Irawati Karve: India’s groundbreaking anthropologist

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Irawati Karve became India’s first female anthropologist - studying tribes that nobody had investigated, and taking her children on expeditions deep in the rainforest.

In 1927, she dared to defy the racist theory of Eugen Fischer, a famous German professor during her PhD in Berlin. Irawati scientifically rejected human differences to justify discrimination, and was the first to do so.

Her granddaughter, Urmilla Deshpande, speaks to Reena Stanton-Sharma about her life and career.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Irawati Karve. Credit: Urmilla Deshpande)

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Mariana Spring, the BBC's social media investigations correspondent.
0:06.3	In my podcast, I've been investigating what happened to the daughter of a conspiracy theorist
0:10.9	who died having rejected chemotherapy.
0:13.5	It would mean the world to me if I could make it that she wasn't just another in the long line of people that die in this way.
0:18.9	How does this reflect the rise of health conspiracy theories on social media and beyond?
0:24.8	The new series of Mariana in Conspiracy Land. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:35.4	Hello and welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Rina Stanton Sharma.
0:42.9	I'm about to take you to a moment in history where you'll hear the amazing memories of people who are there, as well as powerful archive recordings.
0:52.0	The program is just nine minutes long and comes out every weekday,
0:56.6	so make sure you subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts and turn your push notifications on
1:02.7	so you never miss a thing. Today, I'm telling you the story of India's first female anthropologist,
1:09.9	who took her children on expeditions deep into forests story of India's first female anthropologist who took her children on expeditions
1:12.4	deep into forests, studied Indian tribes that nobody had researched before and dared to defy
1:19.3	the racist theory of a famous German professor.
1:27.4	She couldn't afford to pay people sometimes and she would just take her children as
1:32.4	assistance to her actually. They talked about being, you know, deep in the forest and having to
1:38.7	travel in jeeps or on foot to various places where there were, you know, people that she wanted
1:43.9	to study and then they would collect blood know, people that she wanted to study.
1:45.1	And then they would collect blood samples.
1:46.7	They would bring them back to the bungal.
1:48.0	And they didn't have refrigeration or anything.
1:49.7	So they would have to process the samples that they took in the night and then go to sleep.
	...

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