Irawati Karve

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Irawati Karve
Bombay University
OccupationAnthropologist
SpouseDinkar Dhondo Karve
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Irawati Karve (15 December 1905

sociologist, anthropologist, educationist and writer from Maharashtra, India. She was one of the students of G.S. Ghurye
, founder of Indian Sociology & Sociology in India. She has been claimed to be the first female Indian Sociologist.

Early life and education

Irawati Karve was born on 15 December 1905 to a wealthy

Bombay University, obtaining a master's degree in 1928 with a thesis on the subject of her own caste titled The Chitpavan Brahmans — An Ethnic Study.[3]

Karve married Dinkar Dhondo Karve, who taught chemistry in a school, while studying with Ghurye. [a]Although her husband was from a socially distinguished Brahmin family, the match did not meet with approval from her father, who had hoped that she would marry into the ruling family of a princely state. Dinkar was a son of Dhondo Keshav Karve, a Bharat Ratna and a pioneer of women's education. Somewhat contradictorily, Dhondo Karve, opposed Dinkar's decision to send her to Germany for further studies.[5][6]

The time in Germany, which commenced in November 1928, was financed by a loan from

middle-class Hindu family in outlook and deed.[9]

Career

Iravati Karve (1st row leftmost) with C. V. Raman and D. K. Karve (3rd and 2nd from right respectively in 1st row), in SNDT Women's University Convocation, 1935

Karve worked as an administrator at SNDT Women's University in Bombay from 1931 to 1936 and did some postgraduate teaching in the city. She moved to Pune's Deccan College as a Reader in sociology in 1939 and remained there for the rest of her career.[10]

According to Nandini Sundar, Karve was the first Indian female

fieldwork.[12] Sundar notes that "as late as 1968 she retained a belief in the importance of mapping social groups like subcastes on the basis of anthropometric and what was then called 'genetic' data (blood group, colour vision, hand-clasping, and hypertrichosis)".[7]

She founded the department of anthropology at what was then Poona University (now the

University of Pune).[11]

Karve served for many years as the head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at

University of Pune).[13] She presided over the Anthropology Division of the National Science Congress held in New Delhi in 1947.[11] She wrote in both Marathi
and English.

Legacy

Sundar says that

although Karve was very well known in her time, especially in her native Maharashtra, and gets an honourable mention in standard histories of sociology/anthropology, she does not seem to have had a lasting effect on the disciplines in the way of some of her contemporaries.

She provides various possible reasons why Karve's effect has been less than that of people such as Ghurye and

Bombay and because she concentrated on the classical anthropological concern relating to origins at a time when her fellow academics were moving from that to more specialised matters underpinned by functionalism. In addition, her lasting impact may have been affected due to none of her Ph.D. students being able to carry her work forward: unlike, say, Ghurye's students, they failed to establish themselves in academia. There was also the issue of her use of a niche publisher — her employers, Deccan College — for her early works rather than a mainstream academic house such as Oxford University Press, although this may have been imposed upon her.[11]

After Karve's death, Durga Bhagwat, a contemporary Marathi intellectual who had also studied under Ghurye but left the course, wrote a scathing critique of Karve. Sundar summarises this as containing "charges of plagiarism, careerism, manipulation of persons, suppressing the work of others, etc. Whatever the truth of these charges, the essay does Bhagwat little credit."[14]

Although Karve's work on kinship was based on anthropometric and linguistic surveys that are now considered unacceptable, there has been a revival of academic interest in that and some other aspects of her work, such as ecology and Maharashtrian culture.[11]

Her range of reading was wide, encompassing Sanskrit epics such as the Ramayana to the Bhakti poets, Oliver Goldsmith, Jane Austen, Albert Camus and Alistair MacLean, and her library of books related to academic subjects now forms a part of the collection of Deccan College.[15]

Works

Among Karve's publications are:

Notes

  1. ^ Dinkar Karve later became principal of Fergusson College.[4]
  2. ^ Karve studied philosophy, Sanskrit and zoology as well as eugenics for her PhD, which was titled The normal asymmetry of the human skull.[7]
  3. ^ Examples of the Karve family's unconventionality include Irawati's decision not to wear any of the traditional symbols associated with married Hindu women, an unusual degree of familiarity in address between her, her husband and their children, and her being the first woman in Pune to ride a scooter.[9]

References

  1. ^ Irawati Karmarkar Karve (2007). Anthropology for archaeology: proceedings of the Professor Irawati Karve Birth Centenary Seminar. Deccan College Post-graduate and Research Institute. p. 19. Born on 15th December 1905 at Mingyan in Myanmar (then Burma), and named after the River Irawaddy. Her father Hari Ganesh Karmakar worked there in a cotton mill. Her mother's name was Bhagirathi.
  2. ISBN 978-1-905422-78-4
    . In this general atmosphere of reform and women's education, and coming from a professional Chitpavan family, neither getting a education nor going into a profession like teaching would for someone like Irawati Karve have been particularly novel.
  3. ^ Sundar (2007), pp. 367–368, 377
  4. ^ Sundar (2007), p. 370
  5. ^ Sundar (2007), pp. 368–369
  6. ^ a b Dinakar Dhondo Karve (1963). The New Brahmans: Five Maharashtrian Families. University of California Press. p. 93. GGKEY:GPD3WDWREYG.
  7. ^ a b Sundar (2007), p. 380
  8. ^ Sundar (2007), pp. 370–371, 378
  9. ^ a b Sundar (2007), p. 371
  10. ^ Sundar (2007), pp. 380–381
  11. ^ a b c d e Sundar (2007), pp. 360–364
  12. ^ Sundar (2007), pp. 373–380
  13. ISBN 9780815304906
    .
  14. ^ Sundar (2007), p. 374
  15. ^ a b Sundar (2007), p. 372

Bibliography

  • Sundar, Nandini (2007), "In the cause of anthropology: the life and work of Irawati Karve", in Uberoi, Patricia; Sundar, Nandini; Deshpande, Satish (eds.), Anthropology in the East: The founders of Indian Sociology and Anthropology, New Delhi: Permanent Black,
    ISBN 978-1-90542-277-7
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