categories of Indo-European cultures which
systematized the rank and status of the people. These categories were
derived from rishis (saints) of the past. These rishis were the real or
eponymous founder of the gotra and charna.

In India, descent has not always been traced to the blood tie. The lineages
were often based on spiritual descent from sages of the past. Outside the
kinship, one might notice the guru-shishya (teacher-student) relationship,
which is also based on spiritual descent. A disciple is proud to trace his
descent from a master.

Likewise, caste and sub-caste integrated people into a ranked order based
on norms of purity-pollution. The rules of endogamy and commensality
marked off castes from each other. This was integrative instrument, which
organized them into a totality or collectivity.

The Hindu religion provided the conceptual and ritualistic guidelines for
this integration. The Brahmins of India played a key role in legitimizing the
caste ranks and orders through their interpretation of Dharamashastras,
which were the compendia of sacred codes.

Tribe:
Ghurye’s works on the tribes were general as well as specific. He wrote a
general book on Scheduled Tribes in which he dealt with the historical,
administrative and social dimensions of Indian tribes. He also wrote on
specific tribes such as the Kolis in Maharashtra. Ghurye presented his
thesis on tribes at a time when a majority of the established anthropologists
and administrators were of the opinion that the separate identity of the
tribes is to be maintained at any cost.

Ghurye, on the other hand, believes that most of the tribes have been
Hinduized after a long period of contact with Hindus. He holds that it is
futile to search for the separate identity of the tribes. They are nothing but
the ‘backward caste Hindus’. Their backwardness was due to their
imperfect integration into Hindu society. The Santhals, Bhils, Gonds, etc.,
who live in South-Central India are its examples (Ghurye, 1963).

There has been fierce debate between G.S. Ghurye and Verrier Elwin. Elwin
in his book Loss of Nerve said that tribals should be allowed to live in
isolation, whereas Ghurye argued that tribals should be assimilated into
Hindu castes.

Thus, Ghurye holds the view that a grand historical process of merger
between two communities has almost been completed. Consequently,
tribes, now, may be regarded as ‘backward Hindus’. The incorporation of
Hindu values and norms into tribal life was a positive step in the process of
development.

The tribes in India had slowly absorbed certain Hindu values and style of
life through contact with the Hindu social groups. Today, it is being
considered a part of Hindu society. Under Hindu influence, the tribes gave
up liquor drinking, received education and improved their agriculture.

In this context, Hindu voluntary organizations, such as Ramakrishna

Mission and Arya Samaj, played a constructive role for the development of
the tribes. In his later works of north-eastern tribes, Ghurye documented
secessionist trends. He felt that unless these were held in check, the
political unity of the country would be damaged.

Ghurye presents a huge data on the thoughts, practices and habits of the
tribes inhabiting the Central Indian region. He quotes extensively from
various writings and reports to show that Katauris, Bhuiyas, Oraons,
Khonds, Gonds, Korkus etc. have substantially adopted Hinduism as their
religion. Ghurye suggests that the economic motivation behind the
adoption of Hinduism is very strong among the tribes. They can come out
of their tribal crafts and adopt a specialized type of occupation, which is in
demand in society.

Rural-Urbanization:
Ghurye remained occupied all through his life with the idea of
rururbanization securing the advantages of urban life simultaneously with
nature’s greenery. Therefore, he discusses the process of rural-urbanization
in India. He views that the urbanization in India was not a simple function
of industrial growth.

In India, the process of urbanization, at least till recent years, started from
within the rural area itself. He traced Sanskrit texts and documents to
illustrate the growth of urban centres from the need for market felt in a
rural hinterland. Development of agriculture needed more and more
markets to exchange the surplus in food grains.

Consequently, in many rural regions, one part of a big village started

functioning into a market. This led to a township, which in turn developed
administrative, judicial and other institutions. In the past, urban centres
were based on feudal patronage, which had demands for silk cloths,
jewellery, metal artifacts, weapons etc. This led to the growth of urban
centres such as Banaras, Kanchipurum, Jaipur, and Moradabad etc.

In brief, it may be said that Ghurye’s approach to ‘rural-urbanization’

reflects the indigenous source of urbanism. During colonial times, the
growth of metropolitan centres altered the Indian life. The towns and cities
were no longer the outlets for agricultural produce and handicrafts but they
became the major manufacturing centres.

