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Anandibai Joshee was the first Maharashtrian woman to leave Indian shores in the latter half of the 19th century
for higher studies abroad to becOme the first Indian woman to qualify as a medical doctor. The Maharashtrian psyche
remains captivated by the image of Anandibai as a submissive and obedient girl-wife who fulfilled her husband's
visionary ambition for her. However, the series of images sketched by Anandibai's own words produce a self-portrait
in which the submissive wife coexists with an intelligent woman dispassionately perceptive of herself and her society.
This essay attempts to reach the 'real' Anandibai and reclaim her fragmented feminism.
WOMEN'S voices from the past, sometimes and support, was a personal commitment sketching the contours of Anandibai's life,
cogent and sometimes hesitant in articulating aimed at serving her fellow women, which the essay analyses the internal tensions and
the feminine experience and the feminist she defended publicly and sustained through fragmentation in her views on a variety of
protest, make it possible for us to contest perseverance against heavy odds. Hidden by gender issues, contextualises her within the
the received history of the late 19th century these foregrounded events was her less contemporary feminist thought, and assesses
Maharashtra. This history has consistently publicised personal life, itself a continuous the impact of her public stance on the
represented the reformist men as the sole struggle on many fronts, which ended women' s cause in Maharashtra." It concludes
crusaders against gender injustice in orthodox abruptly a little short of her 22 birthdays.3 by contrasting Anandibai's 'retrieved' image
Hindu society, successful in wresting If Anandibai captured, the popular with her popular image, and underscores the
emancipatory privileges for the benefit of imagination during her lifetime (and even need to free real-life women from a
women, posited as passive, mute objects a hundred years after her death), it was as fictionalised portraiture, as an essential part
who participated neither in the protest nor a young woman at the very threshold of life, of the feminist agenda.
in the struggle. The discrepancy between the who ventured into the unknown beyond the
available evidence and the conclusion which seas at the behest of her loved and revered I
disregards it is a matter of the hitherto largely reformer husband; who mastered the A Life-Sketch
uncharted politics of gender reform [Kosambi demanding vocation of a physician in order
1995b]. As part of the same politics, the to heal her suffering and neglected sisters; The initially conventional parameters of
feminist voices themselves have been and who died prematurely in her.prime, the life of Anandibai Joshee, nee Yamuna
effectively stilled and obscured by official sacrificed at the altar of these reformist Joshi, gave little indication of her future
history as well as mainstream society, through aspirations - thereby lending herself all too trials, tribulations and triumphs.9 Born on
a variety of strategies - by simply ignoring easily to the roleof a tragi-romantic heroine. March 30, 1865 in an impoverished
their existence, as in the case of Tarabai Thus the Maharashtrian psyche remains aristocratic Brahmin family of Kalyan near
Shinde's booklet on women and men,' and captivated by the image of Anandibai Joshee Bombay, Yamuna was one of the four
Rakhmabai's published letters on child as a submissive and obedient girl-wife who children who survived out of the total of nine
marriage and enforced widowhood;2 or by fulfilled her husband's visionary ambition born to Ganpatrao Joshi and his second wife
totally marginalising extraordinary women for her and who died even as she attained Gangabai. The proverbial unwanted daughter
and their contribution, as in the case of the glorious destiny he had outlined for her. suffered an attack of smallpox in childhood
Pandita Ramabai;5 or by co-opting a partial However, the series of images sketched which left faint marks on her face, doing
feminist into the pantheon of traditional by Anandibai's own words jigsaw into a little to improve her plain wheat-
female role models, as in the case of self-portrait - a somewhat fragmentary, complexioned looks. However, thanks to
Anandibai Joshee. Explored here is this last sometimes contradictory, but always a the unusual pampering by her maternal
case - an exemplar of the subversive process distinct, identifiable and cohesive self- grandmother who stayed with the family,
which transmuted an intelligent and portrait - in which the submissive, obedient Yamuna grew up sturdy and even earned the
independent woman and a potential threat wife coexists with an intelligent young nickname of 'wrestler' after defeating a
to convention into a popular incarnation of woman who is dispassionately perceptive of somewhat older male cousin in a friendly
a traditional husband-worshipping wife, herself and her society, independent in her fight.
shorn of her individual achievements. reasoning about contemporary genderreform Prompted by vaguely progressive ideas
Anandibai Joshee's life (1865-1887) was issues, fearless in articulating the obstacles which penetrated through the family's
the stuff that legends are made of. The child to women's education in India, and firmly otherwise orthodox lifestyle, Ganpatrao
of an orthodox brahmin family, she was the anchored to an Indian cultural and enrolled Yamuna in the school held in a part
first - and at the age of 18, also the youngest nationalistic identity. Through this of the family mansion, where she picked up
- Maharashtrian woman to leave the Indian fragmentary selfrportrait made up of a rudimentary literacy, though preferring to
shores in 1883 for higher studies abroad.4 multiplicity of images, we try to reach the play truant and spend her time in games with
She was also the first Indian woman to 'real'Anandibai and reclaim her fragmented the neighbourhood girls. The indulgent father
qualify as a medical doctor, having received feminism. boasted about Yamuna's ability to read, to
an American medical degree in 1886, before This essay aims to contribute to the his much shocked visitors who shared the
completing 21 years, during an era which rewarding exercise of reconstructing mainstream society's opposition to women's
forbade even simple vernacular literacy to women's 'doubly refracted' history,6 and education.
women. Her choice of a medical career, situates Anandibai within the emergent At the same time, in a reversal of the usual
though made partly with her husband's help feminismin 19thcentury Maharashtra.7 After parental roles, Yamuna's mother treated her