10 Indian-Christian Women Nation Builders & Freedom Fighters
The Indian Christian community has made disproportionate contributions to the Indian freedom struggle and many other causes meant to uplift the people of India. However the contributions of Indian women to these struggles are often ignored or forgotten. This articles seeks to highlight the lives and accomplishments of 10 Indian Christian women who dedicated their lives to fighting for independence, advocating for social justice or helping to build the institutions of a newly independent India.
- Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati (1858–1922)
Born as Rama Dongre, into a Marathi speaking Hindu brahmin family, she received the titles of ‘Pandita’ and ‘Sarasvati’ in 1878 from Calcutta University in recognition of her knowledge of Sanskrit works. It was following the death of her husband in 1882, when she was just 23 years old, that Ramabai, a widow and a single mother, began to dedicate her life to women’s rights.
Following her husband’s death she founded the Arya Mahila Samaj which sought to promote the cause of women’s education and eliminate misogynistic practices such as child marriage. She advocated for the training of women teachers and administrators as a way to ensure equitable access to education, for Indian women, in a society where the overwhelming majority of men still opposed the idea of women’s education.
In 1883, Ramabai travelled to the United Kingdom where she converted to Christianity. She was particularly inspired by the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament. She also travelled to the United States where she gained the support of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Fun fact, Ramabai is a relative of Anandibai Joshi, one of the first female Indian doctors, and even attended her graduation in 1886.
During a severe famine in 1896, Ramabai travelled through rural Maharashtra on a relief mission, rescuing thousands of vulnerable women and children. This eventually led to the founding of the Mukti Mission which sought to provide a home and refuge for destitute women, children and disabled persons. By 1900, the Mukti Mission was home to nearly 1,500 residents and still operates to this day.
Ramabai was also involved in the Indian Independence Movement and was one of the 10 women delegates to the Indian National Congress in 1889. She was a prolific writer and literary scholar. She authored several books, most notably ‘The High-Caste Hindu Woman’ which detailed misogynistic cultural practices in South Asia such as child brides and the social alienation widows (viewed as cursed or unlucky) endure. She also translated the Bible into Marathi from its original Hebrew and Greek.
Ramabai’s contributions as a nation builder, devout Christian and women’s rights activist have earned her many honors. She was awarded the Kaisari-i-Hindi Medal in 1919 for her community service, has been recognized by the Episcopal Church with a feast day on April 5 in their liturgical calendar and has had commemorative stamps and roads named after her in India.
2. Accamma Cherian (1909–1982)
Accamma Cherian was a Malayalee freedom fighter from Kerala. After completing her university education in 1931, she worked as a teacher eventually becoming the head mistress (principal) before quitting in 1938 to join the State Congress and dedicate herself to the Indian freedom struggle full time.
Cherrian led a mass rally to the Kowdiar Palace demanding an end to the ban on the State Congress and the dropping of charges against its leaders. This eventually led to a stand-off during which a British police chief ordered his men to prepare to fire on the 20,000 marchers assembled. Cherrian intervened an uttered the now famous lines, “I am the leader. Shoot me first before you kill others”. This led to a de-escalation and prevented a massacre. News of her bravery spread across the country and she was nicknamed ‘Jhansi Rani of Travancore’.
Cherrian also founded the Desasevika Sangh, an all woman volunteer group, meant to increase women involvement in the Indian Independence Movement. Her dedication to the cause led her to being imprisoned twice by British officials. She eventually went on to become the acting president of the State Congress in 1942 and was also notable for opposing calls from C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar’s desire to see Travancore be independent from India.
Following independence, Cherian severed in the Travancore Legislative Assembly. She died in 1982 and is memorialized with a statue and park in Trivandum, Kerala.
3. Cornelia Sorabji (1866–1954)
Cornelia Sorabji was the daughter of Rev. Sorabji Karsedji who was a key figure in persuading Bombay University to begin admitting women. She became the first female graduate of Bombay University and then became the first woman to study law at Oxford University.
Upon returning to India in 1894, she played a key role as India’s first woman advocate. The cultural tradition of purdah meant that many Indian women were forbidden to leave their homes, in the name of female modesty, and thus cut off from the broader role. This left women in a vulnerable situation. Sorabji noted that many of these women had been denied inheritances left to them by opportunistic male relatives who knew they could not leave the home or speak to a male lawyer. Sorabji was given permission to enter their please but could not defend them in court as she was not a barrister. Sorabji had bassed the LLB examination, but would not recieve legal recognition as one, until laws were changed in 1923 to allow women to be barristers.
