Ramabai, Pandita, 1858-1922

Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati (23 April 1858 – 5 April 1922), was a women's rights & education activist, a pioneer in the education and emancipation of women in India, and a social reformer. She was the first woman to be awarded the titles of Pandita as a Sanskrit scholar and Sarasvati after being examined by the faculty of the University of Calcutta. She was one of the ten women delegates of the Congress session of 1889. In the late 1890s, she founded Mukti Mission at Kedgaon village, forty miles east of the city of Pune. The mission was later named Pandita Ramabai Mukti Mission.

Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati was born as Ramabai Dongre on 23 April 1858 into a Marathi-speaking Chitpavan Brahmin family. Her father, Anant Shastri Dongre, a Sanskrit scholar, taught her Sanskrit at home. Dongre's extraordinary piety led him to travel extensively across India with his family in tow. Ramabai's gained exposure to public speaking by participating in the family's public recitation of the Puranas at pilgrimage sites around India, which is how they earned a meager living. Orphaned at the age of 16 during the Great Famine of 1876–78, Ramabai and her brother Srinivas continued the family tradition of traveling the country reciting Sanskrit scriptures. Ramabai's fame as a woman adept in Sanskrit reached Calcutta, where the pandits invited her to speak. In 1878, Calcutta University conferred on her the titles of Pandita and Sarasvati in recognition of her knowledge of various Sanskrit works. The theistic reformer Keshab Chandra Sen gave her a copy of the Vedas, the most sacred of all Hindu literature, and encouraged her to read them. After the death of Srinivas in 1880, Ramabai married Bipin Behari Medhvi, a Bengali lawyer. The groom was a Bengali Kayastha, and so the marriage was inter-caste and inter-regional and therefore considered inappropriate for that age. They were married in a civil ceremony on 13 November 1880. The couple had a daughter whom they named Manorama. After Medhvi's death in 1882, Ramabai, who was only 23, moved to Pune and founded an organization to promote women's education.

After Medhvi's death (1882), Ramabai moved to Pune where she founded Arya Mahila Samaj (Arya Women's Society). Influenced by the ideals of the Brahmo Samaj and Hindu reformers, the purpose of the society was to promote the cause of women's education and deliverance from the oppression of child marriage. When in 1882 the Hunter Commission was appointed by Government of India to look into education, Ramabai gave evidence before it. In an address before the Hunter Commission, she declared, "In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the educated men of this country are opposed to female education and the proper position of women. If they observe the slightest fault, they magnify the grain of mustard-seed into a mountain, and try to ruin the character of a woman." She suggested that teachers be trained and women school inspectors be appointed. Further, she said that as the situation in India was that women's conditions were such that women could only medically treat them, Indian women should be admitted to medical colleges. Ramabai's evidence created a great sensation and reached Queen Victoria. It bore fruit later in starting of the Women's Medical Movement by Lord Dufferin. In Maharashtra, Ramabai made contact with Christian organizations also involved in women's education and medical missionary work, in particular a community of Anglican nuns, the Community of St. Mary the Virgin (CSMV).

With earnings from the sale of her first book, Stri Dharma Niti ("Morals for Women," 1882) and contacts with the CSMV, Ramabai went to Britain in 1883 to start medical training; she was rejected from medical programs because of progressive deafness. During her stay she converted to Christianity. Among the reasons Ramabai gave for her conversion was her growing disillusionment with orthodox Hinduism and particularly what she saw as its ill regard of women.

in 1886, she traveled from Britain to the United States at the invitation of Dr. Rachel Bodley, Dean of the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, to attend the graduation of her relative and the first female Indian doctor, Anandibai Joshi, staying for two years. During this time she also translated textbooks and gave lectures throughout the United States and Canada. She also published one of her most important books, The High-Caste Hindu Woman. Her first book written in English, Ramabai dedicated it to her cousin, Dr. Joshi.

in 1889, she returned to India, and founded a school for child widows in Pune called Sharada Sadan, which had the support of many Hindu reformers, including M.G. Ranade. Although Ramabai did not engage in overt evangelism, she did not hide her Christian faith either, and when several students converted to Christianity, she lost the backing of Pune's Hindu reform circles. She moved the school 100 kilometers west to the much quieter village of Kedgaon, and changed its name to the Mukti Mission. In 1896, during a severe famine, Ramabai toured the villages of Maharashtra with a caravan of bullock carts and rescued thousands of outcast children, child widows, orphans, and other destitute women and brought them to the shelter of the Mukti Mission. By 1900 there were 1,500 residents and over a hundred cattle in the Mukti mission. A learned woman knowing seven languages, she also translated the Bible into her mother tongue—Marathi—from the original Hebrew and Greek.. The Pandita Ramabai Mukti Mission is still active today, providing housing, education, vocational training, etc. for many needy groups including widows, orphans, and the blind.

In 1920 Ramabai's health began to flag and she designated her daughter as the one who would take over the ministry of Mukti Mission. However, Manorama died in 1921. Her death was a shock to Ramabai. Nine months later, on 5 April 1922, Ramabai herself died from septic bronchitis, a few weeks before her 64th birthday.