India’s First Woman Anthropologist: The Scholar Who Defied Nazi Race Science

Published : Nov 26, 2024 20:44 IST - 6 MINS READ Some decades ago, I watched a kathakata titled Nathavati, Anathavat by the playwright Saoli Mitra and was deeply moved by the feminist retelling of Draupadi’s story. Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve By Urmilla Deshpande & Thiago Pinto Barbosa Speaking Tiger Pages: 292 Price: Rs.699 While reading Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve, I was repeatedly reminded of Yuganta, where Draupadi is portrayed as a woman and an intellectual and not just a humiliated wife in a polyandrous marriage, when she questions the masculine conception of justice, righteousness, and male entitlement by asking Yudhishtir the basis on which he pawns her. Tracing Karve’s life from childhood to her academic career, the book shows us what it meant to be a woman academic in mid-20th century India—her experience earning her degree in a foreign country; her relations with her family; the long absences from home and extensive fieldwork in remote archaeological sites with only men for company; the transgression, subversion, as well as negotiation of caste and gender norms—all that which made possible the emergence of a successful scholar who was also deeply aware of her femininity and her humanity. I was particularly touched by Karve’s experience of training for her doctoral degree under the German racial anthropology expert Eugen Fischer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. The biography Iru is authored by Urmilla Deshpande, granddaughter of Irawati Karve, whose sense of Karve’s life also comes from the various family anecdotes around her grandmother, and Thiago Pinto Barbosa, whose research on racial and eugenics scholarship in Berlin led him to the Indian social scientist who stood her ground against the rising trend of fascism in early 20th century Germany.