Kerala Sociologist 2019, Vol. 47(1) 13 @Kerala Sociological Society Study of Indian Society and Culture: Methods and Perspectives Biswajit Ghosh The University of Burdwan Abstract The journey of ‘Sociology of India’ that began with ‘colonial Anthropology’ or ‘colonisation’ of the non-Western mind, prepared the ground for our pioneers, some of whom were involved in the nationalist struggle against the British, to rely on a textual view for offering alternative explanations about its society and culture. The effort to revive and energize traditional culture and establish Indian sociology in its own footing quite different from that of Western or colonial categories led to the popularity of Indological approach. But Indological approach itself did not give rise to any uniform and common explanation about Indian society and culture. The religious texts of different ages that Indologists very often studied not only emanated the idea of a ‘Hindu India’; they also proposed contrasting and conflicting visions of time, space and object. The whole discourse of Indology is eventually interrupted by theories on post-colonialism and Orientalism. As a corollary, the need for supplementing those with field view was also felt by some of our pioneers. Gradually, Indian sociologists have started critically responding to the challenges of studying Indian society using diverse perspectives, approaches, and paradigms. This paper tries to reflect on the criticality of these issues in the context of demand for contextualising Indian sociology by avoiding any ‘methodological fundamentalism’. Keywords: Sociology of India, Indology, Ethnography, Comparative Method, Triangulation Corresponding Author: Biswajit Ghosh, Professor, department of Sociology, The University of Burdwan, Wrst Bengal, bghoshbu@gmail.com.