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Indian Express
17-05-2025
- General
- Indian Express
A new biography of anthropologist Irawati Karve examines the historical forces that shaped her work
By Srija Naskar Irawati Karve lived a life that defied conventions at every turn. She was born in Myanmar, raised in a foster home in Pune known to espouse atheism, and eventually married into a family of social reformers. Today known as India's first female anthropologist, Karve was able to navigate multiple social identities with both intellect and a certain degree of panache, challenging rigid hierarchies along the way. This complexity of a woman and anthropologist in a turbulent historical era is the subject of a recent biography, Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve, by Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa. Biographies haven't seen much experimentation because their very structure is bracketed with a cradle on one end and a grave on the other. But with the incorporation of history into this field, a newer possibility can be imagined. That is what Deshpande and Barbosa have achieved. By placing Karve within a particular historical context, the authors have enriched our understanding of the kind of person she was and also the historical forces that shaped her. Quite early, we are thrust into the chaos and creativity that marked the Weimar years, when Karve stepped into Berlin for her doctoral studies. Berlin was a city of contradictions. It was a city of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, of Josephine Baker's electrifying dances and of Magnus Hirschfeld's groundbreaking work on gender identity. But it was also a city reeling from war, its streets flooded with wounded beggars, Nazism on the rise. How does one transport the reader of a biography into a time long lost? If we were to go back to the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s to meet Karve, what would we see? Deshpande and Barbosa detail not just a city being pulled into multiple directions but also an intellectual milieu where differing ideas were thrashed out, argued, repudiated and accepted. For example, Karve's mentor was the anthropologist Eugen Fischer, a man whose theories would later become cornerstones of Nazi ideology. The book tells us how Karve's beliefs and her scientific work clashed with that of Fischer's. So much so that Karve's own doctoral work would actually repudiate Fischer, proving that the contemporary practice of determining racial superiority through skull measurements was nothing but bunkum. The India that Karve returned to was also hierarchical, where caste discrimination held sway. By interrogating the idea of caste mobility through a study of the nomadic Nandiwala tribes in Maharashtra and Gujarat, for instance, or that of the Mahars, Karve showed how focusing on the lived realities of marginalised communities could throw insights into the problem of social stratification. Karve's approach to Hinduism was similarly unorthodox: she dissected its rigid hierarchies and gendered injustices. In Yuganta, for instance, her seminal critique of the Mahabharata, she exposes the moral hypocrisy of Yudhishthira, whose obsession with truth, she argues, comes at the cost of Draupadi's suffering. For Karve, Hinduism was not a static dogma but an evolving tradition, shaped by centuries of exchange and contradiction. Like the discipline she helped redefine, Karve resists easy categorisation. She was at once a rigorous scientist and a literary humanist, a traditionalist by birth and a radical by choice. Deshpande and Barbosa's biography captures this complexity, drawing on family archives, scholarly works and the voices of those who knew her. The result is a portrait of a woman who was always in motion — questioning, adapting and reimagining the world around her. In an era that demanded conformity, Irawati Karve remained gloriously, relentlessly uncontainable. The writer is assistant professor, Department of English, MIT ADT University, Pune
Time of India
05-05-2025
- General
- Time of India
How India's first female sociologist-anthropologist, named after a river, carved her own course defying Nazis, caste and conventions
Before feminism had a name, Irawati Karve was already living it—riding scooters, dissecting skulls, and defying Nazis with science. From Pune to Berlin, she challenged racist theories and caste taboos with quiet brilliance. A pioneering anthropologist, her legacy bridges logic, empathy, and rebellion. Her story, long forgotten, finally re-emerges as a blueprint for intellectual courage. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Not Just a PhD—A War Against Pseudoscience Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads A Scholar of Bones and Boundaries Not Your Textbook Feminist. But the Feminist Your Textbook Forgot. A Legacy That Hums Beneath the Surface In the early 1900s, when most Indian girls were being prepared for domesticity, one young girl was quietly preparing to defy history. Born in colonial Burma and named after the mighty Irrawaddy River, Irawati Karve didn't just meander through the social currents of her time—she surged through them. Raised in a comfortable Brahmin household, she was sent to a girls' boarding school in Pune at the tender age of seven, where her life took a turn no one could have she encountered the Paranjpye family—liberal, learned, and luminous in their support for women's education. Taken in almost as one of their own, young Irawati was fed not just warm meals but fierce ideas—of liberty, logic, and learning. The girl who should have been married off early instead chose books, questions, and a 1928, she did the unthinkable: set sail for Berlin to pursue a doctorate in anthropology . While much of India was still under colonial rule and Indian women were expected to keep their heads bowed and voices low, Karve crossed continents, cultures, and conservative expectations. She entered the hallowed yet haunted halls of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, under the mentorship of Eugen Fischer—a man whose racial theories would later become ideological fuel for Nazi Karve wasn't there to echo prejudice. She was there to question wanted her to prove that skull shape determined intelligence, that white Europeans were inherently superior. Instead, Karve sifted through 149 skulls, dissected assumptions, and dismantled the very thesis she was sent to uphold. With quiet rebellion and meticulous data, she declared: intellect isn't shaped by race; it is driven by the human reward? The lowest passing grade. But Karve had already won something far more lasting: scientific integrity Back in India, Karve didn't rest. She rode scooters, wore swimsuits, and taught sociology while cradling babies and clipboards. She trekked through India's remotest villages, studying tribal cultures, mapping human migration patterns, and even sleeping on barn floors just to observe life at its most bit into half-cooked meat offered by tribal elders to show respect—an act unthinkable for a woman from her Brahmin background. But for Karve, anthropology wasn't a job. It was a mission to connect, understand, and tell stories that had been ignored for excavating ancient bones or collecting folk songs, she wasn't just cataloguing human life—she was honouring career bloomed quietly but profoundly. She led departments, wrote extensively, translated feminist poetry, and even ventured into genetics and serology. She wasn't just an academic; she was a one-woman movement. Her groundbreaking writings on caste and culture are now part of Indian curricula, yet her name still flickers in the footnotes of challenged the sacred and the scientific, questioned temple rituals while quoting Hindu philosophy, while occasionally visiting shrines with her atheist husband —more for tradition than belief. Her life was a gentle refusal to be boxed she died in 1970, Karve left behind more than scholarly papers—she left behind a blueprint for intellectual courage. Her story, long overlooked, is being unearthed again through Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve, co-authored by her granddaughter Urmilla Deshpande and academic Thiago Pinto Barbosa. The book paints a vivid portrait of a woman who wove logic and empathy into every decision, and whose boldness paved roads that others now walk without knowing who carved them a world still struggling to balance identity, equality, and truth, Karve's life reads less like a biography and more like a prophecy. She was a data-driven disrupter before the term existed. A quiet rebel who argued with skulls and sided with justice. A woman who lived like a storm—and left behind a whisper that still stirs the air.
