Doctor sahiba

A lady doctor in 19th century Maharashtra chooses a six-month prison term over living with a man she married at 11 because she wanted to study. The stories of India’s first women in medicine are inspiring tales of fighting caste prejudice, cultural barriers and gender inequity

Rarely does privilege sit heavy. But, we felt this, as a woman, growing up in 21st century India, after reading London-based journalist Kavitha Rao’s just released 
book, Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India’s First Women in Medicine (Westland).

When in the 1880s, Rukhmabai Raut, took on the “wicked practice” of child marriage, seeking divorce from a man she was married to at the age of 11, all because she wanted to study, she was viciously trolled by the prominent conservatives of Bombay, including activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak. “Do you seriously hope that our women will do anything in the direction of original literature for centuries to come? I know of very few female names who have added perceptibly to the stock of human knowledge,” Tilak had ranted in the pages of The Mahratta. Despite the ridicule, the thick-skinned Rukhmabai, who belonged to the suthar or carpenter caste, couldn’t be broken. In 1887, after a Bombay court ruled that she must live with her husband or go to jail for six months, she chose the latter. As Rao describes, she had “lit a grenade under a cloistered, ossified Hindu society”. Rukhmabai went on to secure admission at the London School of Medicine for Women, returning to practice at Madame Cama Hospital in Bombay, and later, Sheth Morarji Vibhukandas Malawi dispensary in Surat, today named Rukhmabai Hospital. But, her story and that of others, is a reminder for this writer, of the good fight they fought valiantly over a century ago, which has made things possible for women today, especially education.

All three completed their medical studies and each of them was the first woman from their respective countries to obtain a degree in western medicine. Pic courtesy/Wikimedia Commons

Rao, who took about three years to research this book, says her own interest in the subject stemmed from a similar line of enquiry. “Like many South Indians, I have an entire family of doctors. I wondered how this profession went from being taboo for women to respectable and even sought after. When I dug deep, I found that it was a very long and painful process. From being labelled whores [like Dr Kadambini Ganguly] to being praised, like Dr Gagandeep Kang is today, it hasn’t been an easy journey. There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears on the way, which I wanted to document,” she says.

Another reason was the “prevalent notion in India, that continues till today, that women are underrepresented in science because they are not scientifically minded or tough enough”. “As I uncovered in the book, [I learnt that] many women doctors, such as Haimabati [Sen] and Muthulakshmi [Reddy] were academically better than the men, but were denied medals, jeered at, or restricted in some way. Often by men. Most worked way harder than them, because they also brought up families.”

Pic courtesy/Mita Roy Photography

The book explores the lives of six Indian “lady doctors”—an “anachronistic” term that arose in the 1870s in the UK, when women first began to entertain the idea of becoming doctors, and were considered “traitress to her sex”—offering short accounts about their professional careers, and how they were influenced by their 
personal choices.  

Among them are Dr Anandibai Joshi, whom Rao chose because she was the first to cross the seas—“an immense accomplishment”—to become the first Indian woman to secure a medical degree in western medicine; Kadambini, who was the first Indian woman to actually practice medicine; and Rukhmabai, who defied caste prejudice and stood up to a giant like Tilak. “I [also] picked Haimabati because of her frank and unusual memoir; I had not read anything like her unvarnished account of being a VLMS [Vernacular Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery] in rural West Bengal before. I had to leave out Motibai Kapadia, Anne Jagannathan and Jherusha Jhirad, because unfortunately I could not find enough material on them. I chose Muthulakshmi Reddy because she had written not one, but two very frank memoirs, and had a presence in legislation to building institutions. And then there is, Mary Poonen Lukose, chosen for the battles she fought for science, vaccination, and hygiene are still ones we are fighting today,” explains Rao.

In all these stories, the role of men in furthering or trying to hold back the careers of these women is of immense interest, too. Anandibai’s domineering and abusive husband Gopalrao Joshi was obsessed by the idea of women’s education. He assaulted Anandibai for cooking instead of studying, often flinging chairs and books at her. In her success, he saw personal glory, and Anandibai was not oblivious to it. “It is very difficult to decide whether your treatment of me was good or bad. If you ask me, I would answer that it was both. It seems to have been right in view of its ultimate goal; but, in all fairness, one is compelled to admit that it was wrong,” she wrote in a letter to him. Yet, she remained, “a good wife,” insisting on wearing only the saree in America, eating vegetarian food, resisting any attempts of converting to Christianity. It compels us to ask, if that was why history-keepers were rather more generous towards her, when compared to the other rebellious lady doctors. “I think it was partly because she fit the model of a good wife, which led to media attention from Kesari and other newspapers. It was also because many of her letters in Marathi and the material about her [that] survive in Drexel University [earlier Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania], plus many biographies about her that were written by Caroline Healey Dall and others. In contrast, very little is known about Kadambini. To be fair, Anandibai was also the first, and that brings its own fame,” says Rao. Anandibai died of an illness in February 1887, a few months after her return to India, before she could 
start practising.

On the other hand, the efforts of Kadambini’s husband, Dwarkanath Ganguly, says Rao, seemed more sincere. “Though it is hard to say since not all the women were that forthcoming about their husbands. However, Haimabati did frankly criticise her husband, and Muthulakshmi Reddy had one telling passage advising lady doctors to forget marriage,” she says.

As far as their contribution to modern Indian medicine goes, Rao says, it’s hard to make comparisons, because all of them had very different education. “Haimabati, for instance, did not even go to school... That being said, I think perhaps Muthulakshmi [had a stellar role to play] because she set up the Adyar Cancer Hospital, a pioneering institute at the time, [which] brought in modern science, and helped destroy the notion that cancer was incurable.”

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