"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 doctorтАФone of the ямБrst 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 stepdaughterтАЩs education. However, his wife arranged RukhmabaiтАЩs 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 тАЬrestitution of his conjugal rightsтАЭ. The case became a cause c├йl├иbre, raising issues of British and Hindu laws in relation to a husbandтАЩs rights over his wife, and a childтАЩs ability to consent to marriage. Among RukhmabaiтАЩs supporters was the editor of the Times of India, Henry Curwen. He published a letter of hers in 1885. Child marriage, she wrote, тАЬhas destroyed the happiness of my life. It comes between me and the thing which I prize above all othersтАФstudy and mental cultivationтАЭ.
Eventually she appealed to Queen Victoria, who ordered the marriage to be dissolved. Dadaji received ямБnancial compensation and Rukhmabai paid all legal costs. The publicity surrounding the case inямВuenced the 1891 increase in the age of consent for Indian girls from 10 to 12тАФalthough 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 тАЬEdinburgh SevenтАЭ, the ямБrst female medical students in the UK, who was Medical OямГcer 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 womenтАЩs education with politicians such as Lord Kimberley, the Secretary of State for India. Sitting her professional examinations in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and BrusselsтАФwomen were not permitted to do so in EnglandтАФ Rukhmabai qualiямБed in 1894. She returned to India and spent 8 months as house surgeon at the Cama Hospital. She was then appointed Chief Medical OямГcer at the womenтАЩs hospital in Surat, in the state of Gujarat, where she stayed for 22 years. In 1918, Rukhmabai was oямАered a medical oямГcer role in the WomenтАЩs 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 inямВuenced her decision.
Rukhmabai undertook extensive public health work during plague and inямВuenza epidemics, and was awarded IndiaтАЩs 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 WomenтАЩs Society), Rukhmabai continued to campaign for womenтАЩs education and against child marriage and other restrictions on womenтАЩs 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 womanтАЩs place Rukhmabai: doctor and social reformer"
