In a quiet corner of Pune lies a serene stretch of road embraced by greenery. Named after pioneering sociologist and anthropologist Irawati Karve, the ‘Irawati Karve Marga’ is a living tribute to her legacy.The road moves past neighbourhood parks like Salisbury Park and the Gool Poonawalla Garden, cutting through a peaceful residential area where the hum of cars and scooters blends with the steady rhythm of joggers, walkers, and families stepping out as the day unwinds. But who was Irawati Karve and what legacy lives on through the road that carries her name?Among nation’s first anthropologistsAccording to Dr Shantanu Ozarkar, Head of the Anthropology Department at the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Karve remains one of the foundational figures of Indian anthropology. “She was one of the first anthropologists in the country. She was the founder-head of the joint department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Deccan College Post-Graduate Research Centre in 1939. She conducted her anthropological research on Indian social systems, caste, kinship, and documented the anthropometric profiles of several communities from India,” he says.“Her work spanned from excavating and describing human skeletons, to anthropometric measurements of communities to documenting kinship terminologies. Her genius lies in looking at all these evidences together, rather than in isolation,” Dr Ozarkar adds.He highlights Karve’s pioneering ideas, especially her conceptualisation of the ‘caste cluster’ and caste as an endogamous group with an extended kin network – concepts that remain important in Indian anthropology. He also points to her prolific academic and literary output: Hindu Society: An Interpretation, Kinship Organisation in India, and Yuganta, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award.Influence on policies, especially involving womenIn Iru, the biography of Irawati Karve by her granddaughter Urmilla Deshpande and Brazilian anthropologist Thiago Pinto Barbosa, the authors note that Karve lived in a time when both science and politics were undergoing devastating shifts. Seen from today’s perspective, her work carries its own ambivalences and moments of controversy. Trained in Berlin in a school of racist science at the dawn of Nazism, she challenged her German colleagues and openly opposed theories of white superiority, later struggling to adapt that training to study Indians in a non-racist way.Story continues below this adMost evident in her policy-oriented essay The Indian Woman in 1975, Karve also worked on influencing government policies towards women. “Her story, of a pioneer anthropologist, her scientific rigor and thoughts that reach us today through her writings, keep on inspiring the younger generation,” states Dr Ozarkar.Karve’s legacy continues within SPPU as well. The varsity’s Museum of Anthropology, established in 1978, was renamed after her in 1993. The teaching and research museum houses rare casts of hominid fossils, more than 900 tribal artefacts, and tribal exhibits spread across the Footprints, Home and Hearth, and Celebration galleries. Today, the museum stands as both an academic resource and a reminder of Karve’s influence.Walking along Irawati Karve Marga today, past its canopy of trees, one can’t help but feel that the path bears a legacy far greater than its length.(Ruta Patil is an intern with The Indian Express)