Pandita Ramabai exhilarated the parched Indian womanhood with her electrifying energy for women`s welfare . She was the architect of a benefiting system of female education in India. Furthermore, she was the flashing force voting for women`s fundamental rights. The ambience, in which she grew up, was conducive enough for making her the person that she turned up into. Her father, Anant Shastri Dongre, was a Sanskrit scholar and a modern mind, who took care of his daughter`s contact with studies. He personally tutored her on Puranic Sanskrit.

In that age when the social abuse of child-marriage was rampant, her father did not make her marry early. She was permitted to receive the light of knowledge and improve her destiny. Ramabai was only sixteen years old, when her parents died. And yet this mishap could not render her helpless, before the inexorability of fate. She was a literate, educated girl, versed in Puranic Sanskrit. She had the strength of education, which gifted her the caliber to be self-sufficient.

Ramabai proved her mettle. She, accompanied by her brother, toured all through India, enlightening people on the urgency of social changes and female education. Such awesome was her aura, that the spellbound Calcutta ( Kolkata) intelligentsia , conferred on her the honorable title of "Saraswati"- the Hindu Goddess of Learning and Wisdom and "Pandita", meaning learned, because she was at par with the Brahmin Pandits, by virtue of her erudition.

It is amazing to note that Ramabai , the Brahmin woman was much ahead of her times. She was bold enough to assert her own will. On 13th November, 1880, she married her choice, Babu Bipin Behari Madhavi, a Bengali lawyer based at Bankipore in Patna of Bihar. He was in all probability a Shudra, i.e. a lower caste person. This unconventional conjunction of a Hindu Brahmin with a Shudra was bound to ignite controversy and agitation among the orthodox, caste-ridden society.

The following year at the age of twenty -three a daughter was born to the couple. Things were in shape, but misfortune soon befell her. Her husband died, at a much tender age. Life became unbearable for her as a widow. The unjustified burden of customs of a widow-life, tormented her badly. To get rid of the social shackles, she underwent religious conversion, and embraced Christianity. This was a radically rebellious act, in terms of the times she belonged to, and created an uproar in the liberal Calcutta Society, too.

Ramabai retired to Poona, to resume her reformist enterprise as a feminist enthusiast. Her assignment involved delivering education to deprived females as a member of the reformist organization, the Arya Mahila Samaj (Aryan Women`s Society). She was so determined to pursue the cause for female education, that before the Hunter Commission in Poona, she persuasively became vocal about the indispensable inclusion of women in serious roles of doctors and teachers.

She was a trendsetter for the track she pointed out. She tried her best to quench her thirst for the knowledge of medical science. She resorted to the help of the Indian wing of the Anglo-Catholic Community of Wantage in Oxfordshire of England, St. Mary, the Virgin. The cost of her academic pursuit was furnished by her alarming book, Stri Dharma Neeti ("Morals for Women") . This book offered a review on the lives of women, and simultaneously recommended changes in lifestyle for betterment. Ramabai availed of scholarship to study medicine abroad. Accordingly, she, along with her daughter, left for England in 1883.

But problems continued to assail her. She was denied access to lectures, on the pretext that her hearing was faulty. An indomitable spirit, she did not give up. She penned her resentment against the humiliating and harmful rules of widowhood, polygamy, and child-marriage in the fiery, "The High Caste Hindu Woman". The orginal Marathi book was launched with its English version. It gained immense popularity in England and America. However, the blindly conservative India could not approve of its non-conformistic theme. It is a matter of pride to discover that Pandita Ramabai had translated the Holy Bible into her native vernacular of Marathi.

The resolute Ramabai did persist with her inclination to academics, till 1886. Next she voyaged to America, to arrive at the graduation ceremony of her dear cousin, Anandibai Joshi. The funds for her trip was collected from the huge sale of her revolutionary literature, The High Caste Hindu Woman. During 1887, in Boston of America, her fan-clan carved out a Ramabai Association to extend aid to her projects in India. She traversed various places in the United States and Canada , attending educational, benevolent and charitable institutions and undergoing discussions with several groups. It was definitely an achievement on her part, that by 1888, she managed to gather a ransom amount of $30,000 for implementing her plans .

Her experience in the United States, were embodied in the interesting record of hers, called Pandita Ramabai`s American Encounter. The book mirrors a traveller`s research on the nature of people and culture, prevalent in the then United States. We come across her illuminating , critical assessment of the position of women in India, in relation to the U.S. womanhood . In this writing, she has explained here, the need for welcoming social modifications in India, to signify national progress :

" How true is the claim of many Western scholars that a civilization should be judged by the conditions of its women! Women are inherently physically weaker than men, and possess innate powers of endurance; men therefore find it very easy to wrest their natural rights and reduce them to a state that suits the men. But, from a moral point of view, physical might is not real strength, nor is it a sign of nobility of character to deprive the weak of their rights… . [A]s men gain wisdom and progress further, they begin to disregard women`s lack of strength to honor their good qualities, and elevate them to a high state. Their low opinion of women and of other such matters undergoes a change and gives way to respect. Thus, one can accurately assess a country`s progress from the condition of its women."

