Rarely does privilege sit heavy. But, we felt this, as a woman, growing up in 21st century India, after reading London-based journalist Kavitha Rao’s just released 
book, Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India’s First Women in Medicine (Westland).

When in the 1880s, Rukhmabai Raut, took on the “wicked practice” of child marriage, seeking divorce from a man she was married to at the age of 11, all because she wanted to study, she was viciously trolled by the prominent conservatives of Bombay, including activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak. “Do you seriously hope that our women will do anything in the direction of original literature for centuries to come? I know of very few female names who have added perceptibly to the stock of human knowledge,” Tilak had ranted in the pages of The Mahratta. Despite the ridicule, the thick-skinned Rukhmabai, who belonged to the suthar or carpenter caste, couldn’t be broken. In 1887, after a Bombay court ruled that she must live with her husband or go to jail for six months, she chose the latter. As Rao describes, she had “lit a grenade under a cloistered, ossified Hindu society”. Rukhmabai went on to secure admission at the London School of Medicine for Women, returning to practice at Madame Cama Hospital in Bombay, and later, Sheth Morarji Vibhukandas Malawi dispensary in Surat, today named Rukhmabai Hospital. But, her story and that of others, is a reminder for this writer, of the good fight they fought valiantly over a century ago, which has made things possible for women today, especially education.