Pandita Ramabai

Pandita Ramabai (Kannada: ಪಂಡಿತಾ ರಮಾಬಾಯಿ) (Marathi: पंिडता रामाबाई) (23 April 1858 – 5 April 1922) was a social reformer and activist. She was born as Hindu, started Arya Mahila Samaj and later converted to Christianity to serve widows and helpless women of India. Ramabai was a poet, a scholar, and a champion of improvement in the plight of Indian women. As a social reformer, she championed the cause of emancipation of Indian women. A widely traveled lady, she visited most parts of India, and even went to England (1883) and the U.S. (1886–88). She wrote many books including her widely popular work titled The High Caste Hindu Woman, which showed the darkest part of subject matter relating to the life of Hindu women, including child brides, child widows and the treatment they receive by the government and society. She had a strong view of what should be accomplished so women would be able to have more freedom, including protection of widowed women and child brides, as many of them were made destitute by their in-laws.
Early Life
Ramabai was born into an intellectual Hindu Chitpavan Brahmin family at Karnataka (Karkala Taluk, Mangalore District). Her father, Anant Shastri Dongre, who stayed at a place in Western Ghats, called Gangamoola, (Mala village, Karkala, Karnataka) was a Sanskrit scholar and believed that women should have education. Against the prevailing traditional Hindu social structure, he taught Puranas and Sanskrit shloks to Ramabai as well as his second wife, Ramambai’s mother Laxmibai and how to read and write Sanskrit as well as how to interpret Vedic texts. She was raised by her father. Her father faced hardships as he was against the tradition and he advocated education to girl children. He proved in front of Hindu scholars at Soday, (Karnataka) that teaching ladies with Sanskrit was not banned in any Shastra or purana. [1]
Her father, mother and sister died during 1874–76, and her brother and she traveled all over India and eventually ended up