Let the Earth Hear Her Voice

Tuesday 5th April 2022 marked the centenary of the death of Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922).

Ramabai was an extraordinary Indian Scholar, Feminist and Educator. Though still little known in the West, she was a pioneer for women's education and participation in public affairs - becoming the first woman to address the Indian National Social Congress; a widely-travelled Sanskrit scholar, despite never having a day at school or college during her childhood, and was author of several pioneering books, including The High Class Hindu Woman and The Peoples of the United States. 

Ramabai was an active social reformer, recording the experiences and life-stories of hundreds of child widows for whom she pioneered a wholly new and distinctive indigenously-rooted setting for and method of education. She travelled across India and many other countries giving lectures on women's rights and she was the first woman to translate the Bible into her own language. Most remarkably for her time, Ramabai charted these paths as a widowed single woman and mother.

Although marginalised in history, since her death Ramabai has started to become more recognised. There are signs that her time has come. The New York Times published an obituary as part of the series, Overlooked No More by Aisha Khan on 14th November 2018. And in her recent book, Azadi, Arundhati Roy wonders why there is no film on this radical campaigner, reformer and tireless friend of women and children in her beloved India.

There have been biographies and academic papers over the decades, but it is following the sustained research, translation and writing by the late Professor Meera Kosambi and her academic colleagues that a comprehensive biography has become possible. Set in social and historical context, Let the Earth Hear her Voice! draws from extensive original material to describe Ramabai's extraordinary life.

Dr White was present for the launch of the centenary edition of the book on 5th April 2022 in Mukti, the community that Ramabai founded near Pune. He has worked on this 800-page study since 1997, beginning with a PhD (2003). He is a so...