625977

research-article2015
IBM0010.1177/2396939315625977International Bulletin of Mission ResearchFrykenberg

Article

International Bulletin of
Mission Research
The Legacy of Pandita 1­–11
© The Author(s) 2016
Ramabai: Mahatma of Mukti Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/2396939315625977
ibmr.sagepub.com

Robert Eric Frykenberg

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Abstract
Pandita Ramabai Dongre (1858–1922), renowned for prodigious learning, became
world famous as a social reformer, educator, speaker and advocate for the causes
of women. Her Brahman father had been banished for daring to impart Sanskrit
literacy to her child-mother. Her life-long spiritual quest for liberty (mukti) led her
to an ever deepening relationship to Christ. After sojourns in Britain and America,
she established the Mukti Mission in Kedgaon, India. Her last days were devoted
completing a common “mother-tongue” Marathi translation of the Bible.

Keywords
Pandita Ramabai, Kedgaon, Mukti, Mukti Mission India, Marathi

No word so epitomizes Ramabai as mukti (“liberty”), the name given to her mission at
Kedgaon. Emblazoned on the “Mukti Prayer Bell” were the words “Proclaim LIBERTY
throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants therein, Lev. XXV.X.”

Born on April 23, 1858, atop Gangamal Mountain, Ramabai was carried by her par-
ents down from their forest ashram, and they all then embarked on an endless “pil-
grimage” when she was yet an infant. The family wandered thousands of miles on
foot, from Kashmir to Kanniyakumari. Her earliest memories were of dusty roadside

Corresponding author:
Robert Eric Frykenberg, Professor Emeritus of History and South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
Email: refryken@wisc.edu
2 International Bulletin of Mission Research 

camps and sounds of Sanskrit recitation. Her renowned father, Anant Sastri Dongre
(b. 1795), excommunicated for daring to impart Sanskritic learning to his child
bride, left the training of his child to her mother, Lakshmibai. Before dawn, relent-
less drilling in the gurukul system would begin—reciting single words, then phrases,
and finally full sentences aloud twice, five times, then ten times, until the exact
sounds were printed into memory. One thousand words, and then two thousand,
would be uttered twice, five times, and ten times. Repeating so many words was
exhausting work. Whole vocabularies, dictionaries, grammars, commentaries, and
classics such as the Bhagavata Purana and Bhagavata Gita were committed to mem-
ory. Palm-leaf manuscripts were carefully copied and then wrapped in cloth. Paper,
ink, and printed books were too polluting. By age fifteen, each child in the family
was giving public recitations. From one sacred place to another, crisscrossing the
Indian Subcontinent on foot, sitting cross-legged by the roadside, in shade of a great
tree, at the sacred confluence of rivers, on the banks of a tank, or at the gates of a
temple, family members intoned sacred sounds. Passersby would pause to listen and
leave offerings of flowers, fruits, food, clothing, or money, all in hopes of merit
(puniya). This pattern continued for sixteen years. Then, with resources exhausted
and famine stalking the land, Ramabai’s father, mother, and sister each starved to
death. Ramabai and her brother, Srinivas, “wandered from place to place . . . more
than four thousand miles . . . sometimes going without food . . . from the south to the
north as far as Kashmir.”1

Dramatic debut
The Calcutta they reached in 1878 was emerging into the modern world. The very
name “India” was new. The subcontinent, with its manifold cultures and domains,
kingdoms, and myriads of village communities, was under the sway of the Indian
Empire. With standing armies of up to 300,000 sepoys, and as many native civil serv-
ants, its shadow covered the Indian Ocean. But new forces were challenging this Raj.
Elite communities who had helped to construct the Raj and who had provided its man-
power, money, and methods were demanding an ever larger role. English speaking,
affluent, and forward-looking, this emerging “public” of enlightened journalists, law-
yers, physicians, teachers, bureaucrats, and landed gentry proclaimed themselves
“nationalists.” They saw themselves as Indians, as distinct from foreigners, who sat in
most of the highest seats.
Just twenty-one years old, Ramabai and her words astounded listeners. Learned
pandits could hardly believe their ears. This tiny woman could recite the whole
text of many classics by heart, including the Bhagavata Purana and Panini’s
famous grammar. They composed verses in her honor. At one event, she responded
by composing a poetic Sanskrit response on the spot. They gave her the title
“Pandita” (scholar/teacher) and then “Saraswati.” Elites vied to hear her. Her
instant celebrity symbolized national pride and soon reached beyond India.
Yet, old verities no longer sufficed. The terrible deaths of her family haunted her.
The Manusmritri and the Vedas pronounced women worse than demons; a woman’s
Frykenberg 3