These centres used rural areas for producing raw materials and turned into
a market for selling industrial products. Thus, the metropolitan economy
emerged to dominate the village economy. Therefore, the urbanization
started making inroads into the rural hinterland in contrast to previous
pattern. A large city or metropolis also functioned as the centre of culture of
the territory encompassing it.

For Ghurye, the large city with its big complexes of higher education,
research, judiciary, health services, print and entertainment media is a
cradle innovation that ultimately serves cultural growth. The functions of
the city are to perform a culturally integrative role, to act as a point of focus
and the centre of radiation of the major tenets of the age. Not any city, but
large city or metropolis having an organic link with the life of the people of
its region can do this work well.

According to Ghurye, an urban planner must tackle the

problems of:
(1) sufficient supply of drinking water,

(2) human congestion,

(3) traffic congestion,

(4) regulation of public vehicles,

(5) insufficiency of railway transport in cities like Mumbai,

(6) erosion of trees,

(7) sound pollution,

(8) indiscriminate tree felling, and

(9) plight of the pedestrians.

Culture and Civilization:

There are two conflicting views about the growth and accumulation pattern
of culture. One theory maintains that in any community culture grows quite
independently of similar events happening elsewhere or predominantly
with reference to local needs and local situation. The other group believes
that culture grows by diffusion. A single invention or discovery is made at
one place and ultimately this cultural trait diffuses throughout the world.
Sir G.E. Smith was the most ardent advocate of the diffusion theory.

In one of his papers, “The Disposal of Human Placenta”, published in 1937,

Ghurye examines the practices of human beings with regard to the disposal
of discard of human body like first out hair, nail pairing, first fallen teeth
and the after birth. The purpose of this paper is, as he says, to compare the
methods of disposal of the human placenta in the different regions of the
world to see if they shed any light on the problem of diffusion of culture.

Culture diffusion is essentially an anthropological theory, which is

concerned with the nature of culture contact operating principally among
the preliminary people. According to Ghurye, culture constitutes the central
or core element for understanding society and its evolution. In fact, culture
is a totality involving the entire heritage of mankind. Ghurye’s abiding
interest was to analyse the course of cultural evolution and the nature of
heritage which mankind has denied from the past.

Culture relates to the realm of values. It is a matter of individual attainment

of excellence and creativity. Ghurye had a strong faith in the power of man
to preserve the best of his old culture, while creating from his own spirit of
new culture. He was more concerned with the process of evolution of Hindu
civilization, which has been termed as a ‘complex civilization’.

And, Ghurye thought that for analyzing the dynamics of culture in such a
long historical civilization. In this context, the process of acculturation is
more relevant than the process of diffusion. He thinks that the challenging
task of a sociologist is to analyse this complex acculturation process in
India.

According to him, India has been the home of many ethnic stocks and
cultures from pre-historic times. In his analysis of caste, Ghurye refers to
how caste system was developed by the Brahmins and how it spread to
other sections of the population. The operation of the process of
Hinduization also provides the general backdrop of his analysis of the trial
phenomenon.

Ghurye was promoted by the belief that there is a “common heritage of

modern civilization” and that civilization is a “collective endeavour of
humanity”. He holds that behind the rise and fall of civilization, there has
occurred a steady growth of culture. Cutting across the vicissitudes of
civilization growth, there are certain values, which have been established as
final. These values have been termed by Ghurye as the ‘foundations of
culture’.
He delineates five such values or foundations of culture. These
are:
1. Religious consciousness

2. Conscience

3. Justice

4. Free pursuit of knowledge and free expression

5. Toleration

According to Ghurye, “civilization is the sum total of social heritage

projected on the social plane”. It is also an attribute of the society. Different
societies can be differentiated with reference to their civilizational
attainment.

Ghurye makes four general conclusions with regard to the

nature of civilization:
i. Firstly, as yet, there has been no society, which has been either
completely civilized or very highly civilized.

ii. Secondly, Ghurye believes in the law of continuous progress.

iii. Thirdly, gradation of civilization is also correlated with the distribution

of values. In a high civilization, the humanitarian and cultural values will be
accepted by a wide cross-section of population.

iv. Fourthly, every civilization, high or low, possesses some distinctive

qualities.
Sociology of Religion:
Religion is fundamental to man. Man becomes conscious of some power
beyond his comprehension almost at the dawn of civilization. This field has
drawn the attention of sociologists like Weber (The Protestant Ethic and
Spirit of Capitalism, 1930) and Durkheim (The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life, 1915).

