While an 1880 case in a Bombay high court by a child-bride, Rukhmabai, renewed discussion of such a law, the tragic death of this eleven-year-old Bengali girl, Phulmoni Dasi , due to forceful intercourse by her 35-year-old husband in 1889, necessitated intervention by judiciary.
Rukhmabai ( November 22, 1864 - September 25, 1955), was an Indian woman who became one of the first practicing women doctors in colonial India. She was also at the heart of a landmark legal case described above She herself was married off at the age of eleven to a nineteen year old groom Dadaji Bhikaji Raut. She however continued to live in the house of her widowed mother Jayantibai who then married Assistant Surgeon Sakharam Arjun. When Dadaji and his family asked Rukhmabai to move to his home, she refused and was supported in her choice by her step-father. This led to a long series of court cases from 1884, a major public discussion on child marriage and on the rights of women. Rukhmabai wrote numerous letters in the newspapers under the pseudonym A Hindu Lady, winning the support of many and when she expressed a wish to study medicine, a fund was created to support her travel and study in England at the London School of Medicine. She subsequently went to England and returned to India as a qualified physician and worked for many years in a women's hospital in Rajkot. To honor her on her 153rd birthday, Google has dedicated its doodle showing a lady with a stethoscope around her neck, surrounded by women patients and nurses in a hospital. In a petition to the Bombay High Court in March 1884, Dadaji plead to restore conjugal rights of the husband over his wife, and the court in its judgment directed Rukhmabai to comply or to go to prison. Rukhmabai refused and told the British India Court that she would suffer imprisonment rather than entering into conjugal relationship with her husband. Apart from being a doctor, Rukhmabai also worked for social causes. She wrote boldly against child marriage and women’s seclusion (purdah). On September 25, 1955, at the age of 91, Rukhmabai breathed her last. Tailpiece : Elizabeth Blackwell (1821 – 1910) was the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, as well as the first woman on the UK Medical Register. She was the first woman to graduate from medical school, a pioneer in promoting the education of women in medicine in the United States; her sister Emily was the third woman in the US to get a medical degree. With regards – S. Sampathkumar
22nd Nov. 2017.