HT Picks; New Reads

A global legacy of cruelty and shame

Widows have always far outnumbered widowers (who quickly remarry, usually younger women). War, hunting and the uncertainties of long travel ensured that most husbands died before their wives did. Mineke Schipper’s cultural history of widows examines how these husband-less women have, throughout history and mythology, been portrayed as helpless damsels, easy pickings for men outside the family or clan, or as cunning witches who are suspected of murder. In every case, the motive has been to exclude them and control them. Schipper traverses the world, travelling across time, to collect and analyse stories about widows and their treatment — the loss of status they face after their husband’s death; the harsh rituals of mourning they are forced to perform; the often brutal controls on attire, mobility and sexuality that they must submit to. It is a global legacy of cruelty and shame — as also, occasionally, of resilience and defiance — that has rarely been studied as deeply and thoroughly as in this extraordinary work. Widows draws upon sources from Ancient Egypt and Greece, medieval India and modern-day Europe, Africa and the Americas — examining folk and real-life stories of communities in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, China, France, and several other countries and regions, as also stories and images from comics and fashion magazines.

Impressively researched and entertainingly narrated, this book — its information made distinctive by Schipper’s sharp insight and her humour — is an important document that helps us understand our past and, through it, our present.*

Courage and a pioneering spirit

In 1927, when Irawati Karve, aged 22, arrived in Berlin to do her doctoral studies at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, she was faced with a dilemma. As a woman of colour, the subject of her thesis was to prove her supervisor Dr Eugen Fischer’s theory of the superiority of the European race over people of colour, based on the measurement of their skulls. After examining 149 ‘white’ skulls from Germany and ‘non-white’ skulls from German colonies in East Africa, Irawati came to the opposite conclusion: the shape of the human skull did not prove racial superiority. Fischer’s theory was later discredited, but at the time, it took courage to present the paper to him and it nearly cost Irawati her PhD.

Courage and a pioneering spirit continued to be her hallmarks on her return to India. At a time when such field trips were difficult if not dangerous, she travelled to the Adivasi areas in Coorg, Western Maharashtra, Assam, Kerala and Bihar. Her research resulted in two key works, Kinship Organisation in India and Hindu Society.

In 1968, she won the Sahitya Akademi Award for her book of essays on the Mahabharata, Yuganta. Irawati’s belief that the Mahabharata was not just an epic, but a historical record, earned her some criticism from her peers at the time, but Yuganta remains a classic to this day.

As the daughter-in-law of the reformist and feminist thinker, Maharshi Dhondo Karve, adored wife of Dinkar Karve, and privileged daughter of two families — her own parents, Ganesh and Bhagirathi Karmarkar, and her adoptive family, RP Paranjpye and his wife, Saitai — Irawati’s personal life was as rich and colourful as her professional one.

In this biography like none other, writer Urmilla Deshpande, Irawati’s granddaughter, and academic researcher Thiago Pinto Barbosa, have created an intimate, captivating portrait of Irawati Karve, the anthropologist and philosopher, and Irawati, the woman, wife and mother.*

An overlooked chapter of Indian history

In 1954, in the small town of Silvassa, wind blows through desolate streets. Doors are bolted for the first time, windows shuttered. The town is silent, except for the soft, persistent patter of August rain. The only movement is that of a group of outsiders, gathering stealthily around the barricaded Silvassa police post, their faces grim. A man raises his hand as a signal — it is time.

Uprising chronicles a remarkable, yet often overlooked chapter of Indian history. A few years after the country became independent, ordinary civilians rose up against the extortionist colonial stragglers entrenched in the villages of Dadra and Nagar Haveli — the Portuguese. With the new Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, unwilling to strain nascent diplomatic bonds, it was up to a few brave men and women to take matters into their own hands. The odds were not good: the Portuguese were armed to the teeth and outnumbered them heavily. It was an extraordinary coalition that took them on: Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi helped raise funds through a concert; volunteers from the Azad Gomantak Dal, the RSS and radical communists collaborated with the local tribal population to launch attacks in Silvassa, Naroli, Pipariya, Khanvel and other places in an effort to drive the Portuguese out once and for all.

Through interviews with descendants of the participants (and a handful of participants themselves), newspaper archival records, letters and diary entries, Neelesh Kulkarni painstakingly puts together the pieces of this little-known history. An electrifying story emerges — the solidarity, resilience and fearlessness of a people who defy tyranny, and make history in the process.*

*All copy from book flap.