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Rukhmabai
‐
Medical doctor and women's rights activist
Other names
Rukhmabhai
Place of birth
Location(s)
NW3 2QG
United Kingdom
Place of death
Bombay, India
Date of time spent in Britain
1889–94
About
Born in 1864, Rukhmabai was married at 11 years to Dadaji Bhikaji, then aged 19. When her in-laws insisted that she move into the marital home some years later, Rukhmabai refused and the case was brought to court. The case came to the attention of the British press as the issue of child marriage and the rights of women were brought to the fore. Although the case went in Rukhmabai's favour, an appeal went in Dadaji's favour.
A fund was raised for Rukhmabai to travel to England to study medicine. In 1889 she arrived in England. She enrolled in the London School of Medicine and qualified as a doctor in 1894 (having also studied at the Royal Free Hospital). She returned to India and worked as the Medical Officer for Women in Surat for twenty-two years and then in Rajkot for twelve years.
Harvey Carlisle (wrote to The Times with Rukhmabai's letter in 1887), Eve McLaren, B. M. Malabari, Louisa Martindale (classmate at London School of Medicine), Sir Monier Monier-Williams (wrote to the press in relation to her case), Dr Edith Pechey Phipson (championed Rukhmabai in Bombay and helped raise funds for her to study in UK), Pandita Ramabai, Cornelia Sorabji.
'Indian Child Marriage (an Appeal to the British Government)', New Review, 16 (September 1890), pp. 263–9
'Purdah – the Need for Its Abolition', in Mithan Choksi and Evelyn Gedge (eds) Women in Modern India (Fifteen Papers by Indian Women Writers) (Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala & Co., 1929), pp. 144–8
Burton, Antoinette, 'From Child Bride to "Hindoo Lady": Rukhmabai and the Debate on Sexual Respectability in Imperial Britain', American Historical Review 103.4 (October 1998), pp. 1119–46
Chandra, Sudhir, Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women's Rights (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Forbes, Geraldine, Women in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
de Souza, Eunice and Pereira, Lindsay (eds) Women's Voices: Selections from Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Indian Writing in English (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002)
The Times (1887)
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
