Rukhmabai - The Indian Woman Who Defied Society and Colonial Law
How I came to know about Rukhmabai, and the law she defied.
I first heard about Rukhmabai in 1984 when the vindictive husband of my friend (who had walked out of an abusive marriage) threatened her with a ‘Restitution of Conjugal Rights’ lawsuit. The term was unfamiliar. Since we did not have Google then, I did the next best thing. I asked my lawyer friend Ansuya Dutt, then the top divorce lawyer of Bombay to explain to me what it was. She explained to me and my friend it requested the court to force the wife back in the matrimonial home so he could exercise his legal right as a husband to sleep with her. Obviously, this information appalled me. I could not believe that there could be such a barbarous law in our legal code, and that it was still being used. She replied that not only did it still survive, it was a favorite ploy used by husbands to harass their ‘errant wives’ who had the temerity to want a better life. Then she told us the bare bones of Rukhmabai’s story, which has stayed with me these last 36 years. All along I wondered about how a young, barely 21-year-old young woman could develop the courage to stand up to society and law.
I was once again reminded of her when Google dedicated a doodle to her and commemorated her 153rd birth anniversary. I was again enraged to find out that not just Google, but all the press write-ups that appeared around that time had not mentioned her great courage and fight. The only mealy mouthed reason they gave for the commemoration was that she was India’s first practicing doctor, which she undoubtedly was, but her contribution to Indian women or rather all women in the British Empire went far beyond that. Worse, the insidious patriarchy she fought all her life showed its hand again. Because we assume that every woman has to have her father’s or husband’s second name, both Google and other write-ups on her gave her name as Rukhmabai Raut!
Imagine what the woman’s soul must have felt! She had scrupulously avoided any surname – be it her father’s, step-father’s or her husband’s in all the court proceedings she bravely suffered through. She also did not use it in her writings, preferring the pseudonym ‘A Hindu Lady’ for her correspondence with the press – be it in Bombay or London[i]. Even her medical papers only listed her as Rukhmabai[ii], and that is the name Lancet, the per-eminent medical journal used when they wrote about her.
Still others touted her name as the first Indian woman to get a divorce! No one had bothered to check the case which was filed not by her, but by her husband, and in which she had merely defended her decision not to live with Dadaji!. They claimed that Queen Victoria dissolved the marriage which was impossible as the Queen had no such rights, and because Rukhmabai had never asked for her marriage to be annulled or for a divorce! Neither did the authors of these pieces mention that not being able to re-marry, she had remained single all her life.
I find it amazing that even today, the clause which permits such vindictive demands still stands in our law books. Hopefully, this law will soon go the way the law against gay and lesbians went. In reply to a PIL filed by two young activists challenging it, the Supreme Court has asked for a reply from the Indian Government.
Who was Rukhmabai, and why is her case important?
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I will answer these questions in reverse. First, I will talk about what and how much her fight changed for all us women in the former British Empire. And then I will turn to her story.
Rukhmabai’s case generated so much debate and reactions in India and England that it is often referred to as ‘the most widely debated and publicized court case of 19th century’[iii] that she had faced in the 19th century. Even today, feminists and law students continue to be debate and discussed it[iv].
It was only because of the questions her case raised, and the way it shamed the conservative Hindus who had obstructed it till then, that that it was possible for the Colonial Government to pass The ‘Age of Consent Act 1891’. This law had been under consideration and discussion from 1850 when Pundit Ishwarchand Vidyasagar had called for it. This law raised the minimum age of marriage for a girl child to 12. The Sarda Act, or the ‘Child Marriage Restraint Act’ of 1929 which built on it, raised the minimum marriage age for girls to 14.
When the Government realized that though child marriages had reduced in India, but not stopped, because there were no punitive provisions, it amended the law in 1978 increasing the minimum age for a bride to 18, and making it a criminal offense for anyone to marry, or even attend a child marriage which was to attract a long jail sentence. Today, the Government of India again plans to raise it to 21[v]. So, it is thanks to her fight which gave teeth to the reformists, that I, and millions of women like me, have escaped child marriage, enjoyed our childhood, and got a chance to educate ourselves and decide our own fate.
Rukhmabai’s Story
Rukhmabai was born on 22nd November 1867 to Janardhan Pandurang Save a prosperous building contractor and 13 years old Jayantibai in Bombay. They belonged to a small community called Somvanshi Kshatriya Pathare that had migrated to the Bombay region in 1300s, which though Kshatriya, had turned to farming over the centuries. After Bombay started growing, members of this community became builders, carpenters, and building contractors[vi].
Not much is known about Jarardan’s background, who died when Rukhmabai was a toddler. Jayantibai’s was the eldest daughter of Harishchandra Yadavji Thakur. Her mother had died when she was a mere baby, and she was brought up by her father’s second wife. Harishchandra had come to Bombay from nearby Vasai (now a suburb of Mumbai) to better himself. He studied in Elphinston Institute after which he joined Bombay Presidency’s Public Works Department and worked for forty years. A diligent and hardworking man, he was liked by his peers and his seniors. Though not very educated, his friend circle was very wide and included members from the European community and members form the ‘progressive’ factions of Indians. Pleased with his performance, the Presidency Government had awarded him the prestigious title ‘Rao Bahadur’. His work had also earned him a special allowance over and above his pension[vii]. He was also made a Justice of Peace in 1895.
