My good friend @aparanjape has reminded us that today is the 48th death anniversary of the writer, sociologist and educationist Iravati Karve. He has nudged me to attempt a Twitter thread on this great scholar
Iravati Karve was born in Burma, where her father worked. She was named after the river Irrawaddy. She later married Dinakar Karve, son of the social reformer D. K. Karve and brother of the great R. D. Karve (who Dr Ambedkar defended in court when he was accused of obscenity)
Iravati Karve was a pioneering sociologist, anthropologist, Indologist. She was a student of G. S. Ghurye in Mumbai. His other brilliant female student was Durgabai Bhagwat. Iravatibai later did her PhD in Germany.
Iravati Karve is best known for Yuganta, her essays on the Mahabharata which have been translated into English. Interestingly, even Durga Bhagwat wrote a superb book of essays on the epic -- व्यासपर्व. It too deserves an English translation for a wider audience
One of my favourite Iravati Karve books is आमची संस्कृती, or Our Culture. My three favourite in this collection are the essays on the social reformer G.G. Agarkar, the sociologist Shridhar Vyankatesh Ketkar, and cow protection (which builds on Savarkar's earlier essays)
Dinkar Karve was an atheist. Iravati Karve was a reformist, but she visited the Vithal temple at Pandharpur every year as a cultural rather than a religious committment. She was also a strong proponent of education in Marathi.
Her speech at the famous Asian Relations Conference at New Delhi in 1947 comes, at least in my view, very close to the Savarkarite view of nationalism, based on a shared cultural history. But she was also clear that India is home to all its religions.
The Karve family quintessentially represented the great Marathi reformist tradition. The friendship between the Karve and Paranjape families, starting from D.K. Karve and Wrangler R.P. Paranjape, is a fascinating story.
Her children -- Anand Karve, Jaai Nimkar and Gauri Deshpande -- continued the tradition. Gauri was a pioneering post-independence feminist writer in Marathi. I have known her daughter Urmila since childhood
Scholars like Iravati Karve do not get their due because they have mostly written in Indian languages. That needs to be corrected through more respect for our bhaasha traditions of scholarship.
An addition: As @anvaya_anand reminded me, Vasant Kanetkar's popular Marathi play हिमालयाची सावली was based on the life of Dhondo Keshav Karve.