sole hope of svarga (heaven) lay in her husband. Low-caste folk had “no hope of any
sort . . . being lower animals.”2 The “old religion” (sanathanā-dharma) would never
bring her “liberation” (mukti). Turning to the monotheism of the Brahmo Samaj, she
abandoned graven images and ceased giving puranika recitations. Her popularity
mounted, and her well-honed voice held audiences spellbound. But when her friend
Keshub Chandra Sen forced his own daughter into a child marriage, her disillusion
deepened.
More personal tragedies befell Ramabai. Srinivas, her companion since infancy,
suddenly died from cholera. He had enabled her to remain unmarried, something
shocking in her day. Soon after his death, in deference to his last wishes, she married
Bepin Behari Das Medhavi, a handsome and talented lawyer at the Sylhet District
Court and a Gauhati school headmaster. For Ramabai, a Maratha Brahman, to marry
out of caste was an enormity: Bepin Babu was a Kayastha and, as such, a mere Shudra.
One day Ramabai happened upon a Bengali copy of Luke’s gospel. Isaac Allen, a
Baptist missionary friend of her husband’s, answered her questions. “Having lost all
faith in my former religion, my heart was hungering after something better. I eagerly
learnt everything I could.”3 Nineteen months later, Bepin too was struck down by
cholera. Just twenty-four, Ramabai found herself a widow with an infant daughter. At
news of the plight of the “native daughter,” reformers of the Prarthana Samaj invited
her to Pune.

Beginning of public women’s advocacy

In Pune, Ramabai’s commitment to the emancipation of women soon became well
known. Encouraged by Raosaheb Mahdeo Govind Ranade and Sir Ramakrishna Gopal
Bhandarkar, she founded the Arya Mahila Samaj, an elite women’s society. At its first
meeting, on June 1, 1882, she challenged the assembled ladies to free themselves from
oppressive customs, child marriage, illiteracy, and, especially, oppression of child
widows. Mrs. Ramabai Ranade wrote: “She had an amazing skill in winning the hearts
of her hearers to whatever she had to say. The result was that every educated person in
the city who desired to learn was filled with pride and admiration.”4 Ramabai’s first
book, Stree dharma-neeti (“Morals for Women,” June 1882), castigated Brahman men
for mistreating their women and Brahman women for slothful habits that lost the
respect of their men.
Opposition soon mounted. Ranade’s wife recorded: “[Women] detest Panditabai
more and more every day, [saying,] ‘She is a wretched convert! Don’t touch anything
of hers. . . . We cannot tolerate such sacrilege. What an accursed thing! Her father
turned her into a devotee and wedded her to the heavenly bridegroom, Shri Dwarkanath.
And yet, this wretch married a Bengali baboo and polluted herself.5 She has brought
utter ruin on everyone!!’”6 Nevertheless, on September 5, 1882, Ramabai fearlessly
testified before the Hunter Commission on Education: “I am the child of a man who
had to suffer a great deal on account of advocating Female Education. . . . I consider it
my duty, to the very end of my life, to maintain this cause, and to advocate the proper
position of women in this land.”7
4 International Bulletin of Mission Research 

Ramabai’s faith quest soon led her to Nehemiah (aka Nilakantha) Goreh. Also a
Chitpavan Maratha Brahman convert versed in Sanskrit lore, he answered her ques-
tions. She then joined Ranade’s wife taking English lessons from Sister Hurford, an
Anglo-Catholic missionary. The Community of St. Mary the Virgin (CSMV) invited
Ramabai to visit Wantage, Oxfordshire, England. She agreed to come, but only under
the condition that she could teach Sanskrit, and only if she would be under no obliga-
tion to change her faith. Her passage to England was covered by book royalties.

