Lady Doctors, by Kavitha Rao, brings the spotlight on country’s pioneering women doctors

Sarika Sharma

It is often said in jest that the women are all liberated, it is the men who now need liberation. But those who mock feminism forget that following centuries of subjugation by men, whenever women took one step at emancipation, partriarchy was pulling them back two steps. First barring them from pursuing their dreams, then impeding their progress by way of social ostracisation, and often erasing their achievements altogether.

‘Lady Doctors’ by Kavitha Rao is the result of a series of such erasures — from both our textbooks and memories — of the achievements of India’s first lady doctors. Had their writings not been subject to conscious scrutiny, this book would have encapsulated the stories of more such pioneers. Better still, it could have been turned into several books, dedicated to each of these women.

At a time when medicine is a highly sought-after career for Indian women, it is hard to imagine what it was like for them. The book tells how firmly they were bound in fetters of family, caste and society, and how fiercely they fought to escape. Rao, a London-based journalist and author, unearths the stories of six women from the 1860s to the 1930s, who defied the idea that they were unfit for medicine by virtue of their gender.

There is the inspiring yet tragic story of Anandibai Joshi, who was the first Indian woman to study medicine, but could not practice it for she died at 22.

She was followed by several other women. Kadambini Ganguly became the first Indian woman to practice medicine. A low-profile unsung Bengali doctor, her achievement is often confused with that of Rukhmabai Raut, who was also the subject of a 2016 Marathi film. While Anandibai and Rukhmabai have been lucky to have biographies written about them, Rao’s research also brings the spotlight on the life of Chennai’s Muthulakshmi Reddy, who established the Adyar Cancer Institute, and Mary Poonen Lukose, India’s first surgeon general and first woman legislator.

The sixth of Rao’s subjects is Haimabati Sen, who, without any encouragement, dreamt of becoming a doctor, studied at a third-rate medical college, yet, somehow, endured. Her astonishing memoir, “unprecedented in frankness”, as Rao says, was discovered only recently and became the basis of her bio here.

To Rao’s credit is her indepth research, whose seed lay in a Google Doodle dedicated to Rukhmabai. The forgotten lives of these pioneers will show light to modern women who still find themselves fighting prejudices all the time.