Breaking down the question
The question carries two distinct but connected demands. The first is comparative — differentiate between the Western and the Indological perspectives on Indian society. This asks for a contrast of standpoints: who observes, from what vantage, using what sources and assumptions. The second demand is expository — bring out the major aspects of G. S. Ghurye's contribution to the Indological approach, treating him as the exemplar who domesticated Indology within sociology.
The word differentiate rewards a structured contrast rather than two separate descriptions. A strong script sets the Western outsider's gaze against the Indological insider's textual reconstruction, then shows Ghurye building a distinctively Indian sociology on that foundation while quietly moving beyond it.
For fuller treatment, draw on the note on Indology and Ghurye.
How to approach it
Open by locating both perspectives as early responses to the question — how should Indian society be studied? Characterise the Western perspective through its colonial, administrative and comparative origins, and the Indological through its reliance on classical texts and civilisational continuity.
Then organise the contrast along clear axes: sources, standpoint, method, and image of society. Devote the second half to Ghurye — his textual method, his work on caste, race, kinship, tribes and religion, and his role in institutionalising the discipline. Close by assessing the enduring value and the limits of the Indological gaze.
Model answer
The study of Indian society began with two competing vantage points. The Western perspective grew from the colonial encounter. Administrators, missionaries and orientalist scholars sought to know India in order to govern, convert or compare it. Its assumptions were often evolutionary and comparative — India measured against a European yardstick and frequently found wanting, cast as static, spiritual or despotic. Its sources were surveys, censuses, gazetteers and, later, the comparative sociology of Weber and Marx. The standpoint was that of the outsider looking in.
The Indological perspective, by contrast, read Indian society from within its own classical civilisation. It drew on textual sources — the Vedas, the Dharmashastras, the epics and the Manusmriti — to reconstruct the ideals and institutions of Hindu society. Where the Western view was comparative and often critical, the Indological view was interpretive and appreciative, emphasising the cultural unity and continuity of an ancient civilisation. Its method was essentially a book-view — society understood through its sacred and legal texts rather than through direct observation of villages.
The two therefore differ along several axes. In sources, the Western relies on empirical and administrative data, the Indological on scriptural and literary texts. In standpoint, one is the outsider's comparative gaze, the other the insider's civilisational self-understanding. In image of society, the Western tends to see rigidity and stagnation, the Indological a coherent, value-integrated order. In method, the Western moves towards fieldwork and comparison, the Indological towards textual exegesis.
G. S. Ghurye, often called the father of Indian sociology, drew the Indological approach into professional sociology and gave it institutional form through the Bombay school. His contribution has several major aspects.
First, on caste, his classic study identified enduring features — segmental division, hierarchy, restrictions on interaction and commensality, civil and religious disabilities, hereditary occupation and restrictions on marriage. He traced caste through Brahminical texts, treating it as central to Hindu social organisation, while also examining its links with race and its modern political mobilisation.
Second, on tribes, Ghurye advanced his celebrated thesis that India's tribes were best understood as backward Hindus — already partly absorbed into the caste-based Hindu fold through a long process of assimilation. This placed him against the isolationist position and framed the enduring debate on the tribe-caste continuum.
Third, on kinship and religion, he studied family, the gotra system, sadhus and Indian costume, using textual and historical materials to trace the cultural threads binding a diverse subcontinent into one civilisation.
Fourth, and institutionally, Ghurye built the discipline — heading the Bombay department, founding the Indian Sociological Society and its journal, and training a generation of scholars. His method was primarily textual and comparative, an Indology harnessed to sociology, though he did not wholly ignore observation.
Ghurye thus exemplifies the Indological approach at its most ambitious. Its strength is a deep sense of civilisational continuity and cultural unity; its limitation, shared with all book-views, is that texts describe ideals rather than lived practice — a gap that M. N. Srinivas's field-view and Louis Dumont's structuralist Indology would later address in different ways.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward candidates who treat differentiate as an instruction to build a genuine contrast, ideally along named axes — sources, standpoint, method, image of society — rather than describing the two perspectives in isolation. A crisp statement of the book-view versus field-view distinction signals conceptual command.
On Ghurye, the marks lie in specificity. Listing his features of caste, stating the backward Hindus thesis on tribes, and noting his institution-building show first-hand familiarity rather than vague praise. The strongest scripts also add a critical note — that the textual method captures ideology more than practice — and locate Ghurye within a lineage running to Srinivas and Dumont. That combination of contrast, detail and evaluation lifts a 20-mark answer into the top band.