Troubled stay in England

Ramabai and her little daughter no sooner landed in May 1883 than she visited a “rescue
home” at Fulham, London. “Fallen women,” whom Hindus would consider outcastes,
were being reclaimed by the Gospel. If the Samaritan woman could receive “the Infinite
Love of Christ for sinners,”8 if Christ came not to condemn but to save all who turned to
him, surely he could transform downtrodden women of India. On September 29, 1883,
Ramabai and her daughter, Manorama were baptized.
Yet, Ramabai’s time in England was also troubled. Sister Geraldine imposed strict
discipline, regimentation, and Catholicism. Ramabai turned to Dorothea Beale, the
intellectual “blue-stocking” founder/principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College.
Professor Max Müller at Oxford secured her support from the Royal Bounty Fund (via
William Gladstone and Queen Victoria) so that Ramabai could break free of Wantage.
Under Beale, she studied mathematics, science, and literature, in return for teaching
Sanskrit in the college. Beale enabled Ramabai to cope with the onslaughts of Sister
Geraldine and Anglo-Catholic bishops.
At issue was conformity. The Church failed to grasp, as Max Müller observed, that
“this truly heroic Hindu lady, in appearance small, delicate, and timid, [was] in reality
strong and bold as a lioness”9 Ramabai declared: “While we cannot know what will
come in the next moment, yet we have a great gift from God, i.e. our own free will. . . .
I am always surprised when I see or hear people troubling themselves to decide my
future.”10 And “[my] Lord God will guide me. I . . . shall by no means let others lay a
hand on my liberty.”11 She elaborated: “Besides meeting people of the most prominent
sects, the High Church, Low Church, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Friends,
Unitarian, Universalist, Roman Catholic, Jew, and others, I met Spiritualists,
Theosophists, Mormons, Christian Scientists, and followers of occult religions. No
one can have any idea of what my feelings were at finding such Babel of religions in
Christian countries.”12 At Eastertide 1885, Ramabai escaped to Bristol. There she
encountered Isaac Allan, her old Baptist friend from Assam. That meeting marked a
turning point. She sailed for America in February 1886 with fixed views about the One
and Only Holy Catholic Church. There would be no conformity.

Triumphal sojourn in the United States

What brought Ramabai to America was the graduation of Anandibai Joshi, her “cousin”
at Women’s Medical College, Philadelphia. Fatally ill with tuberculosis, Joshi met her
on a windy, icebound wharf and later recorded that Ramabai was “as tender as a flower,
Frykenberg 5

timid as can be, and impatient of pain, but her courage has outweighed that of the
sternest and bravest warrior.”13
On March 12, 1886, Ramabai delivered her first address in America. After tea with
some “eighty ladies of the highest social position,” the crowd of five hundred that
jammed the hall “was struck by the speaker’s beauty and awed. . . . The hush which
followed her appeal when, after clasping her hands in silence for a few moments, she
lifted her voice to God in earnest entreaty for her countrywomen in India” made a
profound impression on her audience. Caroline Dall, a society matron from Washington,
continued, “The whole city echoed the next day with wondering inquiry and explana-
tion.”14 In Pune, the Mahratta on May 2, 1886, reported: “A Hindoo woman of high
caste, her slight figure wrapped in the white robe of Indian widowhood, out of which
looked a face of most picturesque beauty, spoke without a text . . . with a voice of
musical sweetness and distinction, and with the unembarrassed manner of genuine
simplicity . . . [telling] the story of Hindoo womanhood.”15
Pandita Ramabai became an overnight sensation. Her name was seen and heard
across the land. Whatever she did or said was followed closely. Articles appeared by the
hundred, especially in women’s magazines. Invitations and speaking engagements mul-
tiplied. In lecture tours, she challenged Americans to help less fortunate sisters in India.
She planned to establish a school for high-caste widows. She needed support of reform-
ers in India and financial backing from friends in America. A voluntary association was
organized, with a governing board of prominent Indians and prominent Americans.
Within both societies, leaders among prominent, upper-class notables were awakened.
Behind Ramabai’s tireless activity, her ceaseless thinking, writing, and lecturing,
lay the hand of Dr. Rachel L. Bodley, president of the Women’s Medical College.
Bodley knew the right people and provided full support. Schoolbooks in Marathi,
based on American models, were prepared. Ramabai’s lectures were published. The
High-Caste Hindu Woman (1887), introduced by Bodley and dedicated to the memory
of Ramabai’s mother and Anandibai Joshi (who had just died), was an immediate, and
lucrative, success.16 During her two years in America, Ramabai penetrated the con-
sciousness of high society, churches, and universities. Renowned leaders pledged
themselves to her cause. The Ramabai Association, inaugurated in Boston on December
13, 1887, was led by such figures as Edward Everett Hale (president), Phillips Brooks,
George A. Gordon, Rachel L. Bodley, Caroline Dall, Frances Willard, and Mary
Hemenway (vice-president). Sailing from San Francisco, Ramabai had the support of
sixty-three Ramabai Circles, each pledging annual donations of $5,000 (Rs 15,000),
plus she had $25,000 in hand for buildings.17
How well Ramabai came to understand America is reflected the Marathi book she
published—Conditions of Life in the United States and Travels There—which reflected
insights of Tocquevillean depth.18