Ghurye thinks that religion is at the centre of the total cultural heritage of
man. He gives the five foundations of culture as mentioned earlier in the
description of culture and civilization, out of which ‘religious consciousness’
is most important. It moulds and directs the behaviour of man in society.

Ghurye made original contribution to the study of Indian religious beliefs

and practices. He wrote six books to bring out the role of religion in society.
These are: Indian Sadhus (1953), Gods and Men (1962), Religious
Consciousness (1965), Indian Accumulation (1977), Vedic India (1979), and
The Legacy of Ramayana (1979).

All these works reflect Ghurye’s interest related to the sociology of religion.
For example, in Gods and Men, Ghurye discusses the nature of the Hindu
ideas of Godhead and the relations, if any, between the climate of an age
and the type of Godhead favoured.

In Religious Consciousness, Ghurye analyses the three oldest human

civilizations, viz., the Mesopotamian, the Egyptian and the Hindu, in their
various aspects of mythological beliefs, speculation, cosmology, life after
death, view of Godhead, temple architecture, etc. And, in the Indian
Sadhus, Ghurye considers the genesis, development and organization of
asceticism in Hindu religion and the role ascetics have played in the
maintenance of Hindu society.
Indian Sadhus:
Indian Sadhus (1953 and 1964) is an excellent sociography of the various
sects and religious centres established by the great Vedantic philosopher
Sankaracharya and other notable religious figures. In this work, Ghurye
highlights the paradoxical nature of renunciation in India. A sadhu or
sannyasin is supposed to be detached from all castes, norms and social
conventions, etc.

He is outside the pale of society. Yet strikingly enough, since the time of
Sankaracharya, the Hindu society has more or less been guided by the
sadhus. These sadhus were not the lonely hermits. Most of them belonged
to monastic orders, which have distinctive traditions.

The monastic organization in India was a product of Hinduism and

Buddhism. The rise of Buddhism and Jainism marked the decline of
individual ascetics like Viswamitra. Indian sadhus have acted as the
arbiters of religious disputes, patronized learning of scriptures and the
sacred lore and even defended religion against external attacks.

National Unity and Integration:

Ghurye had interest in contemporary Indian situations. As a sociologist, he
had been extremely concerned with the concept of integration, the process
of national unity in India, and the contemporary challenges to the situation.
This concern became apparent even at the time he wrote Caste and Race in
India in 1932 and The Aborigines-so-called-and their Future in 1943.

However, this concern with the present ‘disturbing trends’ in Indian society
has come back in a big way in the later writings of Ghurye (Pramanick,
1994). There are three books of Ghurye, known as his ‘triology’ in this field,
which are relevant in this connection.
These are Social Tensions in India (1968), Whither India (1974) and India
Recreates Democracy (1978). In these books he has developed a theoretical
framework to explain unity at the social or cultural level. Ghurye holds that
though groups play an integrational role in society, this is true only up to a
certain extent.

In modern society, there are five sources of danger for national

unity coming as they do form a sense of excessive attachment
with groups:
(1) The Scheduled Castes

(2) The Scheduled Tribes

(3) The Backward Classes

(4) The Muslims as religious minority groups

(5) The linguistic minorities

As we know, the main focus of Ghurye’s writings is on culture. He thinks

that it is largely as a result of Brahminical endeavour that cultural unity in
India has been built up. All the major institutions of Hindu society
originated among the Brahmins and gradually they were accepted by other
sections of the community.

Though Ghurye calls it process of acculturation, it was basically a one-way

flow, in which the Brahminical ideas and institutions infiltrated among the
non-Brahmins. It is the background of such an approach that Ghurye
analyses the problems and prospects of Indian unity in contemporary
India.
Ghurye’s concept of cultural unity is new one and is not secular in
orientation. He is concerned with India of ‘Hindu culture’ and uses the
terms ‘Indian culture’ and ‘Hindu culture’ synonymously. He is concerned
with India, he says provided an excellent normative base for maintaining
social and political unity in the country. Hinduism had brought within its
fold widely different groups in India.

The various sects of Hinduism constitute vast mosaic holding together

millions of people in different parts of India. First, he analysed the
normative structure of Hinduism, and the teaching of sacred religious texts
such as the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Brahmins etc., to show how
they provide the common cultural foundation. Second, the role of such
great Hindu thinkers as Panini, Patanjali, Tulsidas etc. has also been
discussed by Ghurye.

