Pandita Ramabai

Pandita Ramabai was examined in Sanskrit by the pandits of Calcutta, given the title Pandita, and then used it to argue that the texts she had mastered were being used against women. Her father, a Brahmin scholar, had taught his wife and daughter Sanskrit against custom, and the family walked the pilgrimage routes reciting the Puranas for alms until both parents died in the famine of 1876. She married outside her caste, was widowed at twenty-three with an infant, and went to England, where she converted to Christianity - which cost her much of her Indian support without ever making her a compliant missionary subject. The High-Caste Hindu Woman, published in America in 1887, is a direct account of child marriage, enforced widowhood and the treatment of widows, and it raised the money for what followed. Sharada Sadan and later Mukti Mission sheltered widows and famine orphans and taught them trades. She translated the Bible into Marathi from the original languages herself. She was given the titles Pandita and Sarasvati by the pandits of Calcutta in 1878, the first woman so honoured. She addressed the Indian National Congress in 1889 and the American press extensively. Her conversion caused a long public quarrel with Ramabai Ranade and others, and Mukti was accused of proselytising the widows it sheltered, a charge she partly earned and partly refused. During the 1896-97 famine she travelled by bullock cart collecting girls and brought back hundreds. The Mukti Mission at Kedgaon is still running. Her Marathi Bible was finished the year she died.

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