Boycott of Sharada Sadan by Hindu elites

Ramabai reached India Gate, Bombay, on February 1, 1889, after stops in Japan and
China. Her Sharada Sadan (“Home of Learning”) had hardly opened, and moved to
Pune,19 when she had a momentous “personal encounter” with Christ, “not merely His
6 International Bulletin of Mission Research 

religion.” The event radically altered her life. Soon her joyful daily devotions attracted
some of her young charges.20 On January 28, 1890, a Brahman girl turned to Christ.21
Supporters were confident that “no overt actions were drawing Brahmin widows into
the Christian flock.”22 The Ramabai Association reiterated that, while the Sharada
Sadan was entirely secular, Ramabai had a right to worship as a Christian. But on
August 22, 1893, the Advisory Board in India withdrew support, accusing Ramabai of
departing “from strict neutrality” and of failing to prevent her girls from becoming
Christians.23 Guardians and parents withdrew their daughters. The Sharada Sadan was
boycotted. Never again would Ramabai enjoy support of the Hindu public; her career
upon the all-India stage ended. In 1899 a new “Hindu Sharada Sadan” (Anath
Balikashram) opened under the direction of D. K. Karve, a professor at Fergusson
College, whose wife had herself been one Ramabai’s earliest charges. Ramabai ceased
to exist as far as the Chitpavan Brahmans were concerned.24 Max Müller observed:
“How could it be otherwise than that those to whom the world had been so unkind and
Ramabai so kind should wish to be what their friend was, Christian?!! Her very good-
ness was the real [force] that could not be hidden.”25

Founding of the Mukti Mission

The last three decades of Ramabai’s life, grounded in ceaseless prayer, bought out-
reach to widening circles of downtrodden people, especially women, and a huge
increase of her influence around the world. Ramabai also devoted much energy to the
making of a new Marathi translation of the Bible into the most basic mother tongue of
common people.
In October 1894 Ramabai donned the garb of a sannyasini (a female ascetic or
renouncer of the world; one in the fourth ashram, or stage of life) and, on foot,
revisited sacred sites not seen since her youth. She wanted to rescue abandoned
widows suffering depredation. From Brindaban, she wrote: “I had known some-
thing of the condition of widows in this and other places . . ., but I had no real idea
of the terrible facts .” Young widows “by hundreds and thousands” were being
enticed and robbed. “They shut young, helpless widows into their large maths
[monasteries], sell and hire them out; and, when the poor miserable slaves are no
longer pleasing, turn them out to beg [and die] a death worse than [pariah] dogs.”
Against what she saw as darkness and evil, Ramabai waged spiritual warfare. She
urged Western readers not to be charmed by “grand philosophies” but “open the
trap-doors into the dark cellars where they [will] see the real workings of the phi-
losophies they admire.” They should “go round Jagannathpuri, Benares, Gaya,
Allahabad, Mathura, Brindaban, Dwarka, Pandharpur, Udippi, Tirupaty and such
strongholds of Hinduism,” where thousands of priests “oppress the widows and
devour widows’ houses” and “trample poor, ignorant, low-caste people under their
heels.”26 The fact that Swami Vivekananda had recently toured the United States
and, at the First World Parliament of Religions in Chicago,27 persuaded eclectic
Western clerics that Hinduism was a “world religion,”28 while denigrating Ramabai
wherever he went, may have sharpened her ire.
Frykenberg 7

