Irawati Karve- Indian sociologist and anthropologist- Her role in challenging Hitler
~Anushka Sengupta
Irawati Karve (1905–1970) emerged as one of the foremost figures in the field of Indian sociology and physical anthropology due to the academic achievements and her bold act of resisting the racial practices in Nazi Germany. India’s first woman anthropologist, she trod a course rampant with sexism, caste slurs and the rising shadow of fascist thought. Although she was totally committed to scientific integrity and humanism, her academic career, especially in her years in Germany as Nazism was rising, testified to this reality.
Karve was born in Myanmar (then Burma), in 1905, and died on Oct. 11, 1970. Karve earned an MA in sociology from the University of Mumbai in 1928 and a DSc in anthropology from a University in Berlin, Germany, in 1930. Karve was Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Deccan College in Pune affiliated with the University of Pune for several years. In 1947, she was the chairman of the Anthropology Section of the National Science Congress in New Delhi. She wrote in Marathi and English on sociology and anthropology as well as on nonscientific subjects.
Karve rose to international fame for her work in Sociology and Anthropology; she gained fame in Maharashtra for her literary accomplishments. Her most well known work was Yuganta which she wrote in Marathi and later translated it to English too. This book brought her the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1968. The most important works of Karve on caste may be found in her book ‘‘Hindu Society: An Interpretation.’’ The second is the ethnological tradition, evident in the extensive research she conducted for her publications. Third is German physical anthropology – which is mostly the attempt to “prove the genetics of the various groups under study to state.” The last one is of the socio- economic research and archaeological explorations thus achieved, and all these were the impact of Karve’s zeal for research.
Her debt to Ghurye was evident in much of her work as the two shared the view that family, caste, religion, and kinship must be studied as the foundation of Indian society as well as her reliance on sweeping survey data to assert empirical facts. As an Indologist, Karve was among the classical orientalist Indologists who looked to ancient Sanskrit texts to unravel the contemporary. Karve, who was named after the well known Burmese river Irrawaddy, was one of the leading sociologists, anthropologist and writer of India. Karve was born in Myanmar, where her father, Mr. G. H Karmarkar, was employed in a cotton mill, and she was schooled at Huzur Paga boarding school, Pune. She then did her Bachelors in Philosophy at Fergusson College and graduated in 1926 and her M.A. in Sociology from the University of Mumbai with G.S. Ghurye, a pioneer of Indian sociology. Her thesis title under Ghurye was ‘The Chitpavan Brahmans-An Ethnical Study’, a study which she did on her own caste. In between she got married to Dinkar Dhondo Karve who was a chemistry teacher.
Dinkar Dhondo Karve was the second son of Dhondo Keshav Karve, a social reformer against child marriage, proponent of widow remarriage and equal education of females in Maharashtra. Subsequently, Karve travelled to Germany for a Ph. in 1928 and came back two years later. Ironically, his father in law who believed in women’s education was not supportive in this decision which says there is no need for further studies and a job can be created easily. Both Karve and her husband were firm that Karve would go to Germany. Nandini Sundar said: “while Dinkar Karve may not have been a public proponent of social reforms or women’s rights like his father, his daughters argue that he was the perfect supportive husband, recognizing his wife’s exceptional intellectual abilities and doing his best to encourage her”. Post her doctorate, Karve came back to India and was appointed registrar at SNDT Women’s University, which had been established by her father-in-law.
In 1939 she resigned from the post and joined as lecturer of Sociology in the Deccan College, Pune and later she became the Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Karve later became the mainstay of Anthropology in India. Karve was an integral force in the Indian sociology that was on the process of being institutionalized in the country. Not only did Karve manage to mark her space in a field dominated by men, her expertise in her subject pushed her to the forefront. After her graduation in Philosophy from Pune’s Fergusson College, she was awarded the Dakshina Fellowship by the government of Maharashtra. This fellowship permitted her to pursue the study of Sociology under the direction of GS Ghurye at the University of Bombay. GS Ghurye had been a great mentor for her. Karve and his intellectual caliber had given her an impetus in the theory she worked in and in the themes she picked for her research. Under him she published an article on ‘Chitpavan Brahmins’.
On her husband’s encouragement she went to study abroad at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Germany. Here she was introduced to race studies, the comparative anatomy of humans and genetics. Life in Germany had a decisive influence on her way of thinking in later life. She wrote on kinship with the tools of Indology. This approach was a break from the highly Anglicised work that was taking place in India. At that time, Germany was an epicenter for eugenic theories, and her doctoral work was directed by racial Anthropologist Professor Eugen Fischer. Fischer’s theories were built from the belief in the racial superiority of white Europeans, one that would provide the basis of Nazi propaganda years later. Karve’s doctorate had entailed measuring human skulls as a way to explore asymmetry, a technique that Fischer thought could illuminate racial disparities. It did not support Fischer’s claim, but rather exposed the lack of relationship between skull asymmetry to racial traits. Risking her own academic reputation, she reported her findings, in defiance of racist theories.
Karve’s opposition to Fischer’s racial theories was not merely academic; it was a moral rejection of the pseudoscientific racism upon which Nazi ideology was centred. Through her research, she contradicted the belief in natural racial hierarchies, which in turn suggested that human differences did not mean superiority or inferiority. This was an especially bold position to take when it was made in Germany, which was becoming increasingly convinced of such ideologies. The stakes both personally and career wise were high, but Karve’s devotion to truth and scientific integrity was unwavering. Her gestures articulated the position of scholars in questioning the oppressive ideologies and stressed on the ethical responsibilities of academics. After coming back to India she worked on research, working towards studying kinship and caste systems in India.
Among her significant works were Friends, Brothers and Informants: Fieldwork Memoirs of Banaras (1990), Kinship Organization in India (1953), which used empirical fieldwork and literary sources to examine social structure. She also wrote Yuganta: The End of an Epoch (1967) on the Mahabharata characters, portraying the characters of the epic as historical figures accountable to their socio-political milieu. Karve’s interdisciplinary method of blending Anthropology and Sociology with Indology established the trend in the studies of these disciplines in India. Her focus on fieldwork and empirical research paved the way for academic rigor in the Indian social sciences. Karve experienced large obstacles, gender discrimination and caste bias, throughout her career. In the face of these challenges she remained committed to her work, and both in terms of her contribution to social scientific research and her teaching, contributed to the growth of social sciences in India. For her academic accomplishments Karve was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1968 for Yuganta, which also made her the first woman from Maharashtra to win such an award. In the 1920s, her challenge to Nazi race theory not only played out in consideration towards global racial thinking and Anthropology, but also paved the way for later generations of researchers to fight for ethical standards in their work. Karve was the first woman Anthropologist in India and her work continues to be influential in the fields of Sociology and Anthropology.
