Pandita Ramabai
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Pandita Ramabai
(1858–1922), internationally renowned champion of Indian women's education and liberation. Ramabai Dongre , born into a Brahman family of western India, started her peripatetic existence in infancy when her family embarked on a continuous pilgrimage across the Indian subcontinent, eking out a living by reciting Hindu religious texts. Her father, a generally orthodox Sanskrit scholar, supported women's education despite strong social opposition, and he educated his two daughters along with his son in sacred Sanskrit texts. Because of her older sister's unhappy child marriage, Ramabai was also allowed to remain single despite the customary early marriages for Brahman girls.
After the death of her parents and older sister in the 1876–1877 famine, Ramabai continued the same way of life with her older brother. In 1878 they reached Calcutta (now Kolkata), where Ramabai was instantly lionized for her Sanskrit learning and was awarded the titles of “Pandita” and “Saraswati.” She was inducted into Bengal's social reform effort, and she lectured to women on the need for education. After her brother's premature death in 1880, Ramabai married a Bengali lawyer of a low caste, Bipin Behari Das Medhavi . The marriage was by civil registration, because intercaste and interregional marriages could not be performed with the usual Hindu rituals and also because the couple subscribed to the reformist monotheistic religious movement known as the Brahmo Samaj. After two happy years during which a daughter, Manorama , was born, Medhavi died.
On the invitation of social reformers from the Bombay Presidency, Ramabai went to Poona (now Pune) in western India with her baby daughter and helped to propagate women's education through public lectures and a Marathi book entitled Stri Dharma Niti (Morals for Women). Her establishment of a women's club, Arya Mahila Samaj, to mobilize upper-caste women for reform excited male hostility because the social reform movement and its leadership were considered to be a male preserve. In 1882, Ramabai also testified before the Hunter Education Commission and made a passionate plea for Indian women's medical education to redress the neglect of women's health.
With a view to training as a medical doctor herself, Ramabai went to England in 1883 with the help of the local Anglican nuns of the Community of Saint Mary the Virgin (CSMV), whose headquarters at Wantage, England, had agreed to host her. Unfortunately her increasing deafness precluded medical studies. Soon she converted to Anglican Christianity along with her daughter, and she was enrolled by the CSMV into the Cheltenham Ladies' College for a course in teacher training. The college principal, Dorothea Beale (1831–1906), was a pioneer of British women's education and enjoyed good rapport with Ramabai, whose interaction with the Anglican Church was fraught with differences about both theology and race.
Invited to attend the graduation of Anandibai Joshee (1865–1887), a distant relative of hers, from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Ramabai went to the United States in early 1886. Ramabai's visit, intended to be short, stretched to almost three years. During this time she formed friendships with eminent women, including Frances Willard (1839–1898) of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which published Ramabai's book The High-Caste Hindu Woman (1887), which some view as an Indian feminist manifesto. Ramabai traveled widely, presenting her proposal for a secular residential school for widows in India, to which support was pledged by the Ramabai Association, established at Boston in 1887. Upon her return to India in early 1889, she set up the school, the Sharada Sadan, in Bombay (now called Mumbai) and also wrote an informative Marathi account of her travels and experiences in the United States.
Despite the initial hostility aroused by Ramabai's religious conversion, the Sharada Sadan was supported by all social reformers and progressive sections of society. After the Sadan moved to Poona, social conservatives questioned its secular credentials and thus boycotted it, alleging proselytization. Ramabai herself was then permanently marginalized by mainstream Hindu society. In the late 1890s she moved to the nearby village of Kedgaon to escape the virulent plague that was raging in the city. In Kedgaon she built the Mukti Mission, an overtly Christian institution to house the hundreds of famine victims that she had rescued from central India. The mission, into which the old Sharada Sadan was merged, was a model self-reliant community, with women performing all the chores from cooking to teaching and from tailoring to weaving. The mission was a radical innovation and was the first such experiment in modern India, but it remained peripheral to mainstream society.
In 1907, Ramabai wrote the autobiographical A Testimony of Our Inexhaustible Treasure, located within the tradition of Christian confessions. Ramabai spent the last years of her life at the Mukti Mission (still extant) making a new, scholarly translation of the Bible into Marathi, the language of Maharashtra in western India. In the process she also wrote a Hebrew grammar in Marathi. She also contributed articles to the Mukti Prayer Bell, a journal that her daughter Manorama edited. Ramabai's death at Kedgaon was preceded by that of Manorama a year earlier.
Pandita Ramabai was the only woman in the male-dominated social reform discourse in Maharashtra. In addition to analyzing the patriarchal oppression of high-caste Hindu women at all stages of life, Ramabai attempted to involve women in discussions about social issues, innovatively using various media—public lectures, traditional semireligious narrations, and books—to spread her progressive message. She pioneered the concept of residential schools for women in India, to provide them not only with education and economic self-reliance but also with an alternative shelter from oppressive homes. Her wide international outreach earned her crucial Western support in the form of both funds and voluntary workers, although her Christian agenda alienated her from mainstream Hindu society. Arguably, it was her feminism as much as her Christian proselytizing that brought about a conservative male backlash that marginalized her despite her substantial contribution to women's emancipation. Some of Ramabai's extraordinary and multifaceted contribution is still being retrieved.