Sorabji began petitioning as early as 1902 that female legal advisors be created to represent women in provincial court. She was appointed to one such position in 1904 in the Court of Wards of Bengal. In this role, Sorabji helped 100s of women and orphans fight legal battles often charging no fees to low-income clients. Sorabji was also involved in several feminist organizations like the National Council for Women in India and the Federation of University Women. Though she opposed to idea of wholesale Westernization, she strongly believed a reform was needed to eliminate negative cultural practices like child marriage and the alienation of widows.
Sorabji was controversial for opposing Indian independence however, fearing that women’s liberation in India was not strong enough to not be undone by religious fundamentalism. This led to her ostracism from several circles and strained her relationship with several other prominent Indian Christian women who were pro-independence.
4. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur (1887–1964)
Amrit Kaur was born into a Punjabi royal lineage with her father being the youngest son of the Raja of Kapurthala, who converted to Christianity and married the daughter of a Bengali missionary. Kaur was the youngest of their 10 children.
Raised as a Protestant Christian she entered the Indian Independence Movement, following the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre when British forces killed 400 peaceful protestors in Amritsar, Punjab. She began actively working in the Indian Freedom Movement as a member of the Congress Party and close associate of Mahatma Gandhi. She also became a strong advocate of women’s rights within the movement campaigning to abolish misogynstic practices such as child marriage, purdah (the segregation and confinement of women inside the home), and the devadasi system.
In 1927, she founded the All India Women’s Conference in 1927 and was jailed by the British authorities for her participation in the Dandhi March, let by Mahatma Gandhi. In 1934 she began living in Gandhi’s ashram, adopting an austere lifestyle that contrasted greatly from the royal luxury she was born into. Amrit Kaur, along with the Tamil economist and freedom fighter J.C. Kumarappa, would go on to be the two Indian-Christians in Gandhi’s inner circle.
She was jailed again in 1937 during a goodwill mission to what is now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, in Pakistan and was imprisoned once more in 1942 for her involvement in the Quit India Movement. As Indian Independence began to appear on the horizon in the 1940s, Kaur began to advocate for universal suffrage and also served as chairwoman of the All India Women’s Education Fund Association. For these efforts, TIME Magazine declared her the ‘Woman of the Year’ in 1947.
Post-independence, Kaur become an elected representative and severed as Minister of Health for 10 years, during which she led several major public health campaigns to eradicate and limit the spread of malaria and tuberculosis. She also established the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a collection of medical colleges and research institutes.
Despite her old age, Kaur worked tirelessly to advancing the causes of women’s rights, children’s welfare and improving public health. She was a key founding member of the Indian Council of Child Welfare and chairperson of the Indian Red Cross. On her death in 194, she was a member of the Rajya Sabha and held leadership roles in several public health organizations.
5. Dr. Hilda Mary Lazarus (1890–1978)
Dr. Hilda Mary Lazarus was born in 1890 in what is now Visakhapatnam in what is now Andhra Pradesh in South India. She received her medical degree from Madras Medical College and won a gold medal for her outstanding work in midwifery. She went on the receive a specialization in obstetrics and gynecology in the United Kingdom. She joined the Lady Hardinge Medical College in New Delhi, the only medical college in India that was women only and open to people of all religions.
During her career she dedicated herself to the promotion of women and maternal care. She began learning several new Indian languages, aside from her native Telugu, in order to train more women as nurses and midwives. She eventually went on to serve as Director of Vellore Medical College, authoring a book on her experiences as a doctor.
In 1961 she received the Padma Shri award for who contributions to women and maternal care in India in additional to the Order of the British Empire and Kaisar-i-Hindi Gold Medal from the United Kingdom.
6. Violet Hari Alva (1908–1969)
Violet Hari Alva was a Gujarati Christian freedom fighter and lawyer. The daughter of an Anglican reverend, she was orphaned at age 16, and care for by her adult siblings. She eventually went on to become an English language professor at the Indian Women’s University in Bombay.
In 1944 she became the first woman advocate in India to have argued a case before a full High Court bench. She also began a magazine titled ‘Indian Women’. She would go on to serve as deputy chairman of the Bombay Municipal Corporation and also as the President of the Juvenile Court. All the while she was involved in several organizations such as the Young Women’s Christian Association and the Business and Professional Women’s Association.
