Govind Sadashiv Ghurye was born on 12 December 1893 in a Brahmin Malavan family. He went to Cambridge to study anthropology and sociology. He had keen interest in study of Indian society and he used indological texts to work on caste and race in India, an interest that continued throughout his life. After his return from Cambridge, he became the first Reader of the Department of Sociology in Bombay (1924).After a decade, he became its professor. After retirement he continued to conduct extensive researches for a very long period. He worked on classical texts, the study of comparative religion, survey methods, and problems of urban women, bureaucracy, political processes and elites. His work has led to development of both anthropology and sociology.
His own study of caste and race in India provides significant information of caste system, along with its origin, features, function and development with reference to political, economic and social change in India. His work Caste and Race in India (1932) became a basic text in this respect. By 1939, Verrier Elwin suggested that the tribes should be left alone and they should be allowed to develop in isolation, away from the mainstream. On the other hand, G. S. Ghurye had not even wished to enumerate the tribals separately in the census operations, thus enforcing his contrary idea that the tribals should be completely assimilated by the Hindus as a part of the mainstream. His work The Aborigines – ‘so called’ and Their Future (1943) explained problems of the aboriginal tribes of India in a truly anthropological perspective.
Ghurye helped in the emergence of Sociology as a separate discipline in India. His sociological work emphasized about the existence of overall cultural unity in the Indian population as a result of acculturation with the advent of Vedic Aryans. He established the Indian Sociological Society in 1952 and started its journal Sociological Bulletin. He died at age of 90, on 28 December 1984.
His work was multi-disciplinary in nature and he has made significant contribution to both anthropology and sociology. His contribution to field of Social anthropology could be categorized as:
Views about Indian society and culture
Ghurye attempted a synthesis of Indological and sociological perspectives. He believed that culture was central and main element of society and its evolution. He suggested five ‘foundations of culture’. These are religious consciousness, conscience, justice, tolerance and free pursuit of knowledge. He believed in the existence of an overall cultural unity of the Indian population, mainly Hindu population. He believed that this cultural unity was result of acculturation introduced with the arrival of Vedic Aryans.
Views about Caste and kinship system in India
His work, Caste and Race in India (1932), depicted a comprehensive picture of castes, along with its origin, function and development and so on. He believed caste in India is a Brahmanic child of Indo-Aryan culture, cradled in land of Ganges valley. He never supported caste system and thought that it would weaken in urban environment through the impact of formal education. He emphasized that, in past, kinship and caste in India played an integrative role. The integration of different racial and ethnic groups through kin and caste networks helped the Indian society to evolve.
Views about Tribal population
Ghurye observed that certain anthropologists and British officials supported the isolation policy for the tribal people. He was an assimilationist and wanted to include the tribals of India into the ‘mainstream’ of Indian culture. Ghurye contested the ideas of these anthropologist, who thought that tribals, unlike Hindus, were animists and their contact with the Hindus had been dangerous for the culture and economy of the tribals. He viewed that British Administration had created problems in the administration of the tribes. He even emphasized that the British policy of revenue and Justice and even forest policy created hardship for the tribal people.
His work The Aborigines – ‘so called’ and Their Future (1943) explained the problems of the aboriginal tribes of India in a truly anthropological manner. He was of the opinion that these tribes should neither be called ‘adivasis’ nor ‘aborigines’. They should not be a separate category but should be merged with castes and should be treated as backward classes. He believed that tribes followed Hindu social order for economic motivation and catholicity of caste system to the tribal beliefs and rituals