Pandita Ramabai lived up to her promise of reviving the status of womanhood in India. She inaugurated a school for widows, known as the Sharada Sadan (Home of Wisdom), in Bombay. One curious feature of this school was that it was open to all, irrespective of caste and creed. However, contradictions arose as the residing rules were in keeping with the Brahmin class. The outcome was that a few Hindu widows from the upper strata, such as Godubai, (renamed Anandibai after her marriage to D. K. Karve) joined the Sharada Sadan. But the Hindu traditionalists community sustained their doubts regarding the objectives of Ramabai.

Ramabai`s work seemed to proceed along the lines of traditional Hinduism. She made up an Executive Committee, possessing of Hindu reformers catering sincerely to Hindu practices. Her motive was to counter the condemnation of the hostile orthodox Hindu community. However, her efforts were in vain. Almost, a year later, the Bombay news journals, forwarded discouraging comments on Ramabai and her school. Meanwhile, economic disturbances caused the shift of the school from Bombay (Mumbai) to Poona. It was at this juncture, that the newspaper, Kesari , outrageously blamed her for influencing women to get converted into Christianity. When problems forced her to move the school to Poona, the newspaper Kesari charged her with converting widows to Christianity.

Yet amidst all disputes, the Sharada Sadan, expanded its sway, with rising enrolment. By 1900 the Sharada Sadan was crowded with eighty women, acquiring proper vocational training in teaching and nursing, to emerge as professionally skilled and economically independent women. Ramabai concretized her philanthropic dreams, by forming the second school, Mukti, situated at the outskirts of Poona at Kedgaon. This was a center, meant to house the afflicted victims, of the devastating famine that struck the nation in 1897. She also escorted women and children, raided by famine, to the Sharada Sadan . There she provided the starved and impoverished with food and clothing, and ultimately did the magnanimous job of admitting them to her school.

Ramabai did not distance herself from the welfare responsibility of curbing the epidemic plague. In the meantime, the government on the mobility of people imposed prohibition. Again, restriction was cast by the Poona`s city magistrate, on the extent of member- population in Sharada Sadan. Since she could not keep famine victims in Poona, Ramabai had no other options, than to buy 100 acres of land to install accommodation-complex. By 1900, 2,000 women and children were thronging the grand Ramabai House. It was simply outstanding, for a single diligent woman, who could give school-education and suitable professional training, to so many lives, at the same time. Foreign nations were respectful towards Ramabai`s ventures. Mukti , obtained its monetary grants from the American committee of Ramabai.

History reports that Ramabai inspired her inmates to turn towards Christianity, because a profound integrity was always her strife to attain the target. Her ideology of Christianity was rooted in the religious doctrines upheld by the sisters at Wantage, and the Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Indian Christian allies. Ramabai discredited caste as a major drawback of Hindu society. Abominable caste system, she declared makes the intellect entail wrong judgments and meaningless degradation of work. A demeaning caste-system not only enlarges the rift between individuals, but also kills the prospect of greater self-interest that guides a nation towards advancement and a good democracy.

The curriculum of Ramabai was unique. Literature grounded on ethical ideals was supposed to instill in people the attributes of compassion and sensitivity, as well as morality. Physiology and botany was incorporated into the syllabus to cultivate adequate data about the bodily anatomy and the natural world around him. Precise industrial training encompassed livelihood such as printing, carpentry, tailoring, masonry, woodcutting, weaving and needlework, agriculture and gardening. All students should register themselves with the "unions" or societies like the Temperance Union or the Christian Endeavor Society to demolish pernicious caste discriminations. Ramabai believed in sowing seeds of self-reliability and world-knowledge, from the very nascent state. Therefore, child-members of these societies were taught on simple parliamentary rules and were boosted up to augment their level of confidence.

What ramabai desired, was that each and every individual should be able to handle his own issues. Ramabai`s immense contributions were enough to win her a place on the high pedestals of glory. Still, the way she used to implore people for accumulating under the one umbrella of Christianity, has faded the due prestige, she deserves. Her ways agonized some of the eminent men in western India. Arabia whereas defended that the reason for disappointment was because of the fact that some of her fellow-mates, hail from the aristocrat section of the society. Had her realm be limited to the lower, underprivileged class, then no disturbances would have been there.

In 1919, the king of England bestowed on her the Kaiser-i-Hind award, one of the highest awards that an Indian could boast of during the colonial regime. Ramabai is certainly celebrated as a national icon of Women`s Development movement in India.