Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi - A Lifelong Fight for Equality

A woman whose life had many ‘firsts’ , Muthulaksmi Reddi’s first real victory was probably to beat the odds and get an education. Brilliant and feisty, she was the first woman to join an all-male college in 1907 where she studied medicine, then the first female surgeon, and in a later avatar, British India’s first female legislator in 1926. Faced with ridicule and trauma in her formative years for being born to a woman from the Devadasi community, she would become highly empathetic to the community’s plight and as a lawmaker was instrumental in passing a bill against the trafficking of women and children. (The only woman in a panel of over 100 members). Avvai Home and Orphanage was founded by her in 1931, when 3 girls from Devadasi families knocked on her door one night, having run away from home with nowhere to go. It still stands today as a shelter for women and girls, irrespective of caste or religion. At the age of 28, her mother succeeded in convincing Muthulakshmi to get married, which she did on the condition that she would be considered always and only as an equal. Today, her statue stands in the premises of the Adyar Cancer Institute, one of the pioneering non profit centres for oncology that she founded in 1952. In her book ‘My Experiences as a Legislator’, she speaks movingly of her deep imperative to bring change in the lives of women and girls. “No enlightened woman with any self-respect can put up with such one-sided laws which have placed us in an inferior position.”