The inspiring story of Anandi Gopal Joshi – The first Indian female medical practitioner

Early Life

Anandibai was born, raised, and married in Kalyan where her family had earlier been landlords before undergoing financial losses. Ganpatrao, her father, coming from orthodox Hindu customs concerning women and girls, encouraged Joshi’s education. She took admissions in her school from an early age. However, Joshi’s mother was both emotionally and physically abusive. As Joshi would later recall: “My mother never spoke to me affectionately. When she punished me, she used not just a small rope or thong, but always stones, sticks and live charcoal.”

Married Life

When Joshi was six, her father recruited a distant family relative named Gopalrao Joshi to teach her. Three years into this arrangement, her tutor attained a job promotion at the postal service in another city. As per the practice at that time and due to pressure from her mother, she got married at the age of 9. Her husband was the tutor itself. Gopalrao Joshi was a widower. He was almost twenty years older than her. Anandibai was originally named the Yamuna. After her marriage, her husband renamed her Anandi. He worked in Kalyan as a postal clerk. Anandi’s husband was a kind person who stood by his wife’s side and became her biggest inspiration and push. He was determined to educate his wife when she expressed her wish to study medicine at the age of 14.

They lost their first child just ten days after delivery because of the unavailability of proper medical resources. It was a time when women’s education wasn’t taken seriously. Gopalrao appeared as a great exception. Her husband taught Anandi how to read and write Marathi, English, and Sanskrit. He also moved himself to Calcutta to avoid direct interference of Anandi’s parents in her education. He was an obsessed man.  Once she was found helping her grandmother in the kitchen he flew into an uncontrollable rage and beat the young girl with a bamboo stick. Back then husbands beat wives for not cooking but whoever had heard of a wife being beaten for cooking when she should have been reading. Anandi had transformed into a well-read intellectual girl.

Addressing a room full of Bengalese neighbors, companions, and fellow Hindus who had joined at Serampore College, “there is a growing need for Hindu lady doctors in India, and I volunteer to qualify myself for one.”

When Anandibai was 15, it was seen that she was already interested in medicine. In 1880, Gopalrao sent a letter to a well-known American missionary specifying his wife’s keenness to study medicine. Gopalrao’s matter asking for help from the Presbyterian Church was published in the Missionary Review, an American periodical. But the church declined to assist Joshi because she had no intention to convert from Hindu to Christianity per the request of the church to serve as a “native” missionary.

She would have to find another way. Still, this matter wasn’t fully fruitless. An American woman named Theodicia Carpenter read about Joshi’s situation in the Missionary Review and immediately initiated a long-distance correspondence with Joshi. Later, when she traveled to America, Carpenter housed her and helped her choose a university.

“As a rule, we Indian women suffer from innumerable trifling diseases,” she wrote, “unnoticed until they grow serious … fifty percent die in the prime of their youth of disease arising partly through ignorance and loathsomeness to communicate of the parties concerned, and partly through the carelessness of their guardians or husbands.”

At the same time as she faced issues from American Protestants who wished to see her convert before studying in America. Joshi was also facing discouragement from other Hindus who distrusted that she would maintain Hindu customs while living in the West. Yet Joshi’s responsibility to her religious beliefs remained constant. As she told the crowd at Serampore College, “I will go as a Hindu, and come back here to live as a Hindu.” As Pripas says, “She wasn’t just wanting to treat Indian women; she specifically wanted to serve Hindu women.”

Joshi’s speech gained her the support of her Hindu community. And in her success, she gained a donation of 100 Rupees and combined the money she saved from selling the jewelry her father had afforded her passage to America. At last, after years of planning on April 7, 1883, she sailed from Calcutta.

She studied medicine at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. It is now known as Drexel University College of Medicine. At the age of 19, she got her MD degree in 1886. On the day of her graduation, Queen Victoria sent a message congratulating her. She finished her thesis on obstetric practices among the ancient Hindus.

Joshi did become a Protestant or did she return to India as one. “In this regard, Joshee was unique,” says medical historian Sarah Pripas. Even during her studies in America, she kept wearing her sari and sustained a vegetarian diet. She was conscious that Hindus in India were vigilant to see if she kept her promise to return as a Hindu. She was openly critical of missionaries and religious dogmatism. So she handled public display of her religion and culture. Anandi both persuaded her Hindu community and subverted the religious imperialism rooted in the college’s mission.

At the college, she aimed at women’s healthcare, especially gynecology and obstetrics. In her studies, Anandi integrated non-Western medical practice. In her research, Pripas highlights that Anandi used her own translations of Sanskrit texts in her thesis, showing a preference for traditional women’s knowledge over interventional birthing techniques, like the use of the forceps. At the age of 20, Anandi graduated with a U.S. degree in medicine. It was an exceptional achievement for an Indian woman in 1886.

Anandi was already ill with the first symptoms of Tuberculosis that would ultimately kill her. When she returned back in 1886 her health became worse. She received a grand welcome and from the princely state of Kolhapur appointed her as the physician-in-charge of the female ward of the local Albert Edward Hospital. Even though she attained a fusion of Western and Ayurvedic treatment, nothing could be done to save her life.

She passed away on February 26^th, 1887, a month before turning 22. Her ashes were sent to Mrs.Theodicia Carpenter, her host who placed them in her family cemetery near New York.

Joshi’s achievement was shortly taken by more Indian women. Seven years after Joshi in 1893, Gurubai Karmarkar also graduated from Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and came back to India. She treated women in Bombay at the American Marathi Mission. In 1901, Dora Chatterjee, specified as a “Hindu Prince’s Daughter,” graduated from the college. Back in India, she set up the Denny Hospital for Children and Women in Hoshiarpur. Even though Joshi was the first, she was definitely not the last Indian woman to study abroad and return home to care for other women.

19th-century writer Caroline Dall, in her biography of Joshi, asked, “If not yourself, whom would you like to be?” Joshi simply replied, “No one.” Despite of living a short life, marked by abuse and religious discrimination, Joshi achieved what she went out to do: to become a Hindu lady doctor. Joshi did not desire to be anyone else but herself. There is no doubt that many Hindu women and girls would want to be like her and keep up with the trail she had blazed.

Institute for Research and Documentation in Social Science (IRDS) a non-governmental organization from Lucknow has been giving the Anandibai Joshi award for medicine in association to her early contribution to the cause of medical science in India. Moreover, the Government of Maharashtra has set up a fellowship in her name for young women working on women’s health. A crater on Venus has been named in her honor. The 34.3 km-diameter crater on Venus named ‘Joshi’ lies at a latitude of 5.5° N and a longitude of 288.8° E.

Google honored her with a Google Doodle to mark her 153rd birth anniversary On 31 March 2018.

A Marathi film on her life has been made in 2019 by Anandi Gopal. A Gujarati-language play titled Dr. Anandibai Joshi directed by Manoj Shah was premiered at National Centre for the Performing Arts In 2017.

At a period when a woman’s position was not even considered in society and their education was unachievable, Anandi took a bold step to fight and go against her desires to accomplish as a doctor. This became possible for her because of a big supporting hand from her husband Gopalrao who never allowed her to quit and always inspired her to do more. India still deals with unsupportive husbands and a society that concluded that a woman’s position is inside the house, this story of this couple was a bright change. Gopalrao’s support for women’s education and their empowerment was remarkable for that time. She could not convert her degree into a successful profession due to her untimely death. Anandabai surely left a mark on India’s heart. She contributed to a smart and bolder India.