Late in 1896, as famine ravaged the land, Ramabai launched a new campaign. With
“famished skeleton-like” orphans and child widows being waylaid and carried off of
“carnal markets,” she recalled how, twenty-two years earlier, she herself had nearly
“fallen into the cruel hands of wicked people.” “Parents are selling their girl-children
. . . for a rupee or a few annas, or even a few ears of grain.”29 Returning with sixty
female famine victims, she returned to pick up more. Her bullock carts, slowly jolting
along day and night, steadily picked up stray girls in jungles and villages, where they
were prey to both animal and human predators.
Back in Pune, a new crisis arose. Faced with bubonic plague, health officials
ordered famine victims removed from Sharada Sadan within forty-eight hours.
Fortunately, five years earlier, a special donation had enabled Ramabai to purchase a
large piece of undeveloped property. At Kedgaon, thirty-four miles from Pune, work-
ers had begun clearing land, digging wells, planting trees, and cultivating crops; a
“bare, stone, treeless, and waterless” waste was being transformed.30 Here an encamp-
ment of tents was now quickly erected to accommodate famine victims. Under the
direction of Soondarbai Power, Ramabai’s assistant, and with the help of volunteer
staff and students, filthy victims, clad in rags, suffering from sores and vermin, and
faint from malnourishment were scrubbed, shaved, and clothed. Lack of trees big
enough to provide shade, with little escape from the burning sun, meant that “sun-
strokes, fever, sore eyes, and other [ills]” became rampant. “Snakes crawled on sleep-
ing bodies in the night. Numberless scorpions, centipedes and poisonous insects found
their way into bedding . . . and not a few were stung.”31 Emotional traumas and hurtful
habits required hours of comforting and counseling.
Thus was born the Ramabai Mukti Mission. Support for the mission, formally inau-
gurated in 1898, poured in from around the world. Dormitories, schools, a meeting
hall, and other buildings sprang up. What happened reminded Ramabai of the ashram
her father had created on Mount Gangamal before she was born. Beside the Mukti
Sadan and Sharada Sadan, the Kedgaon campus soon added Kripa Sadan (Home of
Mercy), Prita Sadan (Home for Aged and Infirm), Sadanand Sadan (Home for Boys)
and Bartan Sadan (Home for the Blind), where Braille was taught. Over two thousand
souls, rescued from degradation, oppression, or starvation, were being fed, cleaned,
nursed to health, and taught at Kedgaon.
Staff for running the Mukti Mission, not counting those for buildings and grounds,
soon came to eighty-five women and girls: ten matrons, thirty-five teachers, and forty
for crafts. During its first eleven years (1889–1900), Sharada Sadan trained eighty
high-caste girls, each able to earn a living. Sixty-five were married and/or became
teachers. Continuing royalties from sales of The High-Caste Hindu Woman enabled
acquisition of laboratory equipment, instruments, and models, as well as publication
of textbooks in Marathi, a Braille system in Marathi, and a publishing house.

Growth and depth in ministry

During the first decade of Sharada Sadan, Ramabai’s conscience had never allowed
her to take advantage of her position to coerce or proselytize. Genuine conversion, she
8 International Bulletin of Mission Research 

believed, lay beyond human agency alone. Only God could truly transform the human
condition. Ramabai saw herself as both Hindu and Christian. She never felt that her
faith betrayed her family or nation. Her love for India remained steadfast. Such love
was the pole on which all turned. Nor were Europeans seen as worthy, in themselves,
of emulation. She never hesitated to strike out against degrading treatment by plague
officials and “the shameful way in which women were made to submit to treatment by
male doctors.” She chided Europeans who “did not believe Indian women [were] mod-
est and in need of special consideration.”32
Ramabai’s daughter, Manorama (or Mano), was only nineteen when she became
principal of Sharada Sadan, Poona (aka Pune). College trained and fresh from America,
Mano found her position difficult. Below her, Mary Samuel was the head teacher, and
all teachers were older. Predictable frictions arose. Ramabai counted on Mano for cor-
respondence and accounts and expected help from her at Mukti at least once a week.
Eventually the burden began to tell on Mano’s health. As the school continued to grow,
so did difficulties. With her standing in the world growing ever larger, Ramabai tried
to shield Manorama by dispatching her on a tour to represent Mukti in Australia.