His contacts with the Europeans and the ‘progressive Indians’, had influenced Jayantibai enough to ensure that she knew her alphabets. Once Jayantibai became 11 years old, as was the custom, Harishchandra started looking out for a groom for her. The search was long because he wanted an educated man, and most of the people of his caste were uneducated. Finally, after 2 years of search, Harishchandra settled of Janardan, an up-and-coming building contractor. Rukhmabai was born to within a year of the marriage to complete the happy family. Unfortunately, Janardan passed away when Rukhmabai was just a toddler, and her mother Jayantibai who was then only 15-year-old, a widow.
Fortunately for Jayantibai and her daughter, Janardan had made a will before his death, and appointed Harishchandra his executor. In this will Janardan had bequeathed his property which was then worth a princely sum of ₹ 25,000 to his wife Jayantibai and had stipulated that his daughter Rukhmabai be given a gift of ₹ 200 on her marriage[viii]. After Janardan’s death, Harishchandra, as executor of this will started managing Jayantibai’s property[ix] and the mother and daughter went to live with him. Being a widow, and living with a stepmother, Jayantibai’s life could not have been pleasant. This must have also affected Rukhmabai’s life who had now become the daughter of a dependent widow. However, possibly because of her grandfather, Rukhmabai learned her Marathi alphabets. She loved reading and studying which she continued against all odds all her life.
Six years passed, during which the ‘progressive’ influence of Harishchandra grew, which he gave in to, and decided to re-marry Jayantibai. That widow remarriage was not expressly forbidden in their caste must have also helped. This time he settled on the recently widowed Dr Sakharam Arjun, a prominent physician, naturalist and social reformer[x] who also taught in the local medical school, and was one of the two Indian founders of the Bombay Natural History Museum[xi].
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Before getting married to Dr Arjun, Jayantibai bequeathed the properties she had inherited from Janardan to Rukhmabai, which was to prove the bane of Rukhmabai’s life. Even after that, as Rukhmabai was a mere girl, Harishchandra continued managing the properties till 1882, after which Rukhmabai took over financial management of the property while Harishchandra continued looking after the day-to-day management[xii].
Rukhmabai went to live in the Arjun’s after her mother’s marriage. As Dr Arjun was a supporter of woman’s education she also started going to school which she loved. However, she could not read and study as much as she wanted as she was expected to work in the kitchen and around the home when she was at home. In her first letter to the Times of India she tells of how her love for studying “was misconstrued and given other meanings” to which Rukhmabai paid little heed. Obviously, she suffered for this and was often chastised, and even physically punished[xiii].
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Here, we need to remember that in the 19th century society frowned on a educated girl/woman. Most families considered even a wish of a girl to learn to a crime. Thus, very few girls could recognize alphabets or do basic math. Society looked with great askance at a woman who read from books or newspapers. Ramabai Ranade, the social reformer and educationist, and wife of Justice M G Ranade who was of the same age as Rukhmabai, and also married at the same time. In her memoirs she gives tells us how her sister-in-law and her step-mother-in-law often tortured her for following her husband’s wishes that she learn to read and write[xiv]. This, when Justice Ranade was the head of the family!
In the mofussil areas things had changed little even in the 1990s. One of my acquaintances once told me of how her family chastised and heavily reprimanded her for spending her time reading, and how she had to steal time from other chores to read library books.
Rukhmbai’s Marriage
When Rukhmabai was 11, one of Dr Arjun’s distant relatives, a widow proposed marriage alliance with her son, Dadaji, then 19. Dr Arjun agreed under the conditions that Dadaji should come to live in the Arjun household, restart his stopped schooling. and later learn a profession. Though the conditions were unusual, Dadaji’s mother because she thought they would set Dadaji up for life.
As agreed, Dadaji came to live with the Arjuns after marriage and returned to school. However, he was lazy, hated education, and found it insulting to be with much younger classmates. Once his mother died within a month of his marriage, Dadaji gave up all pretenses, stopped going to school and started spending his time with his Narayen Dhurmaji, a womanizer and a man of ill repute. Later, Dadaji found Dr Arjun’s demand for decency and decorum in his house too restrictive, and so he moved in with his uncle. Unlike unwilling Dadaji who was forced to go school after marriage, Rukhmabai, who wanted to go to school was forced to stop by after her marriage[xv]. This left her heartbroken. Unable to do anything about it, she decided to self-educate. But even that was hard, as reading was even more frowned upon. Yet she persevered. In one of her letters, she describes how she learned English as under -
“English words at a time whenever my European lady friends happened to call. Day by day my love for education and social reform increased, and I continued to pursue my studies as much as I could,”[xvi]
Seven months into the marriage Rukhmabai attained puberty – the conventional time for consummation of a marriage in the 19th century. It was also the time a child-bride went to live with her in-laws. However, Dr Arjun, a physician, refused to follow this custom. He explained to Dadaji the perils of such early consummation and convinced him to wait for a few years till Rukhmabai to grew up[xvii]. Dadaji was unhappy, but reluctantly agreed. However, as was the custom, it Rukhmabai had to visit her husband once in a while – in this case the Dhurmaji residence. She visited the Dhurmaji’s residence only once, but vowed never to visit again. We can only speculate the reason. It seems more than likely that as depicted in a fictionalised account of her life in Suhasini Sharangpani’s ‘Mala He Länga Manya Nahi’ (I do not accept this marriage) Rukhmabai barely escaped Dhurmaji’s sexual advances when she had visited Dhurmaji’s family. Rukhmabai alluded to a similar scenario in her letter against child marriages. Factual accounts of the 19th century prove that using a young ward’s wife for sexual gratification was not uncommon.
