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How Dr Rukhmabai achieved the impossible for Indian women in British Raj

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Rimli Bhattacharya
Rimli BhattacharyaNov 22, 2017 | 20:06

How Dr Rukhmabai achieved the impossible for Indian women in British Raj

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

– William Osler

As Google celebrates the birth anniversary of Rukhmabai — the first Indian woman doctor in the colonial era — with a doodle today, I find myself looking back at the remarkable journey of the woman’s fight for a life of dignity and equal rights.

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Born into a poor family of carpenters (suthars), Rukhmabai was married off at the tender age of 11 to 19-year-old Dadaji Bhikaji Raut. Her husband proved to be a man of questionable character, who was unsupportive of the very idea of women’s education.

A child bride, the gutsy Rukhmabai left her husband and started living with her mother and stepfather Dr Sakharam Arjun, a renowned physician at the time.

She fought against the legal case made by her husband demanding conjugal rights. Rukhmabai’s stepfather supported her since he believed one could not force a woman to stay in the wedlock — and helped her in the legal proceedings, which went on for three years and sparked a debate in both England and India.

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When she started practising medicine upon her return from England, she was ostracised by her society. Photo: DailyO

The judgment went in favour of her husband and the house of justice ordered Rukhmabai to go back to her husband or spend six months behind bars. Courageous as she was, Rukhmabai chose the latter.

Her case was cited as a landmark in India during the colonial rule since it raised issues on child marriage and women’s consent. It also got the British press to focus on the bane of child marriage and the importance of equal rights for women.

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Angered by the verdict, educationist and women’s rights activist Pandita Ramabai, wrote: “...when the woman is educated, and refuses to be a slave in soul and body to a man against whom her whole nature revolts, the English government comes to break her spirit allowing its law to become an instrument for riveting her in chains.”

The sensational case came to the notice of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, who countermanded the verdict.

After her divorce from Raut in 1888, Rukhmabai moved to England to pursue medicine. She received enormous support during her study at the London School of Medicine for Women from Dr Edith Pechey, several activists and fellow Indians. On her return to India in 1894 — after the completion of her medical education — she began her practice in Surat, Rajkot and Bombay (now Mumbai), which lasted for 35 years.

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Google paid a tribute to Dr Rukhmabai with a doodle.

In 1880, when Indian women didn’t even have freedom of speech, let alone other rights, Rukhmabai achieved the impossible. When she started practising medicine upon her return from England, she was ostracised by society.

Battling the odds, she not only took over the mantle as chief medical officer in Surat but also started her journey as an activist against child marriage and women’s suffering.

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An extract from a letter written by Rukhmabai to Times of India on June 26, 1885, and reproduced in the book Child Marriages in India by Jaya Sagade:

This wicked practice of child marriage has destroyed the happiness of my life. It comes between me and the things which I prize above all others – study and mental cultivation. Without the least fault of mine I am doomed to seclusion; every aspiration of mine to rise above my ignorant sisters is looked down upon with suspicion and is interpreted in the most uncharitable manner”.

Dr Rukhmabai remained an unmarried woman and earned the glory of being India’s first practising lady doctor.

Interestingly, Anandi Gopalrao Joshi was the first Indian woman doctor. Tuberculosis took her life too soon, so she could not contribute to the society with her medical degree.

Rukhmabai deserves unparalleled respect for being the guiding light of women’s rights in deeply conservative, colonial India. She tolerated humiliation and trauma but what she had in her was the indomitable bravery and determination to study, and eventually became a social activist fighting for women of all times.

She quit the theatre of life on September 25, 1955 but her courage lives on in this message: Women must fight the odds, say no to misogyny and educate themselves no matter what cost and refuse to compromise on their values — and never settle for a man of questionable morality.

Last updated: November 22, 2017 | 22:20
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