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 As the first blog entry got exhausted. My second book |
| In 1887, a court in Bombay gave a young woman named Rukhmabai two choices. Go live with the husband you were forced to marry as a child. Or go to prison. She chose prison. Her answer shocked a nation. It ignited a debate that spread from India to England. And it helped change the law for millions of girls who would come after her. This is the story of how one woman's refusal brought an empire to its knees. Rukhmabai was born in Bombay in 1864. Her mother, Jayantibai, knew firsthand the cruelty of child marriage—she had been married at fourteen, became a mother at fifteen, and was widowed at seventeen. When Rukhmabai was eight, her mother remarried a man named Dr. Sakharam Arjun, an eminent physician and social reformer. He was different from other men of his time. He believed girls should be educated. He filled his home with books and encouraged Rukhmabai to study. But even reformers had limits in 1870s India. When Rukhmabai was eleven years old, she was married to a nineteen-year-old named Dadaji Bhikaji. It was arranged by her maternal grandfather, following the customs that had governed Indian society for centuries. She was a child. She had no voice. She had no choice. Under the customs of the time, Rukhmabai didn't immediately move in with her husband. She stayed with her mother and stepfather, continuing her education in secret while Dadaji was supposed to "become a good man." He didn't. While Rukhmabai grew into an intelligent, cultured young woman—reading voraciously, attending lectures, corresponding with reformers—Dadaji descended into laziness and debt. He dropped out of school. He fell under the influence of a scheming uncle. And he began to see his child bride as the solution to his financial problems. In 1884, when Rukhmabai was twenty years old, Dadaji demanded that she come live with him. She refused. He took her to court. The case of Dadaji Bhikaji versus Rukhmabai became the most publicized legal battle in nineteenth-century India. Dadaji sued for "restitution of conjugal rights"—a legal term that meant, essentially, that his wife was his property and the court should force her to return to him. Rukhmabai's defense was unprecedented. She argued that she had been married as a helpless child, at an age when she couldn't possibly understand what marriage meant. She argued that she had never consented. She argued that a woman should not be treated as property to be claimed. No one had ever made these arguments in an Indian court before. In 1885, Justice Robert Pinhey ruled in her favor. He declared that English law applied to consenting adults—and Rukhmabai had been an infant, incapable of consent. Conservative India exploded. Traditionalists accused the court of attacking Hindu customs. Balgangadhar Tilak, the nationalist leader, wrote that Rukhmabai's defiance was the result of too much English education. Religious leaders warned that Hinduism itself was in danger. The case was appealed. And in 1886, a higher court reversed the decision. In March 1887, Justice Farran issued his ruling: Rukhmabai must go live with her husband, or face six months in prison. Her response became legendary. "I would rather go to prison," she declared, "than submit to a marriage I did not consent to." The words traveled across oceans. British newspapers covered the case extensively. Women's magazines in England rallied to her cause. The famed scholar Max Müller wrote that Rukhmabai's education had made her the best judge of her own choices. Meanwhile, Rukhmabai picked up her pen. Writing anonymously as "A Hindu Lady" in The Times of India, she published fierce essays attacking child marriage. She wrote about girls forced into motherhood before their fourteenth birthdays. She wrote about the death of dreams, the suffocation of potential, the theft of childhood. "This wicked practice has destroyed the happiness of my life," she wrote. "It comes between me and the thing I prize above all others—study and mental cultivation." Her words reached Queen Victoria herself. Rukhmabai wrote directly to the Queen, appealing for justice. She asked for one simple change to Hindu law: that marriages performed before age twenty for boys and fifteen for girls should not be legally binding. "This jubilee year must leave some expression on us Hindu women," she wrote, "and nothing will be more gratefully received." In July 1888, a settlement was finally reached. Dadaji accepted 2,000 rupees to dissolve the marriage and relinquish all claims to Rukhmabai. She was free. But she wasn't finished. With support from Dr. Edith Pechey, a pioneering British physician, Rukhmabai traveled to England to study medicine. In 1894, she graduated from the London School of Medicine for Women. She returned to India as one of the first practicing female doctors in the nation's history. For the next thirty-five years, Rukhmabai served as Chief Medical Officer at women's hospitals in Surat and Rajkot. She treated patients from every class and caste. She trained women in nursing and hygiene. She worked through epidemics when others fled. And she never stopped fighting. Even after retirement, she published pamphlets attacking the practice of purdah—the forced seclusion of women. In her will, she left her home to advance girls' education. The legal battle she fought in her twenties had consequences that outlived her by generations. In 1891—just three years after her case concluded—the British government passed the Age of Consent Act, raising the minimum age for marriage. It was the first major legal reform protecting girls from child marriage in India. It would not be the last. Rukhmabai died on September 25, 1955. She was ninety years old. She had outlived the husband who tried to claim her. She had outlived the empire that ruled her country. She had outlived the customs that tried to silence her. In 2017, Google honored her with a Doodle on what would have been her 153rd birthday. But her real legacy isn't a Doodle or a statue or a law with her name on it. Her legacy is every Indian girl who goes to school instead of becoming a bride. Every woman who chooses her own future. Every voice that refuses to be silenced. Rukhmabai was eleven years old when they married her off. She spent the rest of her life making sure no one could do the same to the girls who came after her. |
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