Dadaji continued living with his maternal uncle who later events show had his eyes set on Rukhmabai’s property. To make Dadaji indebted to him, he encouraged Dadaji’s bad habits and also introduced him to his own vices, which obviously would have included his womanising. Around the same time, Dadaji became a TB patient. By the time Rukhmabai was ready to join her husband he was a totally bed ridden stage four TB patient who was not expected to live long. Naturally, Dr Arjun once again refused to permit consummation of the marriage or send Rukhmabai to Dadaji. Rukhmabai must have sent heaved a sigh of relief for her escape.
Rukhmabai’s Activities During Dadaji’s Illness
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Rukhmabai used the time since her formal schooling stopped to self-educate, and turned into a learned, cultured, thinking, woman. Other than asking visiting family friends to help her with spellings and pronunciation of words (see above), she also borrowed books on various subjects from the Free Church Mission Library. She regularly attended meetings of Prarthana Samaj whose founder Atmaram Pandurang Turkhadkar, also a physician, was a close friend and associate of Dr. Arjun. Prarthana Samaj, an offshoot of the Brahmo Samaj, was a vocal advocate for social and political reforms in Indian society. Their meetings discussed what could be done to alleviate the plight and sufferings of Indian women. At these meetings she met Justice M G Ranade and his social worker, educationist wife Ramabai Ranade, who were also members. The contacts she made in this period were to become some of her most ardent supporters during her trials.
The family also went to Arya Mahila Samaj meetings. Here Rukhmabai came in contact with the firebrand social reformer Pandita Ramabai Saraswati who became a lifelong friend. This Ramabai should not to be confused with Ramabai Ranade, the wife of Justice Ranade whose memoirs are referred to above. From Pandita Ramabai she learnt about Dr Anandibai Joshee the first Indian woman to graduate from a medical college, a friend and relative of Pandita Ramabai. In these meetings she also met and heard from women different backgrounds and came to know about their plight. In her letter published on the 29 June 1887. she tells us a little of how all this affected her thoughts and views on marriage as given below.
“Constant association with the people who had tried to devote their lives to the social reform of India, and by the aid of the little education which I had been able to gain I began seriously to consider the former and present condition of our Hindoo women, and wished to do something, if in my power, to ameliorate our present sufferings.”[xviii]
She adds ‘habits of the man with whom I had been given in marriage added more to my natural distaste for married life., and that as a result she developed ‘a great disgust for married life[xix]’. All this must have given her the courage to go against such customs and wash her hands off her marriage and Dadaji for ever[xx].
Dadaji Asks for Rukhmabai to Come Live With Him
After a long illness of four years, Dadaji recovered some of his health and asked Rukhmabai to come live with him. This time, instead of Dr Arjun, Rukhmabai refused. Not just the consummation, but to never go live with him. Dadaji then pressed Dr Arjun to force Rukhmabai. But her stepfather had witnessed Dadaji’s slide into degradation. He had also realised that Dadaji and his uncle had their eyes on Rukhmabai’s property. He had therefore independently concluded that sending Rukhmabai to him would be a disaster. So, when Rukhmabai announced her decision not to join Dadaji, he supported her, and her resolve to “wash her hands off Dadaji”. Jayantibai, Rukhmabai’s mother, and her grandfather Harischandra Yadavji, were more traditional. For them, a woman rejecting her husband was blasphemy, for after all, weren’t husbands supposed to be a wife’s God? Such a thing was unheard of, and therefore an enormous shock to them. They refused to accept her decision and for a long time kept pressurising Rukhmabai to go live with her husband. Despite all the pressure they put on her, Rukhmabai did not give in.
When this was going on, Dadaji was also pressing for Rukhmabai’s return, and being unsuccessful had turned to abusing the family. These abuses, Dadaji’s ungrateful attitude to Dr Arjun who had for years generously fed and clothed did what Rukhmabai’s protestations had not. Jayantibai and Harishchandra were finally convinced that Rukhmabai was right. So they put all their support behind her.
Dadaji’s Legal Notice
Rukhmabai’s refusal had made Dadaji a laughingstock in his community. Having lost the chance of getting control of Rukhmabai’s property made him see red. When nothing worked, Dadaji and his uncle Narayen Dhurmaji decided to send Rukhmabai and her family a legal notice to demanding “Restitution of Conjugal Rights” believing that the fear of the social stigma that such a court case would force them to capitulate. Accordingly, Dadaji sent Dr Arjun a letter through his solicitors on 19th March 1884 demanding that “his wife be sent to him”. The uncle and nephew followed this up with an orchestrated campaign of hate letters chastising Dr Arjun and the family for keeping Rukhmabai in his home against her husband’s wishes.
Initially, to buy time to think of a plan of action, and to explore avenues for a compromise Dr Arjun sent an ambiguous reply stating that he was not detaining Rukhmabai against her wish. But Dadaji and company gave him no time. The day after they received the letter, Dadaji precipitated the matter by sending a party of people to ‘recover’ Rukhmabai. This party comprising Dadaji’s elder brother, his uncle, some community elders and a clerk from Dadaji’s solicitor’s office to witness the proceedings. Everyone fully expected to take Rukhmabai back with them[xxi].
To their surprise, Rukhmabai remained unmoved by this public shaming. She sent the party packing claiming that Dadaji since Dadaji did not earn; he was is no monetary position to provide her with lodging, maintenance, and clothing. In a separate letter, Dr Arjun told Dadaji that Rukhmabai could be sent to him if he took her to a separate home – making Rukhmabai’s objection to living as a part of Narayen Dhurmaji’s joint family (which besides his wife and daughter also included his concubine because of whom the wife had once attempted suicide) obvious.
