After early education at Highbury School, he attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature under F. R. Leavis.
It was at this time that he began to translate the works of Emile Durkheim and he also conducted fieldwork in Gujarat, as well as among the Indian diaspora in East Africa and London.
Sussex provided a more relaxed social environment and was at the time a centre of challenging intellectual ideas.
[3] While there, he was influential in the foundation of the School of African and Asian Studies and also in rescuing the archives of Mass Observation.
In particular, The Guardian notes, "... forgoing his long and intense association with Roman Catholicism, he looked to a deeper involvement in the mystery of human consciousness through his investigations of Buddhism".