Ketkar was born into a Marathi Hindu family in Raipur, Madhya Pradesh, and was educated in Wilson College, Bombay.

[2] His doctoral thesis was later published as The History of Caste in India (volume 1), which determines the date of Manusmriti and comments on the nature of caste-relations in that period.

He later wrote a sequel to this work, titled An Essay on Hinduism, which discusses, inter alia, the genesis of the caste system in India.

In 1914, he published two more treatises, namely An Essay on Indian Economics, and Hindu Law and the Methods and Principles of the Historical Study Thereof.

They evince little interest in conventional character development; on the other hand, they contain much information about various tribes and societies, coupled with several strikingly blunt ideas about sociological reform.