Law Suit Preperation
When the legal notice did not achieve its aims, Dadaji filed a for “Restitution of Conjugal Rights” claim against Rukhmabai. Dr Arjun and Rukhmabai hired the solicitor firm of Payne, Gilbert and Sayani[xxii] that J. D. Inverarity, an advocate and a colleague of Dr Arjun in the Bombay Natural History Society had introduced to them. The other members of the defence team were K.T. Telang a leading authority on Hindu Law and F.L. Latham, the Advocate General of Bombay. Telang later became a judge in the Bombay High Court and Vice Chancellor of Bombay University.
In her written submission drafted Rukhmabai stoutly denied the accusations made by Dadaji that Jayantibai, Harishchandra Yadavji and Dr Arjun were detaining her for her property. She also highlighted Dadaji’s his inability to feed, clothe and shelter her, and then claimed that Dadaji’s ill-health and his advanced TB was a danger to her own health[xxiii]. She also added that as she was only 11 when she was married, and not at an age to give consent for the same, she should not be bound to it[xxiv].
Her contention that a bride’s intelligent consent should be needed for a marriage to be valid was not only novel, it also challenged the very foundation of a Hindu marriage in which a father-in-law gifts his daughter – kanya-daan to his son-in-law exactly like he would gift any other property he owned be it a cow, goat or a chair. The Hindu bride has no agency or say in her own marriage. It is not a contract like the Abrahamic religions. It is a sacrament – a sacred ritual. This claim if accepted would have meant that a Hindu marriage could not be binding on a spouse who had not consented to it (or was not old enough to give consent). As can be expected, it had the conservatives up in arms and therefore became central to the case to be hotly debated both inside and outside the court.
Rukhmabai had also raised the issue of the character of the people Dadaji lived. This also was a threat to Indian family life, culture, and society as joint families were the norm in India. Brides did not have an option. They had to be a of the joint family whether they liked the joint family and their members or not. Indian women are still fighting for a woman’s right to choose whether to be a part of a joint family in the 21st century. In 2016, the Supreme court ruled that living with a husband’s family is a wife’s duty, and not doing so tantamounts to cruelty[xxv]!
Dr Arjun’s Death
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One of Dadaji’s supporters was Dr Kanhoba Ranchoddas Kirtikar, Dr Arjun’s one time protegee who had for years enjoyed Dr Arjun’s hospitality and lived with him. His defection deeply hurt Dr Arjun. This hurt, the stress of the case and the social ostracism because of the case sent Dr Arjun to an early grave in April 1885, before the trial began. One historian of the Bombay Natural History Museum maintains that Dr Arjun’s progressive views and his support of his stepdaughter cost him even in death. As one of the founder members of the Bombay Natural History Society, there should have been a condolence meeting in his honor, and an obituary in the Society’s journal. The faction led by Dr Kirtikar who was also a member of the Bombay Natural History Society denied this for Dr Arjun[xxvi]. On his death Dr Arjun left his wife and his children much better provided for than Rukhmabai and her property[xxvii]. This, once for all disproved Dadaji’s claims of his greed.
This Dr Kirtikar not only gave evidence against Rukhmabai in the court, he also made libellous allegations against her in various meetings. He was also Dadaji’s star witness in the libel case that Dadaji filed – and lost against Rukhmabai. He claimed that he did this because he was Dadaji’s well-wisher, and a religious conservative who wanted to save Indian society from attacks by the likes of Rukhmabai. But one can’t help doubting these claims. Given that Kirtikar’s meanness extended to prohibiting a condolence meeting and obituary for Dr Arjun it seems more than likely that the real reason was to get vendetta for some real or perceived slight.
With her step-father, her major pillar of support gone everyone thought Rukhmabai will give up her fight. But contrary to all expectations, she stood firm, her resolve to fight unwavering. Rukhmabai’s years of contemplations on Hindoo marriages, her questioning the then current practice, the condition of Indian women and her wish to do whatever she can about it was the deciding factor.
Supporters and Letters to The Editor
Knowing Rukhmabai’s resolve and foreseeing the furore the case would cause Dr Arjun had introduced Rukhmabai to Mr Behram Malbari, the editor of Indian Spectator and Henry Curwen the editor of Times of India. Behram Malbari was a gifted publicist who had devoted his life to eradicating child marriages, whereas Henry Curwen, a grandson of Wordsworth was committed to the cause of women. These two became Rukhmabai’s pillars of support throughout the trial.
Before the trial began, Curwen strategically published her letter decrying child marriage (under the pseudonym “A Hindu Lady”) which gave voice to the plight of girls who became child brides[xxviii]. He published Rukhmabai’s second letter to the editor titled “Enforced Widowhood” on 19th September 1885, the day the case went to trial to draw attention of all the people that matter[xxix].
Trial in the Lower Court
The trial began on the 19th September 1885 in front of Justice Robert Hill Pinhey. After hearing the opening arguments on the case by Dadaji’s lawyers, Justice Pinhey summarily dismissed the claim on Monday, 21st September 1885, without waiting for the defense to state their case[xxx]. This was the technicality on which the High Court sent back the case to the Divisional Court for retrial. Pinhey, with his long experience with Indian Law ruled since the marriage was never consummated, there was no question of restitution, and hence there was no case. He also added that given a Hindu marriage was a sacrament and not a contract, ‘Restitution of Conjugal Rights’ claims had no foundation in Hindu law[xxxi].
