Untold Saga Of An Iconoclast

The eighth decade of the 19th century was epochal.

- SANJEEV CHOPRA

Four months before Indian National Congress was founded in December, a landmark judgement gave our eponymous 'shero' Rukhmabai, the liberty to not consummate her marriage with Dadaji Bhikaji. She had argued that the marriage had taken place when she was just 11 years of age, and had no agency to make a decision about her own life. This was perhaps the first case of its kind - for the young woman in question had not only challenged the might of the Imperial legal system, but also the entrenched patriarchal orthodoxy of her times.

Resurrection of Rukhmabai The credit for the resurrection of Rukhmabai goes entirely to the meticulous researcher, Sudhir Chandra. By happenstance, he was consulting the personal library of Dr Sakharam Arjun, the stepfather of Rukhmabai for his doctoral thesis on the emergence of national consciousness in India in 1968. Later in 1975 he was at the NMML (now PMML) going through the issues of Indian Spectator from January 1887 on the establishment of the Indian National Social Conference. But what held his attention was the Rukhmabai case. This had stirred a major legal debate between the Anglo Saxon and Hindu jurisprudential canons, and also divided the orthodox and progressive elements of the Indian society on the contentious issue of whether marriage was a sacrament for the fulfilment of familial and religious duties or a social contract in which both consenting parties had legitimate rights and expectations. Later, he presented a paper at a seminar at IIAS Shimla, and at the Women's study centre founded by Veena Mazumdar. Finally, in 2008, he completed his magnum opus 'Enslaved daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women's Rights'. Freely accessible on the Internet archive, it provides the academic backdrop to this fascinating study.