Breaking down the question
The statement asks you to discuss the claim that the textual perspective is important for understanding the Indian social system. The verb invites a balanced argument — establish the value of the approach, but also weigh its limits, rather than merely praising it.
The key term is textual perspective, also called the Indological or book-view approach. It reconstructs society from classical written sources — the Vedas, Dharmashastras, epics and the Manusmriti — treating scripture and law-books as the code of social life. The word important signals an evaluative demand: how far does the text explain the lived system?
How to approach it
Open by defining the textual perspective and locating it within Indological sociology. Then build the case for its importance across two or three clear grounds — access to civilisational values, the historical depth it gives, and its grasp of the normative order of caste and ashrama. Follow with a fair critique, and close with a synthesis that positions the text-view alongside the field-view rather than against it.
Model answer
The textual perspective approaches Indian society through its classical literature, reading the Vedas, Dharmashastras, epics, Arthashastra and Manusmriti as a repository of the ideals and institutions that ordered social life. Pioneered in sociology by G. S. Ghurye and later refined by Louis Dumont, it treats the sacred and legal text as a key to the deep structure of Indian civilisation.
Its importance rests on several grounds. First, Indian society is unusually scripturally self-conscious — concepts such as dharma, varna, ashrama, karma and purushartha are not merely academic categories but living organising principles drawn directly from these texts. To ignore them is to miss the moral grammar of the system.
Second, the textual view supplies historical and civilisational depth. It reveals the continuity of institutions across millennia and helps explain the cultural unity that binds a diverse subcontinent — a unity Ghurye traced through kinship, gotra and pilgrimage. Third, it captures the normative order — how society was meant to work — which remains indispensable for interpreting caste hierarchy, purity and pollution, as Dumont showed in Homo Hierarchicus.
Yet the approach has real limits. Texts describe ideals, not practice; they privilege a Brahminical, upper-caste, male standpoint and silence the voices of women, Dalits and tribes. They cannot capture regional variation or social change. This is the celebrated book-view versus field-view debate — M. N. Srinivas argued that direct observation of the village revealed processes such as Sanskritisation and dominant caste that no scripture records.
The reasonable conclusion is that the textual perspective is important but not sufficient. It illuminates the normative and civilisational dimensions of the Indian social system, and remains foundational; but it must be complemented by fieldwork to grasp the system as actually lived. For fuller treatment, see the note on Indology and Ghurye.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners look for a candidate who discusses rather than describes — building the case for the text-view and then testing it. The strongest scripts name specific texts and concepts, cite Ghurye and Dumont for the affirmative, and use Srinivas and the book-view versus field-view distinction for the critique. A balanced conclusion that treats text and field as complementary, not rival, signals maturity and lifts the answer into the top band.