Press Reactions to the Case
The case, Dadaji, and Rukhmabai became instantly famous. Reactions to the case, and Pinhey’s judgement poured in. They ranged from laudatory to viciously critical. Times of India in its coverage claimed that it was ‘a shrewd blow at the whole system of infant marriage’ that would ‘have a most wholesome influence in the direction of reform’. Most of the Anglo-Indian press from Calcutta to Lahore echoed this viewpoint.
As against this, most Indians, especially conservative Hindus, found the case and the verdict to be a serious threat to their domestic and social order. The exultant tone of the Anglo-Indian Press, which, sure in the superiority of the British, saw the verdict as a strike against the ills afflicting Indian womanhood only exacerbated this fear.
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I expected such reactions when I started researching the case, but was completely unprepared for the meanness of Lokmanaya Tilak’s writing in Kesari. Especially because Tilak was someone I had respected all my life as a great leader, freedom fighter and intellectual. I was appalled to read his insinuations in Kesari of 13th October 1885 that there was a liaison between Justice Pinhey and Rukhmabai! His later writings on this case and the case of Phulmani dasi the nine-year-old who died because of the brutal rape of her husband were to plumb new depths of sexism. To me today, this journalism is at par with what I see on today’s Republic TV.
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Except for Behram Malabari’s Indian Spectator who wrote editorials in her support, very few Indian owned newspapers supported Rukhmabai. In Rukhmabai’s case, Malbari had found his ‘cause-celebre’. When some conservatives criticized Rukhmabai’s refusal to accept Dadaji because of his ill-health and lack of education, he quickly called out their sexism, and asked them if they would not have the same thoughts if the situation was reverse.
Dadaji’s Appeal and Trial Before the High Court
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While the discussions and furore continued, the conservative faction now coalesced around Dadaji. A fund was created to help Dadaji, a pauper to appeal which at the end of the case left him pretty well-off. Dr Kirtikar was one of the first to contribute by paying Rs 50, something which he was later to boast about in court.
With the help of the fund Dadaji appealed. As against this, when Bombay organizer tried to set up a fund to help Rukhmabai defray the High Court costs, she quickly shut it down. As a result, where at the end of court case Dadaji was better off, Rukhmabai almost became a destitute.
It was around this time, just before the case went up in front of the High Court, the Times, London Calcutta correspondent, John Cameron MacGregor had introduced Time’s readers to Rukhmabai’s case. In it, before giving the basic facts of the case, he began by drawing their attention to the excerpts of her letters (under the pseudonym A Hindu Lady) published a year ago. He then went to portray it as a case of mere marital discord. It was only three weeks later, that he explained the real issues at stake[xxxii].
In the High Court, the case was heard by a two-judge bench of Chief Justice Sir Charles Sargent, and Justice Holyoake Bayley. Both lacked the sensitivity for Hindu Law and conditions because of lack of Indian long experience. The hearing began on the 12th March 1886, debating if ‘Restitution of Conjugal Rights’ had a place in Hindu Law. The other issue was the rights of a woman. Many scholars gave evidence. Unfortunately for Rukhmabai, the judges did not differentiate between law Hindu and Muslim Law. Further, the judges were also blinded by their prejudice for male prerogative and bias towards implementing the Imperial agenda for codifying the nebulous, elastic law of the various caste differentiations. The judgement was delivered on 2nd April 1886 wherein the judges ruled against the issues raised by Rukhmabai’s defense because even though Hindu Law books did not mention ‘Restitution of Conjugal Rights’, as they were silent about the issue, they also did not prohibit it all together. Therefore, the British Law should prevail, (and justice be damned). The judges then sent the case back to the Divisional Court for retrial because according to them, the Pinhey ruling was based on emotion rather than law.
Narrow ‘Law’ the favorite of the Imperialists, had triumphed over ‘Justice’ which they claimed they were going to provide to all.
Dadaji’s party rejoiced at the ruling, claiming victory for the ‘Hindu Law’ even though it really was the victory of the narrow vision of the British Law. Unlike them, Rukhmabai and her lawyers were dejected. The result of the retrial was not a foregone conclusion and therefore just a formality. Rukhmabai’s supporters started preparing to approach the Privy Council. Rukhmabai’s supporters set up a ‘Rukhmabai Defense Committee’ and a ‘Rukhmabai Defense Fund’
Reactions to High Court Judgement
After the High Court decision, the conservative attacks on Rukhmabai intensified. In Pune, under Tilak’s sponsorship, Narayan Bapuji Kanitkar’s Marathi play ‘Taruni shikshan Natika’ (play about a young woman’s education) ridiculing Rukhmabai and her education was staged. Tilak’s Kesari also published a satire on Rukhmabai for refusing to live with her husband, which depicted her as an immoral and loose woman. The inference was that she did this because she wanted to spend her time with other men. Other similar criticisms and prurient statements reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the country in almost all regional press.
Most of the conservative reactions displayed the disquiet that they felt when Rukhmabai challenged their patriarchal assumptions that a wife is owned and by a husband and therefore had no right to reject her husband. That a wife has independent rights had threatened the men who arbitrate on society’s morals. These included the Honorable Judges. For them, it raised the specter of millions of women walking out of exploitative marriages.
The Re-trial
By the time the case came back to the Divisional Court, Justice Pinhey had retired and returned to England. So, the case came up before Justice Farran who lacked the sensitivity and appreciation of the nuances of Indian marriages.
Given the High Court had rejected Rukhmabai’s claims, the hearing was only a formality, and because Rukhmabai still resolutely refused to go to Dadaji, a prison sentence a foregone conclusion.
