India, Oct. 30 -- On Saturday, November 1, Karnataka will burst into joyful celebration, commemorating that day in 1956 when all the Kannada-speaking lands were brought together within the newly-drawn borders of Mysore State. That makes this week a particularly good time to remember, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, an extraordinary daughter of the soil who died on October 29, 1988; a woman that the Hassan-born Indian-American novelist, Raja Rao, described in his preface to her 1986 memoir as "perhaps the most august woman on the Indian scene today", and her recent biographer, American historian Nico Slate, believes is probably "the most important woman of the 20th century."

Perhaps because we are misled by her married name, or because her life...