"Straddling a faultline between tradition and progressive education in 19th-century British India, Rukhmabai forced legislators to reconsider laws on the status of girls, and went on to forge her own career as a doctor—one of the first Indian women to practise in her country. She was quick to generalise her own experience of injustice as a Hindu woman to the predicament of all her fellow countrywomen, and was an outspoken social reformer.
Rukhmabai was born in 1864 in Mumbai, to Janardhan Pandurang and his 14-year-old wife Jayantibai. Janardhan died 2 years later, and when Rukhmabai was 8 years old, Jayantibai married Sakharam Arjun, a physician. Sakharam was an enlightened man and encouraged his stepdaughter’s education. However, his wife arranged Rukhmabai’s marriage at the age of 11 years to one of his relatives, the 19-year-old Dadaji Bhikaji, and they took the young man into their home to supervise his education. Aware of the dangers of early pregnancy and childbirth, Sakharam refused to allow the consummation of the marriage. A disgruntled Dadaji gave up his education and went to live with an uncle, where he led a dissipated life. Rukhmabai refused to join him, and when she was 20 years old, he began legal steps for “restitution of his conjugal rights”. The case became a cause célèbre, raising issues of British and Hindu laws in relation to a husband’s rights over his wife, and a child’s ability to consent to marriage. Among Rukhmabai’s supporters was the editor of the Times of India, Henry Curwen. He published a letter of hers in 1885. Child marriage, she wrote, “has destroyed the happiness of my life. It comes between me and the thing which I prize above all others—study and mental cultivation”.
Eventually she appealed to Queen Victoria, who ordered the marriage to be dissolved. Dadaji received financial compensation and Rukhmabai paid all legal costs. The publicity surrounding the case influenced the 1891 increase in the age of consent for Indian girls from 10 to 12—although Rukhmabai herself thought 15 should be the minimum. All this time she had been learning English and pursuing studies in a wide range of subjects, using books borrowed from mission schools, and had set her heart on becoming a doctor. She was befriended by Edith Pechey, one of the “Edinburgh Seven”, the first female medical students in the UK, who was Medical Officer at the newly built Cama Hospital for women in Mumbai. Pechey and others raised the funds to send Rukhmabai to the London School of Medicine for Women in the UK.
While in England she mixed with feminists and colonial reformers. She was able to argue the case for Indian women’s education with politicians such as Lord Kimberley, the Secretary of State for India. Sitting her professional examinations in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Brussels—women were not permitted to do so in England— Rukhmabai qualified in 1894. She returned to India and spent 8 months as house surgeon at the Cama Hospital. She was then appointed Chief Medical Officer at the women’s hospital in Surat, in the state of Gujarat, where she stayed for 22 years. In 1918, Rukhmabai was offered a medical officer role in the Women’s Medical Service (WMS), founded by the British Indian administration 4 years previously. But she chose instead to accept a position at the Rasulkhanji Zenana Hospital in Rajkot, where she supervised the care of women in the more than 200 semiautonomous princely states of Saurashtra (now part of Gujarat). The WMS had a reputation for promoting European women doctors over more experienced Indian women, which may have influenced her decision.
Rukhmabai undertook extensive public health work during plague and influenza epidemics, and was awarded India’s public service medal, the Kaisar-i-Hind. She also raised money from her contacts among the maharajas and nawabs of Saurashtra to train Indian women as nurses. The settlement of her legal case stipulated that she should not remarry, and she never did. As a member of the Arya Mahila Samaj (Arya Women’s Society), Rukhmabai continued to campaign for women’s education and against child marriage and other restrictions on women’s lives, such as purdah. She moved back to Mumbai on her retirement and died at the age of 90 years, an inspiration to generations of Indian women who followed her into medicine."
From: Ferry Georgina, "A woman’s place Rukhmabai: doctor and social reformer"
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