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Rukhmabai, who had lost her earlier faith in getting any justice from men, including English men who were the judges (displayed in her previous missives to the press) started preparing for her jail sentence. On the 18th March 1887, before the re-trial started, she wrote to her friend Pandita Ramabai -
“My dear friend, I shall have been cast into the State prison when this letter reaches you: this is because I do not, and cannot obey the order of Mr Justice Farran. There is no hope for women in India, whether they be under Hindu rule or British rule; some are of the opinion that my case so cruelly decided, may bring about a better condition for women by turning public opinion in her favor, but I fear it will be otherwise. The hard-hearted mother-in-law will now be greatly strengthened, and will induce their sons, who have for some reason or other, been slow to enforce the conjugal rights to sue their wives in the British Courts, since they are now fully assured that under no circumstances can the British government act adversely to the Hindu law,” [xxxiii].
Given that Farran had drafted Dadaji’s first petition as a lawyer[xxxiv], by rights, he should have recused himself. But he did not. Inexplicably, Rukhmabai’s counsel also did not press this issue. After High Court had rejected most of Rukhmabai’s claims, the retrial had become just a formality, so being a foregone conclusion.
Despairing of justice at the hands of men, Rukhmabai defiantly told the court that ‘rather than accept a verdict that directed her to live with Dadaji, she would submit herself to the maximum penalty admissible under the law[xxxv] which meant six months in jail, and could also extend to confiscation of her property. As expected, Justice Farran ruled that Rukhmabai should ‘go or return’ to Dadaji's house within one month and inform the court accordingly. If not, she was to face six months in jail. He also ordered that she should pay the costs for Dadaji’s appeal to the High Court.
We need to remember the law under which Judge Farran passed the order. ‘The Matrimonial Causes Act’ had already been amended in England in 1884 and its penal provisions removed. Under this amendment provisions of sentencing a spouse for not following court orders on ‘Restitution of Conjugal Rights’ had been repealed. By 1886, a court in England could ONLY give directives on ‘Restitution of Conjugal Rights Cases’. Another irony was that had Rukhmabai been a Parsi, her maximum punishment for not following court orders in a ‘Restitution of Conjugal Rights’ case would have been only 2 months!
Rukhmabai again refused to follow the court’s order after the judgement. (She may have decided six month in jail was a small price to pay for getting rid of Dadaji for life.) After her defiant statement her lawyers requested that a notice be given to Rukhmabai ‘as a matter of courtesy’, before a bailiff was sent to her home. This request made everyone uncomfortable.
Another Press Storm
This judgement unleashed another storm. Tilak, the archconservative who construed any talk of alleviating Indian women’s condition an ‘attack on Hinduism’ used this refusal to claim this was because of the ill effects of English education on women[xxxvi]. That the very nationalist, conservative people who bristled at a British intervention in social matters, were now rejoicing at a punishment by the British courts that had no basis in Hindu law books! Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows.
The very people who extolled Hindu Religion and claimed that it respected women and treated them as goddesses started trashing Rukhmabai and her character. In a lecture delivered in Bombay Bramho Samaj, Kirtikar, Dr Arjun’s protegee who had sided with Dadaji cast aspersions on Rukhmabai’s character and then warned parents that English education would Rukhmabai’s of their daughters.
It was open season on Rukhmabai and education for women, especially English education. Many like Tilak blamed it for Rukhmabai’s ability to think differently and her rebellion. Interestingly, even a ‘Judge’ in England agreed with him, who in his letter to the Times in London stated that ‘eastern women’ should not be given English education as that realised their lascivious tendencies which threatened the very fabric of society! [xxxvii]
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Rudyard Kipling, who wrote op-eds about the case in Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore considered as an example of the superiority of the Imperialist law. [xxxviii][xxxix] There were many other reports and editorials in the same vein in the Anglo-Indian Press.
Still others like Vaman Abaji Modak, Principal of the Elphinstone High School, expressed sympathies for both Dadaji and Rukhmabai, but more so for Rukhmabai for being saddled with a husband whom she detested. He also donated to the ‘Rukhmabai Defence Fund’.
Reactions in England
The story had been picked up by the English press for which the case represented everything that was wrong with the Indian marriage system, how and what the Imperial powers can do about it. Only some, like Max Muller wrote back in support of the Hindu Law saying that the mess was created because English Law was superimposed on traditional laws and customs. Sir Monier Williams the Sanskritist waded in the controversy and supported Max Muller[xl].
Rukhmabai herself wrote a series of letters and articles in Times of India about problems of child marriages and her case[xli] at one point even writing to Queen Victoria to urge her to make laws prohibiting child marriage.
Many English, Welsh and Scottish women saw their own conditions reflected in Rukhmabai’s plight and flooded the press with letters in her support. However, except for Pandita Ramabai Saraswati, no other Indian woman supported her and remained mostly silent throughout Rukhmabai’s ordeal and even later. This, I find perplexing as these women were most affected by the case.
Feminsit Support
Moved by the press coverage, English feminists like Katherine Lyttleton[xlii] and Dr Elizabeth Pechey also joined the cause, and set up the English ‘Rukhmabai Defence Fund’ to help raise money for taking her case to the Privy Council (Supreme Court in colonial times) and also to raise the issue of child marriages in parliament. Later, when appeal to the Privy Council did not happen, Dr Pechey, who with a group of women had set up the London School of Medicine for Women, used the funds to help Rukhmabai get admission in the school and train as a doctor.
The sight of the spectacle of an educated Indian woman being dragged to jail also shook the establishment. Things came to such a pass that even the Viceroy thought it prudent to cable the British Law minister and draw his attention to the case[xliii]. Even the conservatives were not keen for Rukhmabai to go to jail.
