Among those extending full support in transformation of Arya Mahila Samaj (AMS) into an organised movement at grassroots level, were prominent personalities like Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, Dr Ramkrishna Bhandarkar, Justice Kashinathpant Teleng, Hari Narayan Apte, Barrister Narayanrao Chandavarkar, Rao Bahadur Vamanrao Modak, Mr Kelkar, Rev Father Nehemiah Goreh and many other towering men and women in public life in Bombay Presidency.
With the overwhelming support to AMS aims and objectives and with child-widows and widows joining AMS, Ramabai embarked upon motivational tours in Bombay Presidency and propagated her movement objectives. Building up favourable public opinion against superstitious customs and practices, inculcating female education culture in the society and empowering women with their rights, constituted the fundamental objectives of her AMS. Ramabai addressed a large number of meetings, also covering wide ranging subjects such as stringent legislative measures against offenders of bigamy marriages and injustice against women. Women themselves must take a lead and fight against the injustice. Men will not do that. And if women don’t do that, they will be committing the greatest sin (in their life), would be her message to women during her meetings.
It was around this time that the Education Commission under the Chairmanship of Sir William Hunter visited Poona on September 5, 1882. On being summoned before the Commission, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, as a great scholar and educationist, presented brilliant evidence on female education with a plea for setting up an extensive network of educational institutions exclusively for girls, on the basis of her planned roadmap of management pattern by a woman (and not by men). Her second plea, a significant one, pertained to the training and appointment of native women physicians for treatment of women-patients which attracted the serious attention of Her Majesty the Queen Empress and proved to be the origin of Countess Dufferin Movement setting in motion steps for the training and appointment of native women-physicians. This was Ramabai’s greatest achievement in female education, within the very first three months of inception of AMS.
Meanwhile, Ramabai had finalised her plans for her training in English language skills. To meet her travel expenses, she authored her first book in Marathi Stree Dharma Neeti (Ethics for Women) in June 1882 in which she pledged that minimum age for a girl to be married should be nineteen. She made these observations when a child marriages were common in Hindu society. Ramabai left Poona for England along with her young daughter Manorama, in April 1883, arrived at St Mary the Virgin at Wantage in May and commenced her studies, simultaneously, working as Professor of Sanskrit at Cheltanham Ladies College.
During her stay in England, Ramabai accepted Christian faith through her personal convictions, on September 29, 1883. She left for America in February 1886 to attend the convocation ceremony of Mrs Anandibai Joshi, the first Indian woman to graduate in Medicine (MD) in America. For over two and half years that she remained in America, Ramabai travelled over 40,000 miles, underwent Kindergarten training, studied American educational system and addressed public meetings all over America and Canada on position (status) of Indian womanhood.
It was during this period that Ramabai wrote her first book in English The High caste Hindus Woman, describing the deplorable condition of high caste Hindu women in Hindu society. This book, indeed, helped her in mobilising massive public support for Indian womanhood. The American generosity, goodwill and sympathies generated by this book, thus, led to the formation of Ramabai Association of America in Boston, Massachusetts, in December 1887. The Association pledged itself to support education to 50 child widows for 10 years. This assurance marked a milestone in Ramabai’s pioneering contribution to the reforms movement for womanhood in India. Now that Ramabai had achieved her objectives, she sailed from San Fransisco in November 1888 across Pacific to visit Japan and then to India back home.
Soon after her arrival in India, Ramabai started Sharada Sadan in Wilson College premises in Bombay on March 11, 1889, a boarding school for child widows, widows and orphans. Within a few days, Sharada Sadan enlisted a sizeable response of over 30 child widows and orphans. However, after one and a half year, it was shifted to Poona as an educational institution for women in November 1890.
During this period, the fundamentalists and orthodox outfits in Poona launched a fresh wave of social unrest against Ramabai’s shift-over plans of Sharada Sadan to the city. Just as her movement was gaining wider acceptance, fundamentalists, too, intensified their opposition, fiercely abusing her reforms as a threat to the whole fabric of Hinduism. Their ruthless attacks on her character, aims and methods through press criticism, social boycotts, threats to her accursed status and widowhood, vitiated peace and harmony in the Presidency. But Ramabai faced the attacks on her, suffered in silence and remained focused on her goal of helping widows and orphans.
(This is the second part in the three part series. The third part will be published in tomorrow’s edition)