Quest for ultimate spiritual Mukti

Early struggles for survival and later struggles in England and America and India were
stages along Ramabai’s road of conversion. Initial faith in Assam and intellectual
encounters in England and America broadened her theology. A deeper bhakti spiritual-
ity emerged in 1891. As her biblical studies increased, Ramabai realized that she had
failed to grasp the most essential truth—that she needed Christ, not his religion: “I,
who was sitting in darkness, saw a Great Light. . . . O the love, the unspeakable love
of the Father for me, a lost sinner, who gave His only son to die for me! I did not merit
this love.” Furthermore,

No caste, no sex, no work, and no man was to be depended upon to get . . . everlasting life,
but God gave it freely to any one and every one who believed in His Son, Whom he sent to
be the “propitiation for our sins.” And there was not a particle of doubt left. . . . I would not
have to wait till, after undergoing births and deaths for countless millions of times, I should
become a Brahman man in order to know the Brahma. . . . Salvation, which God gives
through Christ, is present now and not something in the future.33

A final “turn” came fourteen years later, in 1905. “There were about seventy of us
who met together each morning and prayed for the true conversion of all Indian
Christians, including ourselves, and for a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all
Christians . . . [when] the Lord graciously sent a glorious Holy Ghost revival among
us.”34 Young women struggling to overcome horrible experiences, deceit, falsehood,
gloom, impurity, sullenness, and illnesses felt a sudden release. Joyous outbursts—
prayers, songs, healing, “consuming fire” and “speaking in tongues”—occurred.
Quietly restrained, Ramabai confessed to an ecstatic consciousness of “the Holy Spirit
as a burning flame” within her. Emotions “too deep for sound or form” gripped her.
Frykenberg 9

“Love, perfect divine love [was] the only and most necessary sign of the baptism of the
Holy Spirit.” L. B. Butcher of the CMS noted that the Pandita herself had “a very sane
attitude.” What mattered most to Ramabai was hard evidence of changed lives. Her
constant refrain was, “One thing I know, that once I was blind, but now I can see.”35
During her last twenty years, Ramabai lived in Scripture. Her father and mother,
whom she expected to see in Glory, had enabled her to master the enormous amounts
of classical lore. Her efforts to end oppression of child widows had changed her atti-
tudes toward ritual purity. For a wider vision of humanity, of being “born again” rather
than “twice born” (dvija), Sanskrit no longer sufficed. All language could convey
divine truth. The “Word of God” could become incarnate in any language. The Marathi
Bible was too heavily Sanskritized for simple folk. Putting God’s Word into Marathi
became her consuming task. Beside mastery of India’s languages, she acquired Greek
and Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin. Day by day, year by year, she toiled. She had just
completed this task when her beloved Mano suddenly died. Ramabai followed her in
death a few months later, on April 5, 1922, days before her sixty-fourth birthday.

Conclusion
Pandita Ramabai is one of the most noteworthy women India has ever produced. A
true Mahatma (“Great Soul”) seldom surfaces in any age. Her title “Pandita” was
hardly enough. Scholars had exclaimed, “We do not feel that you belong to this world,
since the great Pandits have been dazzled and amazed by your superhuman ability. The
very Goddess of Learning— ‘Saraswati’—has come down amidst us in human
form.”36 After turning to Christ, she was publicly shunned by Hindu elites and became
a nonperson. Only recently have her name and fame been restored, especially by secu-
lar feminists. It is time to rediscover her. Her Mukti Mission continues.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
  1. Pandita Ramabai, A Testimony of Our Inexhaustible Treasure (Kedgaon: Mukti Mission,
1907; repr., Pandita Ramabai Mukti Mission, 1977), 16. In other accounts she wrote of
living on a handful of grain soaked in water, walking barefoot, sleeping under trees or
roadside bridges, and digging pits to keep warm.
  2. Ibid., 19–20.
  3. Ibid., 25.
 4. Ramabai Ranade, Ranade: A Wife’s Reminiscences (New Delhi: Government of India,
1963), 83; see also Ranade, Amchya ayushyatil Kahi Athawani (“Recollections . . . ”) (Pune:
Dyyanprakash Press, 1910), and Nicol Macnicol, Pandita Ramabai: A Builder of Modern
India (Calcutta: YMCA, 1926; repr., New Delhi: Good Books, 1996), 100.
  5. “Baboo” (modern spelling “babu”) is an honorific, “Mr.,” sometimes disparagingly applied
to English-speaking Bengali bureaucrats or civil servants.
10 International Bulletin of Mission Research 