Alva also became a supporter of the Indian Independence Movement and a member of Congress and married fellow Indian-Christian freedom fighter, Joachim Alva. Her activities as a freedom fighter would eventually lead to her imprisonment by British authorities in the Arthur Road Jail. During this time, Alva brought her 5 month year old baby son to jail with her.To further support the independence movement she leveraged her experience and ties in the publishing would to create the ‘Forum’ magazine in 1943 which was dedicated to publishing and disseminating pro-independence writings and giving fellow freedom fighters a platform to voice their ideas.
Following independence, Alva served as a member of parliament where she advocated for family planning education and tools to be made more available and expansion to the Indian Navy. She would go on to become the Deputy Minister of State for Home Affairs and then the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. She passed away in 1969 and Parliament was adjourned early in her honor. She and her husband were honored in 2007 with a portrait in parliament for being the first parliamentarian couple in Indian history.
7. Constance Prem Nath Dass (1886–1971)
Constance Prem Nath Dass was born into a Punjabi-Protestant family and completed her university education at the University of Allahabad. She went on to become the first Indian woman to sever as the principal of a Christian college in India, at Isabella Thoburn College.
Dass dedicated herself to securing admissions fees for poor and underprivileged people, organizing for donations and providing information on scholarships. She continued this work even during World War II when budgets cuts significantly impacted the ability of many Indian students to pursue their education. She also worked to promoting the expansion and modernization of university education in India.
Dass was also a strong support of the Indian Independence Movement. She was notable for her extremely progressive views on education, believing in a holistic model of learning that strongly emphasized the responsibilities and duties Indian graduates have towards working to build up their country. She believed students from different religious and cultural backgrounds she study together to promote an atmosphere of tolerance and cooperation across communities that would be vital for India’s success as a nation.
8. Dr. Gurubai Karmarkar (?-1932)
It’s not known when Dr. Gurubai Karmarkar was born, however she is of Marathi background. She became the second Indian woman to graduate from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886 and returned to India in 1893.
Her medical practice was dedicated to providing care to the poorest and most marginalized people in Indian society. Lower caste people, including so-called “criminal castes”, child brides, widows (seen as cursed) and lepers. She also played an instrumental role in providing medical care during famines and during the 1916 plague outbreak.
Dr. Karamarkar also spoke openly about the evils of cultural practices such as child marriage, discrimination against widows, and casteism. One early incident that impacted her greatly was of a ‘child-bride’ who suffered extreme abuse from her “husband” and “in-laws” which included the branding of her feet to prevent her from running away.
Following her retirement, she donated her personal wealth to open the ‘Dr. Gurubai Karmarkar Wing’ at the Lincoln House in Bombay, India.
9. Neidonuo Angami (1950-Present)
Neidonuo Angami is an Indian social worker from the Northeastern state of Nagaland, home to the Christian tribal Naga people. In 1984, she founded the Naga Mothers’ Association, to address the growing public health challenges of alcholism and drug abuse that were facing the Naga people.
She began by organizing women across Naga tribes with the common goal of addressing the issues of addictions and the social ills it can cause such as domestic violence, crime, family breakdown and the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Shelters and rehabilitation centres for addicts were established along with a clinic and hospice centre for people with HIV/AIDS.
She also began the ‘Shed No More Blood’ campaign which sought to promote national unity and end separatist violence in the state by encouraging insurgents to drop their weapons and join mainstream politics. She played a critical role in the brokering of a ceasefire between the insurgents and government. Her social activism and contributions to peace and national unity have led her to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 and receive the Padma Shri in 2000.
10. Lilavati Singh (1868–1909)
Lilavati Singh was born in what is now Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh to Indian Christian parents. In 1895 she earned a degree in English literature from the University of Allahabad, becoming one of the first two women to earn a degree from the institution.
She would go on to become a professor of literature and philosophy at Isabella Thoburn College becoming one of the first Indian women to become a professor. While teaching, she devoted her energy to inspiring her female students who belonged to the first generation of Indian women to receive a modern education to take advantage of all opportunities they receive in order to achieve their full potential. She would go on to serve as chair of women’s committee of the World Students’ Christian Federation. She also edited a women’s newspaper entitled Rafik-i-Niswan.
Singh realized the importance of Indian Christians developing their own indigenous literature. She dedicated herself to the translation of Christian works into Indian languages and was a strong admirer of the African-American intellectual, Booker T. Washington and translated his biography for publication in the Indian Christian newspaper Kankab-i-Hind.
Singh’s life was cut short by post-surgery complications and she passed away at the age of 40 while on a speaking tour through the United States. A Lilavati Singh dormitory at Isabella Thoburn College was built in her honor.
