Shunya's Notes

In Memoriam, Dr. Malati Kesaree (1934/5–2025)

Malati Kesaree, beloved mother, grandmother, sister, and friend, passed away peacefully at her home in Eugene, Oregon, on Thursday, February 13th, 2025. She had been on hospice for five weeks.

Malati was born in Dharwad, Karnataka, in South India, about 90 years ago. In her youth, she could speak multiple Indian languages, including Kannada (her mother tongue), Marathi, Konkani, and later Hindi, as well as English. She enjoyed taking part in classical Indian dance and creating skillfully detailed pencil sketches. She went on to become the first woman engineer to graduate from the state of Karnataka, and then the first woman ever to attend Roorkie University, India’s premier engineering college at the time, where she earned a master’s degree and met my father, Varada "Hary" Charyulu.

She arrived in the United States in 1958 to pursue further studies, eventually marrying Varada in 1962 and giving birth to her first child in 1963, while still in graduate school. On her way to the hospital, in labor with her second child, she stopped to hand off her thesis to the typist. She would become the first woman to earn a PhD in engineering from Iowa State University in 1964. Her last child was born in 1965, when she began her career as a professor at Oklahoma State University. In 1968, she moved with her family to Pocatello, Idaho, where she taught mathematics at Idaho State University and became the first woman engineer licensed in the state of Idaho.

Malati became a US citizen in 1976, before going on to work in various aspects of the nuclear power industry across eight different US states, from Washington to Connecticut. Almost everywhere she went, she found and joined a local European folkdance group and took time to explore local landmarks and institutions of art, culture, and history. She maintained a lifelong love of learning, which inspired her to travel across the globe and to learn German, while living there with her family and working at the Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe from 1980–81. She cultivated and maintained lifelong friendships from all the places she lived during her life. She and Varada separated in 1986 and divorced in 1988.

On Social Scientists Engaging With Civic Spaces

I was part of a panel at the India International Center, Delhi, on 18 Feb, 2025, to discuss a book, Social Scientists in the Civic Space (Routledge, 2025), edited by Arundhati Virmani, Jean Boutier, and Manohar Kumar. To begin with, panelists were invited to offer their views on the book. This is the text of my statement. —Namit Arora

Thank you for inviting me for this discussion. I think the issue of social scientists engaging with civic spaces is a crucial one. The excellent book we’re discussing today examines this engagement through four key dimensions: context, modes of intervention, involvement, and ethical considerations. Its approach is largely historical, offering insights into how scholars have navigated these dimensions in different times and countries.

For instance, in discussing context, the book explores the civic spaces of specific societies at particular times—analyzing their political milieu, education systems, media landscapes, social science institutions, and more. When addressing intervention and involvement, it examines the diverse roles scholars have played—as teachers, policy advisors, public intellectuals, social activists—and how they influenced civic discourse and policy.

As I read, I kept thinking: How does this framework apply to contemporary India? What challenges do we face in terms of context and modes of intervention or involvement? One way to respond to this book—and to even extend its ideas—is to examine the present situation of social scientists in India and their opportunities for public engagement. That’s what I’ll do in the time I have, using history as the paradigmatic social science.