The doctor who opposed child marriage

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI, JULY 3. Recently, Maharashtra's Women and Child Welfare Minister, Ms. Vimal Mundada, blessed a minor girl who was married off in her home town. Later, she said she was not aware of the bride's age. There was neither an announcement of a probe nor a public outcry, making it just another episode which just put the minister in a spot. Local officials were blamed for not briefing Ms. Mundada about the bride.

About the same time, rich tributes were paid to Dr. Rakhmabai, who, over a century ago - when child marriages had social sanction - successfully resisted her husband, Dadaji Thakur's demand for restoration of conjugal rights. Born in 1864, she was married at the age of 10 without her consent and hence she resisted tradition. Ten years later, she became a doctor.

Rakhmabai, who neither used her father's nor her husband's surname, went on to become the first-ever woman doctor from India, getting her degree in Scotland.

When a book on her Dr. Rakhmabai - an odyssey, written by Dr. Mohini Varde as a tribute to womanhood was released, accolades were heaped on her. She was also one of the founders of the Red Cross Movement in India but what stood out prominently was her refusal to bow to a cruel tradition..

Says Dr. Varde, author of the book, that for her gumption, Dr. Rakhmabai was ``condemned to six months jail or a fine''. The rebellious path-breaker found support from Sir and Lady Cowasji Jehangir, Kamaruddin Tayabji and Mahadev Govind Ranade. Her plea for reform was echoed in the British Parliament but she faced, for her effort, even a criminal defamation suit but the matter was settled out of court.

Today, Dr. Rakhmabai's portrait adorns the precincts of the Bombay University, thanks to an endowment by an eminent ENT specialist, Dr. L. H. Hiranandani, and an award has been set up to mark the annual best effort in medicine by girl students. But, it would appear from what Dr. Hiranandani himself says, ``there are few who are willing to stop such practices as child marriages''..

Undaunted by the court suits, she wrote letters in the Mumbai press then and even took her cause to such greats as Pandita Ramabai and had said in one of her letters that ``I would rather go to jail than live with a person she had been married to without her consent''. There were other reasons like the eye Dadaji Thakur had on the property she would have got from an uncle but in the main, the resistance to child marriage was on the principle that it was an evil.

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