He blames the political leaders for this, because they followed a course of
action, which was more or less exactly the one which should have been
avoided but the foundation for this national cultural unity had been built
and maintained by the Hindus for one hundred years. According to Ghurye,
society is not just an aggregation of isolated individuals but that group life,
which provides the bridge between the individual and society.

An individual acquires social attributes and is socializes through groups.

This is the integrative function of groups in society. When groups perform
the function efficiently, integration is achieved. Tensions in the process of
this integration in India arise today because the various groups of people
have failed to transient their narrow group loyalties. Religious and
linguistic minorities are the most potential source of danger to the unity in
modern India. Religion and linguistic groups are the prime areas which
came disintegration to India’s cohesion.
Ghurye gives great importance to the role of language in the process of
nation-building in India. Even, in case of tribes, tribal life and culture can
be improved only when the pickup developed language of a neighbouring
community. Ghurye holds the view that the regional language has a
symbolic integrational value of the region. The regional languages ensure
the unity of territory at the local level and all efforts should be made to
improve.

Discourse:
During his creative period of writing, Indian sociology was engaged in the
debate on tradition and modernity. Ghurye neither entered into this
controversy, nor he took up the issue of the role of tradition in Indian
society. He further stressed that Indian traditions are actually Hindu
traditions. One must know the Hindu traditions to understand Indian
society.

In fact, Ghurye created a special kind of Hindu sociology. The traditions of

India are only Hindu traditions. He did not define traditions. He also did
not discuss the impact of modernity. His main concern was the core of
Hindu society. In this sense, the traditions of Indian society have its roots
in scriptures, which is a very narrow vision about Indian society.

It has been argued that the most of Ghurye’s works are based on textual and
scriptural data. The choice of scripture and the way of writing may have
bias towards one section of society to another. Ghurye further fails to
recognize that qualitative change has occurred in modern India. Past is
important for present.

The question is that how much of the past is useful. Some argue that
Ghurye did not have this realization as his knowledge of the India’s past,
instead of helping him, stood in his way of analysis. However, Ghurye was
not only concerned with the past evolution of Indian society but also with
its present tensions and problems.

The task of sociologists, according to him, is to explore the social history of

past. He says, one cannot understand the present without the reference of
the past. Ghurye introduced a down-to-earth empiricism in Indian
sociology and social anthropology. He was an ethnographer, who studied
tribes and castes of India, using historical and Indological data. His
knowledge of Sanskrit enabled him to study the religious scriptures in the
context of Indian society.

Conclusion:
The sweep of Ghurye’s works and the wide range of his intellectual interests
have had a profound influence on the development of the twin disciplines
(sociology and social anthropology) in India. Like a discreet butterfly,
Ghurye moved from one theme to another with equal interest, erudition
and ability.

He showed India to an inexhaustible mind where sociologists and social

anthropologists could conduct endless explorations. He indicated
innumerable but unexplored dimensions of Indian society, culture and
social institutions, which would occupy social analysis for decades if they
had both the desire and the ability to know.

Ghurye’s basic discipline may be regarded as social anthropology, since his

PhD was under W.H.R. Rivers at Cambridge (UK). The range of Ghurye’s
scholarly interests and research is astounding. Exploration of diverse
aspects of Indian culture and society through the use of Indological sources
permeated Ghurye’s otherwise shifting intellectual concerns and empirical
research pursuits. His erudition and versatility, therefore, are substantiated
by the wide range of his research from Sanskrit text, through interpretation
of Indian culture and society.

This rare spirit of inquiry and commitment to advancing the frontiers of

knowledge was one of Ghurye’s precious gifts to Indian sociology and social
anthropology. His diversified interests are also reflected in the great variety
of works of his research students produced on themes ranging from family,
kinship structures, marriage, religious sects, ethnic groups, castes and
aboriginals, their customs and institutions, to social differentiation and
stratification, caste and class, education and society, the Indian nationalist
movement, social structure and social change in specific villages or
religions of India, and also urbanization, industrialization and related social
problems in India.

The range of Ghurye’s interests is encyclopaedic. His abiding interest is in

the course of world civilization in general and in Hindu civilization in
particular. He has analysed various aspects like the origin and evolution of
caste, the evolution of Indo-Aryan family structures and its connections
with the Indo-European family structure, and specific institutions like gotra
etc. Analysis of the diverse aspects of the evolution of Indian social history
and culture thus constitutes the major preoccupation of Ghurye.