Rukhmabai Defence Committee and Fund
Supporters of Rukhmabai, who included the editor of Bombay Spectator, Graeme Geary and luminaries like Justice Ranade, set up the ‘Rukhmabai Defence Committee’ to move the authorities for a quick change in the law to save Rukhmabai from punishment. Geary and his wife also set up a ‘Rukhmabai Defence Fund’ in India to help her take her case to the Privy Council.
The Case for Libel
Within a week of the Divisional Court’s judgement, Dadaji wrote an ‘Exposition’ about the case that was published in the Times of India of the 19 April 1887. [xliv]. This ‘Exposition’ made many erroneous claims and allegations against Rukhmabai. Later, under cross-examination it became clear the vengeful Dr Kirtikar had authored the ‘Exposition’ instead of Dadaji. However, because of this exposition Dadaji’s the real reason for pursuing Rukhmabai – acquisition of her property became clear to all because he had stated in the exposition, that he, as a husband, had ‘the right to the custody of a wife’s body and property (to do what he wanted with them).’
Rukhmabai, depressed at the way the case had gone, initially did not respond to this ‘Exposition’. Later, once her supporters convinced her that her quite would be construed as agreement with the falsehoods, she wrote a scathing reply which Times of India and the Bombay Gazette published simultaneously on the 29 June 1887.[xlv] In her reply, Rukhmabai had finally revealed her principal objection to going to live with Dadaji and Dhurmaji’s family. There she mentioned that Dhurmaji had forced his wife to live with his concubine in the same home whose torture had led the wife’s attempted suicide.
Immediately, Narayen Dhurmaji sued both the publications and Rukhmabai for libel. During the case it became clear that the sole purpose of the lawsuit was to torture and humiliate Rukhmabai, which Dhurmaji’s advocate did in ample measure. The editor of Bombay the GazettE, Graeme Geary, not one to be cowed down, fought the case, simultaneously publishing the court proceedings and the results of his investigation of Dhurmaji’s life which showed that the claims made in Rukhmabai’s reply were true.
In between all this, Rukhmabai also filed an appeal against Farran’s in the High Court to postpone going to jail, and to gain time to appeal to the Privy Council. I still wonder at the steel of this woman who single-handedly suffered the tornado of allegations and court cases in the 19th century at the tender age of 25.
Dhurmaji lost the suite, and it became obvious to all that Dhurmaji had been the main instigator and financier of ALL Dadaji’s lawsuits. This viciousness is in character with the reactions of sex attacker who has lost his prey. It also created more supporters and sympathisers for Dadaji.
With the loss of the libel case Dadaji finally realised that there was no chance of his winning any other cases and so he negotiated an out-of-court settlement with Rukhmabai and in exchange for Rs 2000 agreed to take no further action against her[xlvi]. After he received ₹ 2,000 from Rukhmabai, Dadaji withdrew the case, remarried and disappeared from history.
British Feminists to the Rescue
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By the time Dadaji received his money, Rukhmabai had lost all her money fighting the expensive court cases, but she still maintained her free thinking and spirit. At this juncture, the English feminists became her saviour. Because Rukhmabai had repeatedly expressed her wish to study medicine in her writings, Dr Edith Pechey helped her secure an admission in the medical college and used the funds raised by her defence funds to pay for her passage to England and her education and stay in England.
In 1890 Rukhmabai sailed to England to train as a doctor. Just before she left, her grandfather asked her to promise - not to eat beef, and not to convert to Christianity. She accepted the second, but refused to promise not to eat beef, which she promptly started after reaching England[xlvii]. Even after her devastating loss, she had not given up her fight against the custom of child marriage as seen in her piece called ‘Indian Child Marriages’ for The ‘New Review’ in September 1890, which underscored many of the points she had made during her trial.
She completed her degree in 1894 and after which she returned to India. Even after her return she continued her activism as proven by the recently discovered correspondence between her and Lady Katherine Lyttleton in the Queen Mary Library[xlviii].
Life After Return to India
After her return to India, she worked as the Chief Medical Officer of Surat hospital in 1909[xlix] and later at the Zanana hospital at Rajkot. Her only bow to the conventional norms of the surrounding society was stopping wearing vermillion and coloured saris after Dadaji’s death. Sudhir Chandra speculates that she did this so as not to upset the family’s of the women she had become a doctor to serve. She died in 1950, a 90-year-old single woman, still wedded to the cause of women, and their education. In her will she donated the building behind the Raut Bunglow in Gamdevi, Mumbai that her mother built with Dr Arjun’s insurance money that she had built with her earnings to the local school. The school still holds classes in the building, though the students have no idea of the struggle their benefactress had to go through to give it to them.
References
[i] A Hindu Lady (Rukhmabai), “Enforced Widowhood" Times of India (19th September 1885) p 4.
[ii] Rukhhmabai and B H Bennett, “A Case of Myxoma,” Indian Medical Gazette 44, no. 5 (May 1909): 180, 1.
[iii] Jim Masselos, “Sexual Property/Sexual Violence: Wives in Nineteenth-Century Bombay,” South Asia Research 12, no. 2 (November 1992) p 81–99.
[iv] Rukhhmabai and B H Bennett, “A Case of Myxoma,” Indian Medical Gazette 44, no. 5 (May 1909): 180, 1.
