11. Irawati Karve (1905 – 1970)

 

Irawati Karve was India's first woman anthropologist. That was the time when anthropology and social science started working together. She was an expert in Indology who analysed Indian history and Indian culture as part of Asian culture. Her other fields of study were fossil studies, palaeontology, and anthropometry. She was an early advocate for women's education. Karve's contributions were far ahead of the time in which she lived.

 

Irawati Karve was born on 15 December 1905 in Maharashtra to a rich Brahmin family. She was named after a river in Burma, the Irawati, in memory of her father, Ganesh Hari Karmarkar, who worked in Burma. Primary education was in school in Poona. After that, she studied philosophy at Ferguson College. And graduated in 1926. She then got a Dakshina Fellowship to study social science and worked under Professor GS Ghurve at Bombay University and obtained her Master's degree in 1928. Her master's degree was on the subject of 'Chitrapan Brahmin', the caste she was born into. She married Dinakar Dhondo Karve, who was teaching chemistry at the school. Their father was not very much interested in this marriage because he wanted his daughter to marry into a higher family. Her father also did not like her husband's decision to send Iravati to Germany for further studies. She went to study in Germany with the money loaned by Jivaraj Mehta of the Indian National Congress. Her husband Dinakar is a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Germany.  Irawati  went on to study human heredity and the science of eugenics at the Kaiser William Institute of Anthropology in Germany. Two years later, Iravati received her  Ph.D. degree from this Institute. After that she  came back to India. The couple went ahead with their lives ignoring the orthodox family practices of the day. Iravati's husband was a complete atheist. Irawati visited some temples as part of her anthropological studies, not out of devotion, but only out of interest and curiosity.

Professional life

Karvey worked as an administrator at the SNDT Women's University in Bombay from 1931 to 1936. She did a little PG teaching  also  in between. She was then appointed as a Reader in Sociology at the Poona Deccan College in 1939. The rest of their lives were spent there. Karve was the first woman anthropologist in India, her field of study was social science but she had many other interests. These included the study of fossils, the study of the physical dimensions of different types of humans, serology and Indology. She even wrote poems on the subject of women's freedom. She studied classical Indology and the colour differences practiced in the British Raj. They examined whether the blood group, colour differences , hand holding style of people of different castes and sub-castes in Hinduism are characteristics of each community. She created an anthropology department in the college where she worked in Poona. In 1947, Irawati created the Anthropology Section at the National Science Congress held in New Delhi and became its President. Their books were in Marathi and English.

Her  contributions

Although Karve was generally known in Maharashtra and elsewhere, it is doubtful whether her efforts received the recognition they deserved, especially when compared to the contributions of some of her  contemporaries. After her death on August 11, 1970, Durga Bhagwat, who worked under Ghurve, Professor of Iravati, came forward and severely criticized Iravati's findings. This may also have been the reason why she  did not get the recognition she  deserved.

Her  major publications

·       Kinship Organization in India (Deccan College, 1953), a study of various social institutions in India.

·       Hindu Society — an interpretation (Deccan College, 1961), a study of Hindu society based on data which Karve had collected in her field trips, and her study of pertinent texts in Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit. In the book, she discussed the pre-Aryan existence of the caste system in Hinduism, and traced its development to its present form.

·       Maharashtra — Land and People (1968) - describes various social institutions and rituals in Maharashtra.

·       Yuganta: The End of an Epoch, a study of the main characters of the Mahabharata treats them as historical figures and uses their attitudes and behavior to gain an understanding of the times in which they lived. Karve wrote the book first in Marathi, and later translated it into English. The book won the 1967 Sahitya Academy Award for best book in Marathi

·       Paripurti (in Marathi)

·       Bhovara (in Marathi)

·       Amachi Samskruti (in Marathi)

·       Samskruti (in Marathi)

·       Gangajal (in Marathi)

·       The New Brahmans: Five Maharashtrian Families -biography of her father-in-law in a chapter called Grandfather