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| Legends from the South |
| Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy |
| Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy (1886-1968) was one
of India’s most distinguished women of her time. The first woman
to be admitted as a medical student at the Madras Medical College,
she was also the first woman to be nominated to the Madras Legislative
Council, where she was elected Deputy Chairperson. She was the
founder-president of the Indian Women’s Association and became
the first alderwoman of the Madras Corporation. Keenly aware
of her role as a pioneer among women, Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy,
constantly fought for the emancipation and upliftment of women
in India. She was the prime mover behind the legislation that
abolished the devadasi system in 1929 and played a keen role
in raising the minimum marriage age for women in India. |
| Born to Narayanaswamy and Chandrammal on August
30, 1886, at Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu, Muthulakshmi was the
eldest in a family of four. Her father, impressed with his daughter’s
thirst for knowledge even as a four-year old at the thinnai
pallikoodam, was keen to educate her. Those days, girls were
generally not sent to school, and Narayanaswamy engaged tutors
to teach her at home. Muthulakshmi sat for the Matriculation
examination and passed out in flying colours in 1902. |
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| Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy. |
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| The first woman doctor |
| Muthulakshmi’s dream to pursue higher education
was tempered by her knowledge of the family’s straitened circumstances.
Narayanaswamy sought the help of the Maharaja of Pudukottai, who came
forward to help Muthulakshmi pursue her studies, and the young girl
was able to join college at Pudukottai. Performing consistently and
impressing the professors and principal of her college, Muthulakshmi
applied for admission to medical college in pursuit of a childhood
dream and succeeded. In 1907, she joined the Madras Medical College,
where too she achieved a brilliant academic record. With several gold
medals and prizes to her credit, Muthulakshmi passed out in 1912 to
become the first woman doctor in the country. |
| Muthulakshmi had more surprises up her sleeve. When
her parents broached the subject of marriage, she expressed her opposition
to the very idea. She was of the view that marriage would force women
to succumb to the power of men, but for once, Muthulakshmi met her
match. Impressed with her academic excellence, Dr Sundar Reddy, a
well-known surgeon, the first Indian doctor to become a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Civil Surgeons (FRCS) approached Narayanaswamy
and asked for his daughter’s hand. He soon persuaded his daughter
to marry Dr Sundar Reddy in 1914. Muthulakshmi gave her consent not
without a fight! She demanded that she be treated as an equal and
given the freedom to do what she wanted. |
| Later Dr Reddy served at the Pudukottai Medical
College as the chief doctor and Dr Muthulakshmi joined her husband
there. They worked together for three years, before returning to Madras
where Dr Reddy joined the Madras Medical College as an Assistant Professor.
Soon afterwards, Muthulakshmi lost her sister to cancer, a tragedy
that was to influence her decision to take to research on the dread
disease, which she pursued at the Royal Cancer Hospital, UK. She also
trained in gynaecology there. |
| Her services |
| After her return to India, Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy
was elected to the Madras Legislative Council. Facing opposition from
many quarters, Dr Reddy enlisted the support of no less a personage
than Mahatma Gandhi, when she sought to liberate devadasi women from
the tyranny of their tradition. Gandhiji made public speeches and
wrote in his columns in support of Muthulakshmi’s efforts to uplift
the status of women in India. |
| The Avvai Home |
| Dr Reddy was actively involved with several orphanage
homes and women’s welfare organisations, and initiated measures to
improve the medical facilities given to slum dwellers. In 1930, she
founded Avvai Home, a home for destitute women and orphans at Besant
Avenue, Adyar. As an MLC, she introduced a scheme of free education
for girls up to class eight. |
| The first alderwoman |
| In 1937 Dr Reddy became the first alderwoman of
the Madras Corporation, where she introduced many schemes to improve
the life of leprosy patients. She launched measures to widen the city
limits, to relieve the congestion caused by the city’s galloping population.
To solve the water problem in the city, she recommended that more
wells be dug in many parts of the city. |
| Muthulakshmi, as a writer and orator |
| Muthulakshmi could write and speak well in Tamil
and English. She wrote many inspiring, patriotic articles in Sri Dharma,
a magazine of those days. She translated Mahatma Gandhi’s speeches
from English to Tamil. |
| Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy was a delegate at the Round
Table Conference in London. At a conference in Chicago, she spoke
forcefully of the plight and status of women in India, voiced her
protest against child marriage and advocated widow remarriage. |
| Cancer Hospital |
| During her address at the Golden Jubilee celebration
of the Madras Medical College in 1935, Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy first
expressed her desire to start a hospital for cancer patients. With
the overwhelming support of like-minded people, the foundation stone
for the hospital was laid by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1952. The hospital
which started functioning on June 18, 1954, was only the second of
its kind in India and the first in south India. It is today a world-renowned
institution offering treatment to nearly 80,000 cancer patients every
year. An institution builder, who brought fame to Indian womanhood,
and was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1956, Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy passed
away on July 22, 1968. |
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