Caste And Race Of India By G. Ghurye Essay

Sociology as a discipline in India and, its study of the phenomenon of caste has witnessed huge methodological variations as well as an abundance of theoretical and explanatory accounts since its inception in Bombay University in 1914. In pre-independence India, in the 1930s and 1940s, owing to the influence of the colonialists and orientalists, the sociology of caste functioned primarily within the boundaries of Indian philosophy, Indology, surveys, and history-writing. Sociologist G.S Ghurye had played a crucial role in the shaping of sociology as a discipline in India resorted to such ideas in his approach to caste while relying on empirical, contextual data at the same time. Post-1947, in the 1950s and 1960s, with the spreading of the subject

Caste here becomes a product of culture, a changing phenomenon of sociological interest appropriate to be studied by a diffusionist historian, not an indologist which later Ghurye himself shifted focus from the initial approach of the British anthropologists to a more indological attitude later. He depicted caste as both a social reality through empirical evidence as well as Indologically, through textual sources such as the Vedas, epics, regional literature etc. He was an armchair theorist but he also encouraged empirical research. For the latter, he conducted surveys and other research including data collection. He combines anthropology and sociology in analyzing the caste system. The origin of caste as proposed by Ghurye was that it had come to India with the Aryans in the Vedic period. The Aryans differentiated themselves from non-Aryan groups in terms of colour initially, and with time ethnic alliances solidified. Ghurye explains that caste was not a hierarchical exploitative system but a system that promoted disciplined life, occupation, and division of labour. There were six major features of caste that were practiced in India, according to