Review Article on A Fragmented Feminism: The Life and Letters of Anandibai Joshee By Meera Kosambi, Ram Ramaswamy, Madhavi Kolhatkar & Aban Mukherji

Abstract

A Fragmented Feminism: The Life and Letters of Anandibai Joshee is the seminal work on social history about the first woman doctor of India, Anandibai Gopal Joshee written by the sociologist Meera Kosambi and Edited by Ram Ramaswamy, Madhavi Kolhatkar and Aban Mukherji. It provides insight into the psychosocial impacts of culture on Indian women through the life of Dr. Anandibai Gopal Joshee, India’s first women doctor. The author collected the letters written by Anandibai, newspaper reports on her, her poems in Marathi and rare photographs of her to craft the biography of her life. This book resembles an epistolary style in its narrative quality accompanied by annotations and explanations by the author and Editors. Anandibai, who was graduated in western medicine at America, lived during the nineteenth century pre-independence India where access to basic education was a distant dream. This book stands as a witness to practices of child marriage, physical and emotional abusement on women. (Kosambi, 19) ‘In childhood the mind is immature and the body undeveloped. And you know how I acted on these occasions. If I had left, you at that immature age, as you kept on suggesting, what would have happened? (And any number of girls have left their homes because of harassment from mothers-in-law and husbands). I did not do so because I was afraid that my ill-considered behaviour would tarnish my father’s honour… And I requested you not to spare me, but to kill me. In out society, for centuries there has been no legal barrier between husband and wives; and if it exists, it works against women! Such being the vase, I had no recourse but to allow you to hit me with chairs and bear it with equanimity. A Hindu woman has not right to utter a word or to advise her husband. On the contrary she has right to allow her husband to do what he wishes and to keep quiet.’