Talk:Kadambini Ganguly

First woman doctor

• Please check that Dr Anandi Gopal from Puna was first Doctor...

Link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anandi_Gopal_Joshi

Comment - The page Anandi Gopal Joshi claims her to be the first Indian woman who qualified as a doctor from Philadelphia. The article does not have complete information. The dates are a little misleading. Anandibai Gopal Joshi was born in 1865, four years after Kadambini Ganguly. She was married and had a child. The year she passed Entrance/ school exam is not mentioned. She qualified as a doctor from Philadelphia and then died in 1887. It is obvious that she did not practise as a doctor. Even if the claim of Anandi Gopal Joshi passing out earlier holds, Kadambini Ganguly was the first practising woman doctor in South Asia. Moreover, the article does not have any references. May be it would be inserted later. The present Internet link leads to “Forbidden: You don't have permission to access”. -- P.K.Niyogi 02:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Info

The following text is from

Chawla, Maina. (Sept. 30, 2000) Asian Journal of Women's Studies. Volume 6; Issue 3. Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Women's Education in Colonial India: A Study of the Bethune School, Calcutta.

In the 1880s, as an institution for higher education, Bethune entered a new phase of expansion. Although John Bethune's Hindu Female School had been envisaged for girls from orthodox Hindu families, as the institution grew, the policy of religious inclusiveness was liberalized. In 1879, after some debate within the managing committee, Miss Ellen D'Abreu, a Christian student was admitted to the collegiate class. English became more central to the curriculum and science subjects were introduced. In 1883 Kadambini Bose, (later Kadambini Ganguly) applied for admission to the Calcutta Medical College (Karlekar, 1986). She was the wife of Dwarkanath Ganguly, an influential Brahmo leader. Unlike other conservative Brahmo leaders like Keshub Sen, who feared that western education would denationalize Indian women, Ganguly championed a progressive campaign against the purdah system (Kopf, 1979). (***Keshub Sen's conservative stand was borne out in the establishment of the Victoria Female School which was supposed to provide model education for a Bengali girl, stressing both Bengali literature as well as Brahmo religious instruction (Kopf, 1979: 35-8).***) Brahmo leadership successfully campaigned for Kadambini and in 1883, she was admitted as Calcutta University's first woman medical student. (***Previously in 1881, Abala Bose and Miss D'Abreu were refused admission to the Calcutta medical College and had joined the Medical College in Madras (Bethune College, 1883-4).***) Bethune School once again benefited from its privileged status as a model, which progressive elements within the local community were determined to nurture.

Beyond College Life: The Bethune Women

By the 1930s, Bethune School had produced several women graduates who became distinguished educationalists, professionals, and political actors in India's nationalist struggle. As many founded voluntary institutions in Bengal, they carved new roles for themselves, thus setting new patterns for women's voluntarism. Bethune's first graduate and the first woman medical graduate of Calcutta University, Kadambini Bose (later Ganguly), worked as a physician at the Eden Hospital of the Bengal Medical College. She subsequently obtained the higher medical degrees (LRCP and LRCS) from Glasgow and Edinburgh (Forbes, 1996). (***For details of Ganguly's professional career see Forbes, Geraldine (1996), The New Cambridge History of India IV. 2: Women in Modern India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.***) In 1889, she was among the first women delegates at the Indian National Congress. In 1908, she was president of a society formed to raise funds for Gandhi's satyagraha (non-cooperation) movement in South Africa. In 1923, she toured the coal-mining areas of Bihar to study labor conditions of women and child workers.

A contemporary of Kadambini, Abala Bose, founded the Brahmo Girls' School, Calcutta. Bose championed women's education, as she put it, "not because we may make better matches for our girls ... but because a woman like a man, is first of all a mind" (Tharoor, 1990: 47). In the early 1920s, she was deeply involved in the Nari Siksha Samiti (Women's Education Association) and its sister organization, the Vidyasagar Bhavan, which focused on women in rural Bengal, establishing primary schools, maternity and child-welfare centers, adult education, and mother's classes for instruction on first-aid, home-nursing, and child-rearing. With an endowment of Rupees 1,000,000 left by her husband, Sir J. C. Bose, a renowned scientist, she founded the Adult Primary Education Centre (Nag, 1950: 153). When the largest ever National Women's Educational Conference was held in 1927, Bose was a member of its Standing Committee (AIWC, 1927).

Kadambini Roy was a student at Bethune School during the Ilbert Bill agitation (1882-83). She organized girls to hold protest meetings at Bethune, wearing badges in support of the Bill, which proposed to enhance the powers of Indian members of the colonial judiciary. Although she ceased to be active for some years afterwards, when her husband died in 1909, she joined the Bangla Mahila Samiti, a progressive women's organization and worked on social reform projects for women (Kumar, 1993: 49).

In 1889, at the session of the Indian National Congress (INC or Congress) in Bombay, Bethune graduates, Swarankumari Debi and Kadambini Ganguly, were among the six women delegates (Nag, 1950). (***Swarnakumari (1856-1932) founded the journal Bharati, was an active supporter of the `Swadeshi' boycott of British made goods in support of indigenous products. In 1886 she started the `Sakhi Samiti' organization to train widows to teach and aid in spreading women's education. She also organized mahila silpa melas (women's craft fairs) at which handicrafts made by women were sold--thus serving the two purposes, the nationalist one and fund-raising for Sakhi Samiti. The first exhibition was held at Bethune in 1924. Swarnakumari was also a novelist and poet of some recognition (Nag, 1950: 148).***) In the following year, at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress, Kadambini Ganguly delivered the vote of thanks. Though women were never barred from membership of the Congress, such prominence on the political platform was rare for women at the time, even in the West. At the same session, Sarla Debi created a sensation by organizing a chorus of 56 girls to sing a fiery, patriotic Bengali song, urging people of different provinces to join the freedom struggle (Basu, 1976: 17). Thus, women not only began to participate in the deliberations of the Congress, along with men, but also organized pressure groups of their own. In fact, they made use of a wider range of organizational activities available to them through women's community networks.--Aarshiya84 03:36, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi

How about Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi who is also claimed to be the first woman doctor in India?
Mind Swapper (talk) 15:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

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