Exploring Irawati Karve's life in Iru: An anthropologist ahead of her time

Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve

Author: Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa

Publisher: Speaking Tiger

Price: Rs 699   
Pages: 292

Urmilla Deshpande set out to work on a novel about an Indian woman in Germany in the 1920s based on her grandmother Irawati Karve when she stumbled on the opportunity to write her biography. When she researched Karve’s life, visiting places across the world, she came across Thiago Pinto Barbosa, a Brazilian researcher. His research included a study of KWI-A, the institute where Karve studied in Berlin in the 1920s. He was intrigued by the outsider who challenged the scientific racism of the Eurocentric thinkers. Together they embarked on a journey to portray Irawati Karve, the first woman anthropologist in India, as a formidable figure in Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve. 
 

This biography highlights Karve’s unconventional life as a Chitpavan Brahmin woman, unbound curiosity, faith in her intuitive research practices, and intimate relationship with her husband, Dinkar Karve. Irawati was born in 1905 in Mandalay, Myanmar (then Burma), where her father Ganesh Karmakar worked in the cotton industry. To connect her with their homeland, her father sent her to a boarding school in Pune. At age seven, she felt she was being taken away from home rather than towards it. She was soon raised in the Paranjpye household in Pune “where there was not only no objection, but an education was expected and it was enthusiastically encouraged.” RP “Wrangler” Paranjpye, a liberal atheist, was the first Indian to graduate from the University of Cambridge in 1899. He acquainted his children and Irawati with various English books, including the Jane Austen novels. Contrarily, Irawati’s father wanted to marry her into a princely family. Upon her opposition to this marriage proposition and insistence on studying further, her father feared her becoming less marriageable by the day. Later Irawati chose to marry Dinkar Karve, much to her father’s displeasure. Dinkar was the son of the highly acclaimed social reformer, Maharshi Dhondo Keshav Karve, a champion of women’s rights and education. 
 

Despite the poor financial condition of the family, Dinkar had managed to get a PhD in chemistry in Germany and suggested Irawati do the same. Defying the elders in the family, including her father-in-law, she boarded the ship. Dinkar, a “deeply principled” man, was there “to see her off, to cheer her on, to support her, to encourage her, to be her champion, now as he would be through the rest of their life together.” In Germany, she worked under the supervision of Eugen Fischer who hypothesised that for Europeans, the right side of the brain is bigger, making their skulls asymmetrical compared to the rest of the population. Karve was a lone Indian woman at the institute and a minority, but she was not afraid to conduct her research independently and challenge the hegemonic ways of thinking in those times. She titled her thesis “Die normale Asymmetrue des Menschlichen Schadels” or “The Normal Asymmetry of the Human Skull,” suggesting that European skulls were no different from the rest of humanity. Upon her return to India, she used a patchwork of resources such as ancient Indian texts, oral storytelling, and poetry in her research that dismantled the centrality of biological anthropology, creating a way for a sociological and cultural approach.
 

Drawing from several interviews with her family members and people who worked with her, the authors create a visual narrative that showcases Karve as a fearless woman forging ahead with new imaginative ways of thinking. She was bound only by her curiosity to study ethnic communities in India, different castes, and humanitarian differentiation. She single-handedly created and headed the anthropology department at Deccan College, and is one of the significant figures in shaping this science in India. They incorporate various works by her, citing them as they chart out her professional journey, which was backed heavily by a husband who took care of the household and their children when she was out in the field or invited for guest lectures in the UK and the US. Interestingly, Karve married into a family that worked for women’s education and empowerment. Her brother-in-law advocated women’s right to their sexuality. Karve may have been just another addition to this family of thinkers, but she was a force to be reckoned with in the public domain.
 

The book’s epigraph is from one of Karve’s essays, “The Racial Factor in Indian Social Life”, published in 1963. It emphasises that India has been home to many people throughout history and that anyone living in India who calls India their home is Indian — an assertion that would displease many people in India today. She asserts India is neither a Hindi or Hindu state, but a multilingual and multicultural state where diverse people live in comradeship.
 

This extensively researched biography reads like a novel, without academic jargon, that sucks readers into its smoothly flowing narration. It evokes awe in many instances as Karve’s life is recreated from various fragments across time and space. Every time the narration borders on portraying a perfect image, a limitation is cleverly put forward. The biography is supplemented by photographs of Karve and a conversation between the authors. All in all, it is an act of remembering a woman whose contribution greatly shaped the world of anthropology, and an invitation for people outside of anthropology and sociology to know her life intimately. 

The reviewer is an independent writer based in Sambalpur. She is @geekyliterati on Instagram and X