Pandita Ramabai

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PR was a tireless advocate for the importance of education (both secular and religious) for women, and Indian self-reliance. Fifty-five years after her death, A. B. Shah called her the greatest woman produced by modern India and one of the greatest Indians in all history.
Burton, Antoinette. At the Heart of the Empire. University of California Press, 1998.
72
She published in English, Marathi, Hindi and Sanskrit, and her writing was largely tied to her reform work. Her publications include several non-fiction books, pamphlets, and letters on aspects of Indian womanhood, education, and religion in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, as well as poetry, hymns, music, travel books and a translation of the Bible into Marathi.
  • BirthName: Ramabai Dongre
  • Married: Medhavi
  • Religious: Mary Rama
    PR took this name on her conversion to Anglicanism, and often signed herself as such in her English correspondence, but she continued to be known as Pandita Ramabai.
    Burton, Antoinette. At the Heart of the Empire. University of California Press, 1998.
    95
  • Styled: Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati
    Modern-day scholarship refers to PR by her honorific names of Pandita Ramabai or Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati, not by her married or given name. The title pandita or pundita (of which the masculine form is pandit or pundit) means learned woman, and sarasvati (or saraswati) means Goddess of Learning.
    Kosambi, Meera, and Pandita Ramabai. “Introduction: Returning the American Gaze: Situating Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter”. Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter : The Peoples of the United States, 1889, Meera Kosambi and Meera Kosambiedited & translated by , Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 1-46.
    17
    Blumhofer, Edith L. “From India’s Coral Strand: Pandita Ramabai and U. S. Support for Foreign Missions”. The Foreign Mission Enterprise at Home, edited by Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker, University of Alamaba Press, 2003, pp. 152-70.
    153-4
Black and white photograph of Pandita Ramabai, shown from the shoulders up, looking earnestly to the left of the viewer, wearing a white hijab. "Ramabai" is signed below.

Milestones

23 April 1858

Ramabai Dongre (later known as PR ) was born, probably in the Gangamul forest within the Mangalore District of Karnataka in Southern India.
Ramabai, Pandita. Pandita Ramabai Through Her Own Words: Selected Works. Kosambi, MeeraEditor & translator , Oxford University Press, 2000.
115, 116
Blumhofer, Edith L. “From India’s Coral Strand: Pandita Ramabai and U. S. Support for Foreign Missions”. The Foreign Mission Enterprise at Home, edited by Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker, University of Alamaba Press, 2003, pp. 152-70.
153

June 1887

PR 's most famous English book, The High-Caste Hindu Woman, was published privately in Philadelphia to support the Ramabai Association (which funded a school for high-caste widows at Bombay in India).
Bodley, Rachel L., and Pandita Ramabai. “Introduction”. The High-Caste Hindu Woman, Jas B. Rogers, 1888, p. i - xxiv.
xxiii
Kosambi, Meera, and Pandita Ramabai. “Introduction: Returning the American Gaze: Situating Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter”. Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter : The Peoples of the United States, 1889, Meera Kosambi and Meera Kosambiedited & translated by , Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 1-46.
22
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

By December 1889

Yunaited Stetsci lokasthiti ani pravasavrtta (The Peoples of the United States) was published in Bombay(now Mumbai), India. It was PR 's last major work on female education and her longest travel writing.
Ramabai, Pandita. Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter. Kosambi, MeeraEditor & translator , Indiana University Press, 2003.
54
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

5 April 1922

PR died at her home at Kedgaon in Maharashtra, India, in her sixties, of unknown causes.
Blumhofer, Edith L. “From India’s Coral Strand: Pandita Ramabai and U. S. Support for Foreign Missions”. The Foreign Mission Enterprise at Home, edited by Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker, University of Alamaba Press, 2003, pp. 152-70.
169

1922, 1924

PR 's final, massive work, published posthumously, was a Marathi version of the entire Bible: the Old Testament appeared in 1922 and the New Testament in 1924.
Burton, Antoinette. At the Heart of the Empire. University of California Press, 1998.
75-6
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

Biography

Birth and Family

23 April 1858

Ramabai Dongre (later known as PR ) was born, probably in the Gangamul forest within the Mangalore District of Karnataka in Southern India.
Ramabai, Pandita. Pandita Ramabai Through Her Own Words: Selected Works. Kosambi, MeeraEditor & translator , Oxford University Press, 2000.
115, 116
Blumhofer, Edith L. “From India’s Coral Strand: Pandita Ramabai and U. S. Support for Foreign Missions”. The Foreign Mission Enterprise at Home, edited by Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker, University of Alamaba Press, 2003, pp. 152-70.
153

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