Multiple Contestations: Pandita Ramabai’s Educational and Missionary Activities in Late Nineteenth-Century India and Abroad
Author(s)
Kosambi, Meera
Abstract
Unconventionally educated by her father, a Sanskrit scholar, Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922) received the title of Pandita scholar in 1878 and worked for Indian women’s education in Calcutta and Poona (Pune) before the Sisters of the Community of St. Mary the Virgin (CSMV) sponsored her travel to England in 1883 where Ramabai was baptized as Mary Rama and studied at Cheltenham Ladies College. Ramabai also undertook a fundraising lecture tour in the United States before returning to Calcutta in 1889 where, with the support of the American Ramabai Association, she opened the Sharada Sadan, offering both academic and vocational instruction to Hindu widows. Opposition to women’s education compelled Ramabai to relocate her school and to align herself with Christian missionaries, but her nondenominational approach to her primary objective of providing Indian women with opportunities for education and independence, and her opposition to patriarchal institutions, created tension with the Christian missions as well. Ramabai’s life and work has been marginalized in both Indian and Christian missionary historiography.