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| Pandita Ramabai | |
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 A picture of Ramabai |
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| Born | 23 April 1858 Gangamoola,Karkala,Karnataka,India |
| Died | 5 April 1922 Maharashtra, India |
Pandita Ramabai (Kannada: ಪಂಡಿತಾ ರಮಾಬಾಯಿ)(Marathi: पंिडता रामाबाई) (23 April 1858 – 5 April 1922) was a social reformer and activist in India. She was born as Brahmin Hindu, started Arya Mahila Samaj, later converted to Christianity, and served widows and helpless women of India.
Ramabai was a poet, a scholar, and a champion of improvement in the plight of Indian women and their emancipation. She visited most parts of India, and even went to Britain (1883) and the United States of America (1886–88). She wrote many books including The High Caste Hindu Woman, which showed the darkest aspects of the life of Hindu women, including child brides and child widows, and their treatment by government and society. She had a strong view of what should be accomplished so that women would be able to have more freedom, including the protection of widows and child brides, many of whom were made destitute by in-laws.
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Early life
Ramabai was born into an intellectual Hindu Marathi-speaking Chitpavan Brahmin family at Karnataka (Karkala Taluk, Mangalore District). Her father, Anant Shastri Dongre,who stayed at a place in western ghats called Gangamoola,(Mala village,Karkala,Karnataka) was a Sanskrit scholar and believed that women should have education. Against the prevailing traditional Hindu social structure, he taught Puranas and Sanskrit shlokas to Ramabai as well as his second wife, Ramambai’s mother Laxmibai and how to read and write Sanskrit as well as how to interpret vedic texts. She was raised by her father. Her father faced hardships as he was against the tradition and he advocated education to girl children. He proved in front of Hindu scholars at Soday,(Karnataka) that teaching women Sanskrit was not banned in any shastra or purana.[1]
Her father, mother and sister died during 1874–76; and her brother and she traveled all over India and eventually ended up in Calcutta in Bengal. Their travel included 2,000 miles by foot! [2] Ramabai's Sanskrit knowledge surprised the educated people of Kolkata. She was awarded with the title of Pandita by Calcutta University, and was also awarded with the title of Sarasvati in recognition of her ability to interpret various Sanskrit works.
After her brother's death in 1880, even though it was considered inappropriate for a Hindu to marry into a lower caste, she married, on 13 November 1880, Babu Bipin Behari Medhavi, a Bengali lawyer at Bankipore, who was not a Brahmin but a Shudra. Six months after the birth of their daughter Manorama, Babu died in 1882, and Pandita was once again left with just one family member, her daughter, Ramabai received a scholarship to study in Britain. During her time there she converted to Christianity. When she returned to India, she started homes for the destitute and Christian churches which had Sanskrit script rather than the Roman script which was used for English and other European languages. Ramabai combined her new Christian ideals with her old Indian culture and used this mix to promote change in India. She also lectured across America for three years on the plight of women and child widows in India; and when the Ramabai Foundation was formed in America to collect funds for her projects in India, more than $30,000 was collected. More than 10,000 copies of her book, High Caste Hindu Women were sold in America, the profits from which were used give shelter to destitute women in India!
She wrote a book about her travels to the United States [She wrote about her American experience in a book titled United States Chi Lokasthiti Ani Pravasvrutta (Status of Society of United States and a travelogue)]and it has been published in English translation as Pandita Ramabai's American Encounter. The book is a traveler's account of the people and culture of the United States. It contains a pointed comparison of the status of women in the U.S.A. and India, and suggests that India should follow the path of reform, but is not without criticisms of American society, particularly its race problem.
Social service
In addition to her writing Ramabai founded the Arya Mahila Sabha in 1881, in Pune, the very first Indian feminist organization. She studied and taught about issues which surround Indian women especially those involved in the Hindu traditions. She spoke against the practice of child marriage and the terrible constraints on the lives of child widows.
In 1889 Ramabai established the Mukti Mission in Pune, as a refuge and a Gospel witness for young widows deserted and abused by their families; she also established Krupa Sadan, a home for destitute women. In Sanskrit and most Indian languages MUKTI means liberation. She was also involved in establishing a Church at Mukti. The Pandita Ramabai Mukti Mission is still active today, providing housing, education, vocational training, and medical services, for many needy groups including widows, orphans, and the blind. Ramabai also started SHARDA SADAN, which also provided housing, education, vocational training and medical services for many needy groups including widows, orphans and the blind.
Family life
As Pandita Ramabai involved herself in social service, there was little family life for her. Her childhood was full of hardships, she lost her parents early and her husband expired within two years of marriage. She had also to educate her only daughter Manorama bai. She did this well: Manorama completed her BA at Bombay University, went to America for higher studies, returned to India and worked as Principal of Sharada Sadan, Mumbai. With her help, Pandita Ramabai established Christian High school at Gulbarga (now in Karnataka), a backward district of south India, during 1912, and her daughter was Principal of the school. But Manorama's untimely death was a shock to Ramabai, and within two years of daughter's death, on 5 April 1922 she herself took her last breath. Her contribution to Christianity in India is much appreciated.[3]
Awards and honors
"Pandita" and "Saraswati" at Bengal (before going to Britain), recognising her skills in Sanskrit. Kaisar-i-Hind medal for community service in 1919, awarded by the British Government. She is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on April 5.
On 26 October 1989, in recognition of her contribution to the advancement of Indian women, the Government of India issued a commemorative stamp.
References
Further reading
- Helen S. Dyer, Pandita Ramabai: the story of her life (1900) online
External links
- Life Testimony of Pandita Ramabai
- Panditha Ramabai,Saraswathi: Making of a social entrepreneur [1]
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