Anandi’s quest to become a doctor for Indian women was born of tragedy — her son died when he was only a few weeks old. She was devastated by the loss.
She had seen other girl-women of her age (13 or 14) become mothers; and, she was not a stranger to the loss of the mother and/or the baby during the delivery or soon after. Indeed, she had very likely witnessed the grief and anguish of other women who had suffered losses similar to hers, for she would later describe their (and her) particular sorrow thus:
“A child’s death does no harm to its father, but its mother does not want it to die.”
However, whereas other women (and men) of her time were inclined to see such losses as karma (fate) or a just punishment for some or other perceived religious infraction, only a few years of education had started to fundamentally change Anandi’s perceptions of and reactions to everyday events.
So it was that she came to the realization that she lost her baby because of lack of access to medical care. The reality was that there were very few western-trained physicians in India at this time (1878). And, even those few could not treat female patients owing to prevalent ideas of modesty and religious/ritual purity. In her grief, Anandi realized that if there were women doctors, they would be able to treat women patients and this would neatly circumvent all the religious, social and tradition-bound objections to men providing medical care to women.
Up until this point, she had been a somewhat reluctant participant in her husband’s quixotic (and sometimes harsh) attempts to educate her. The loss of her son made her path clear. She would study, but not simply in order to learn the alphabet and grammar and maps and history. Rather, she would study so she might provide healthcare and offer medical training to her beleaguered “country-sisters.”
Mahatma Gandhi would later proclaim “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” Long before then, Anandi put this thought into action, deciding that if she wanted to be useful, she would have to bet her body, heart and soul on the pursuit of a medical education; that in this pursuit she would have to challenge religious and social strictures to cross the seas and travel alone, even if it be to the other end of the earth.
Owing to her early death, Anandi was not able to practice medicine in India. But, her example — her courage, grit and success in obtaining the M.D. degree — proved to the Hindu orthodoxy that women were capable of a life of the mind, and that they were deserving of empathy; indeed, that the key to Indian society’s uplift lay in the well-being of its women.
The childless mother thus became a fore-mother to generations of Indian women whose education and empowerment gradually but surely became a mainstream idea.