Contribution of G.S. Ghurve to the Study of Sociology in India

Professor G. S. Ghurye (1893-1983) is justifiably considered the doyen of Indian Sociology. Ghurye's contribution to the development of sociology and anthropology in India is enormous and multi-faceted. A prolific writer, Ghurye wrote 32 books and scores of papers, which cover such wide-ranging themes as kinship and marriage, urbanization, ascetic traditions, tribal life, demography, architecture and literature Ghurye played a key role in the professionalisation of sociology by founding the Indian Sociological Society and its journal Sociological Bulletin. In addition, he encouraged and trained a large number of talented students who, in turn, advanced the frontiers of sociological and anthropological research in the country. With his own voluminous output and through the researches of his able students Ghurye embarked on an ambitious project of mapping out the ethnographic landscape of India.G.S. Ghurye can be considered the founder of institutionalised sociology in India. He headed India’s very first post-graduate teaching department of Sociology at Bombay University for thirty-five years. He guided a large number of research scholars, many of whom went on to occupy prominent positions in the discipline. He also founded the Indian Sociological Society as well as its journal Sociological Bulletin . His academic writings were not only prolific, but very wide-ranging in the subjects they covered. At a time when financial and institutional support for university research was very limited, Ghurye managed to nurture sociology as an increasingly Indian discipline Ghurye’s Bombay University department was the first to successfully implement two of the features which were later enthusiastically endorsed by his successors in the discipline. These were the active combining of teaching and research within the same institution, and the merger of social anthropology and sociology into a composite discipline Best known,