ABSTRACT
Ramabai's life story usually starts four decades before her birth with the student years of her father, Anant Dongre whose dramatic and eventful life merits a separate narrative. This chapter looks at the life of Pandita Ramabai, one of the major social reformers of 19th-century India. Her unique life trajectory spanned across a pan-Indian, orthodox Hindu mould to being part of Brahmo Samaj and Prarthana Samaj, and further to Christianity. In the aftermath of this multiple tragedy which truncated the family, Ramabai and Shrinivas continued the familiar way of life and made their way on foot to various pilgrimage sites. Their subsequent life and journey from the south to the Himalayas was necessarily frugal and involved extreme hardship. Lionized for her unique mastery over the Sanskrit language and texts, Ramabai was publicly examined by a small panel of Sanskrit scholars comprising Professor Tawney, Professor Gough and Pandit Maheshchandra Nyayaratna at the Senate House of the University of Calcutta.