 6. Ranade, Ranade, 232; Ramabai Ranade, Himself: The Autobiography of a Hindu Lady,
trans. Katherine van Akin Gates (New York: Longmans, 1938).
 7. Hunter Commission Report, September 5, 1882; Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati [Dongre
Medhavi], The High-Caste Hindu Woman, introduction by Rachel L. Bodley, A.M., M.D.
(Philadelphia: Jas. B. Rodgers Printing, 1887; repr., New Delhi: Inter-India Publications,
1984), xvi–xvii. W. W. Hunter was so impressed that he had 600 copies of Ramabai’s tes-
timony printed.
 8. Ramabai, A Testimony, 25–26.
 9. The Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Müller, 2 vols. (London:
Longman, Green, 1902), 2:149.
10. A. B. Shah, ed., Sister Geraldine, comp., The Letters and Correspondence of Pandita
Ramabai (Bombay: Maharashtra State Board of Literature and Culture, 1977), Pandita
Ramabai to Sister Geraldine, Cheltenham, July 1884, p. 25.
11. Ibid., May 9, 1885, pp. 50, 58–61.
12. Ramabai, A Testimony, 26–28.
13. Letter of March 10, 1886, in Caroline Wells Healey Dall, The Life of Dr. Anandabai Joshi:
A Kinswoman of the Pandita Ramabai (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1888), 130–32.
14. Ibid., 135–36.
15. Quoted at length in Meera Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and Christian
Conversions: Focus on “Stree dharma-neeti” (Bombay: Research Centre for Women
Studies, 1995), 152–53.
16. Ramabai, The High-Caste Hindu Woman, xxiii–xxiv; Shah, Letters and Correspondence,
xx.
17. Shah, Letters and Correspondence, no. 102, pp. 182–84.
18. Pandita Ramabai, Pandita Ramabai’s America, ed. Robert Eric Frykenberg, trans. Kshitija
Gomes and Philip C. Engblom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); see also Meera Kosambi,
trans., Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2003).
19. Dnyānodaya, March 14, 1889, pp. 81–82: Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and
Christian Conversions, 157–58.
20. Ramabai, A Testimony, 28–29, 40–41; Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and Christian
Conversions, 160–61, 189; and Meera Kosambi, ed., Pandita Ramabai through Her Own
Words: Selected Works (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), 319–20.
21. Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and Christian Conversions, 160–62.
22. Indu-Prakash, August 17, 1891, p. 4; Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and Christian
Conversions, 160–62.
23. Kesari, August 22, 1893; Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and Christian Conversions,
163. See also Shah, Letters and Correspondence, 302ff.
24. Anandibai Karve (1858–1950), “Autobiography,” in The New Brahmans: Five
Maharashtrian Families, ed. D. D. Karve and Ellen E. McDonald (Berkeley: Univ. of
California Press, 1963), 58–79.
25. F. Max Müller, Auld Lang Syne; vol. 2: My Indian Friends (London: Longmans, Green,
1898–99; repr., Oxford, 1998), 2:128.
26. Shah, Letters and Correspondence, 312–13.
27. Eric J. Ziolkowski, “Heavenly Visions and Worldly Intentions: Chicago’s Columbian
Exposition and World’s Parliament of Religions (1893),” Journal of American Culture 13,
no. 4 (1990): 11–12.
28. R. E. Frykenberg, “Constructions of Hinduism at the Nexus of History and Religion,”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23, no. 3 (1993): 523–50.
Frykenberg 11

29. Letter, January 1897, in Pandita Ramabai: The Widow’s Friend; An Australasian Edition
of “The High-Caste Hindu Woman,” ed. Manoramabai (Melbourne: Robertson, 1903),
135; Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati: Her Life and Work (New York: Asia
Publishing House, 1970), 238; and Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and Christian
Conversions, 166–68.
30. Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, 235–39; Ramabai, A Testimony, 24.
31. Pandita Ramabai: The Widow’s Friend, 140–41: Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai’s Feminist and
Christian Conversions, 169; Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, 242; Helen S. Dyer,
Pandita Ramabai: The Story of Her Life, new ed. (London: Morgan & Scott, 1907), 58.
32. Shah, Letters and Correspondence, xxviii, 176–78, 336.
33. Ramabai, A Testimony, 31; Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai through Her Own Words, 311–13.
34. Ramabai, A Testimony, 41.
35. Macnicol, Pandita Ramabai, 121, 116–32.
36. Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, 1.

Author biography
Robert Eric Frykenberg, born and reared in India by missionaries, is pro-
fessor emeritus of history and South Asian studies, University of Wisconsin,
Madison. He is the author of numerous books and articles including
Christianity in India: Beginnings to the Present (2008) and is the editor of
Pandita Ramabai’s America: Conditions of Life in the United States.
(2003).