Breaking down the question
The command word is critically examine. This is not an invitation merely to describe Ghurye's method — it asks for exposition followed by evaluation. A complete answer must first establish what the Indological approach is and how G. S. Ghurye practised it, and then weigh its strengths against its limitations.
The phrase understanding of Indian society signals the scope. Ghurye is being assessed as the scholar who tried to read Indian society from within its own civilisational categories — caste, kinship, religion, tribe — largely through classical texts. The examiner wants you to show why this was a pioneering move for a colonised discipline, and equally where the textual gaze falls short.
A high-scoring script therefore has a clear architecture: define the approach, illustrate it through Ghurye's substantive studies, and reserve a substantial closing section for critique. For a fuller treatment of the thinker, see the note on Indology and Ghurye.
How to approach it
Begin by locating Ghurye historically — often called the father of Indian sociology, he built the Bombay school and turned Indology into a working sociological method. State plainly what the Indological approach involves: reading society through its sacred and legal texts, treating India as a continuous civilisation with an underlying cultural unity.
Then demonstrate the method in action across his major themes: caste, tribe, kinship and gotra, religion and sadhus, and the cultural integration of the subcontinent. Do not simply catalogue — show how texts served as his primary evidence.
Devote the final third to critical assessment. Contrast the book-view with the field-view, note the charge of Hindu and Brahminical bias, and acknowledge the counter-evidence of his empirical range. Close with a balanced verdict rather than a one-sided dismissal.
Model answer
G. S. Ghurye, widely regarded as the founder of institutional sociology in India, drew the classical tradition of Indology into professional sociology. The Indological approach rests on a distinctive premise — that Indian society is best understood not by imported comparative yardsticks but through its own textual and civilisational categories. Its sources are the Vedas, the Dharmashastras, the epics and the Manusmriti; its method is essentially interpretive, reconstructing the ideals and institutions of Hindu society from the written word. Underlying it all is a conviction of the cultural unity and continuity of an ancient civilisation.
Ghurye's substantive work shows the method at work. On caste, his classic study identified enduring features — segmental division, hierarchy, restrictions on commensality and social interaction, civil and religious disabilities, hereditary occupation, and restrictions on marriage. He traced these through Brahminical texts while also examining caste's links with race and its modern political expression, revealing a scholar who read the past to explain the present.
On tribes, Ghurye advanced his celebrated thesis that India's tribes were best understood as backward Hindus — communities already drawn, through long assimilation, into the caste-ordered Hindu fold. This placed him against the isolationist position of Verrier Elwin and framed the enduring debate on the tribe-caste continuum.
On kinship and religion, he studied the family, the gotra system, sadhus, sex in Hindu society, and Indian costume, using historical and textual materials to trace the cultural threads binding a diverse subcontinent into one whole. His method was strengthened by a diffusionist sensibility, tracking the spread of cultural traits across regions.
The strengths of this approach are considerable. It gave a colonised discipline an indigenous voice, resisting the tendency to read India solely through European theory. It captured a genuine sense of civilisational depth and cultural coherence, and it institutionalised sociology through the Bombay department, the Indian Sociological Society and its journal.
Yet the approach invites serious criticism. Its central weakness is that of any book-view — texts describe ideals, not lived practice. The Dharmashastras prescribe how society ought to work; they do not record how villages actually functioned. M. N. Srinivas's field-view, built on participant observation, was in part a corrective to this textual bias. Critics further charge Ghurye with a Hindu and Brahminical orientation, privileging Sanskritic sources and underplaying the experience of lower castes, women, Muslims and regional traditions. His reading of tribes as backward Hindus has been contested as denying tribal distinctiveness and cultural autonomy. Finally, the diffusionist and civilisational framing can slide into a somewhat static, integrationist picture that understates conflict and change.
On balance, Ghurye's Indological approach was a foundational rather than a final word. Its enduring merit lies in insisting that Indian society be understood on its own civilisational terms; its limitation lies in mistaking the normative text for social reality. Later scholarship — Srinivas's fieldwork and Louis Dumont's structuralist Indology — built upon and moved beyond it, which is itself testimony to its formative influence.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners look first for a candidate who genuinely understands what Indological means — the reliance on classical texts and the civilisational premise — rather than one who merely lists Ghurye's books. Anchoring the discussion in specific studies, especially the features of caste and the backward Hindus thesis, signals first-hand familiarity.
The word critically is where marks are won or lost. Weak scripts describe the method and stop; strong scripts stage a genuine evaluation, deploying the book-view versus field-view contrast and the charge of Brahminical bias, while fairly crediting Ghurye's empirical range and institution-building. The best answers reach a measured verdict — foundational but limited — and locate him within a lineage running to Srinivas and Dumont. That balance of exposition, critique and placement lifts the answer into the top band.