[v] “SC ’17 Ruling behind Move on Age of Marriage - The Economic Times,” accessed October 12, 2020,
[vi] Abha Goradia, “‘A Tale of Natives’ The Indian Express, September 30, 2019,
[vii] Mohini Varde, Rukhmabai: Ek Aarta (Mumbai: Popular Prakasahan, 1982) p 3.
[viii] Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008). p 237
[ix] ibid
[x] Mohini Varde, Rukhmabai: Ek Aarta (Mumbai: Popular Prakasahan, 1982) p 3
[xi] “Bombay Natural History Society,” accessed October 17, 2020, https://bnhs.org/who-we-are.
[xii] Sudhir Chandra, Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008) p 237
[xiii] A Hindu Lady (Rukhmabai), “Enforced Widowhood" Times of India (19th September 1885) p 4.
[xiv] Ramabai Ranade, Aamchya Ayushatil Kahi Athavani, 5 (of Varada Prakashan) (Pune: Varada Prakashan, 2017).
[xv] A Hindu Lady (Rukhmabai), “Enforced Widowhood" Times of India (19th September 1885) p 4..
[xvi] Rukhmabai, “A Jubilee for the Women of India, Times of London (April 9, 1887)
[xvii] Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008) p 225
[xviii] Rukhmabai, “Reply to Dadaji’s ’Exposition ’.” Times of India, (19th June 1887) edition page 4
[xix] Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008) p 24
[xx] Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008) p 24.
[xxi] Dadaji Bhikaji, “Exposition of Some of the Facts of the Case Dadaji v. Rukhmabai,” Times of India, Bombay, 19th April 1887 edition.p 4
[xxii] Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008) p 237
[xxiii] Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights:"Oxford Univ. PressNew Delhi p 21
[xxiv] Rukhmabai, “Reply to Dadaji’s ’Exposition ’.” Times of India, 19th June 1887 edition page 4
[xxv] Vidhi Doshi, “India Grants Divorce to Man Whose Wife Refused to Live with In-Laws,” The Guardian, October 8, 2016, s
[xxvi] Shyamal L, “Catching Flies: Naturalists in Court and Courtship,” Catching Flies (blog), February 14, 2017, https://muscicapa.blogspot.com/2017/02/naturalists-courting-trouble.html.
[xxvii] Rukhmabai, “Reply to Dadaji’s ’Exposition ’.” Times of India, 19th June 1887 edition page 4
[xxviii] [xxviii] A Hindu Lady (Rukhmabai), “Enforced Widowhood" Times of India (19th September 1885) p 4.
[xxix] A Hindu Lady (Rukhmabai), “Enforced Widowhood" Times of India (19th September 1885) p 4. Also see Henry Curwen’s editorial on the same page.
[xxx] “Dadaji Bhikaji vs Rukhmabai on 21 September, 1885,” accessed October 14, 2020, https://indiankanoon.org/doc/623704/.
[xxxi] Sudhir Chandra, “Rukhmabai: Debate Over Woman’s Right to Her Person,” Economic and Political Weekly 34 (1996): 37–47.
[xxxii] Antoinette Burton, Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism (Duke University Press, 2011), pp 187.
[xxxiii] Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, The High Caste Hindu Woman, George Bell&Sons vols. (Philadelphia: Ten Thousand, 1888),
[xxxiv] Sudhir Chandra, Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008) p 102
[xxxv] Sudhir Chandra, Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008) p 103.
[xxxvi] Bal Gangadhar Tilak, “’Hindudharm Ghav Ghalnare Navin Trikut (The New Confederacy of Three in Assaulting Hinduism’),” Kesari
[xxxvii] Antoinette Burton, Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism. (Duke University Press) p 194
[xxxviii] Rudyard Kipling, “Op-Ed on Rukhmabai” Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore, April 16, 1887. https://scalar.lehigh.edu/kiplings/op-ed-on-rukhmabai-april-16-1887-credited-to-rudyard-kipling.
[xxxix] Rudyard Kipling, “Commentary on Behramji Merchant’s Editorial in Indian Spectator Abt Rukhmabai’s Case” Civil and Military Gazatte, 26 March 1887, https://scalar.lehigh.edu/kiplings/rukhmabai-scrap-march-26-1887.
[xl] Antoinette Burton, Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism. Antoinette Burton. (Duke University Press) p 197
[xli] Rukhmabai, “Reply to Dadaji’s ’Exposition ’.” Times of India, 19th June 1887 edition.
[xlii] https://www.qmul.ac.uk/library/archives/news/archives-sheds-light-on-child-brides-and-womens-rights-in-the-1880s-and-the-infamous-rukhmabai-court-case.html.
[xliii] Antoinette Burton, “From Child Bride to ‘Hindoo Lady’: Rukhmabai and the Debate on Sexual Respectability in Imperial Britain,” The American Historical Review 103, no. 4 (October 1998)
[xliv] Dadaji Bhikaji, “Exposition of Some of the Facts of the Case Dadaji v. Rukhmabai.” Times of India, 19 April 1887.
[xlv] Rukhmabai, “Reply to Dadaji’s ’Exposition ’.”, Times of India, 29 June 1887.
[xlvi] Mohini Varde, Rukhmabai: Ek Aarta (Mumbai: Popular Prakasahan, 1982) pp 85-92.
[xlvii] Mohini Varde, Rukhmabai: Ek Aarta. (Mumbai: Popular Prakasahan, 1982) p 103-104
[xlviii]https://www.qmul.ac.uk/library/archives/news/archives-sheds-light-on-child-brides-and-womens-rights-in-the-1880s-and-the-infamous-rukhmabai-court-case.html.
[xlix] Rukhhmabai and B H Bennett.”
