Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb

“Open thy mouth for the dumb, In the cause of all such as are left desolate.” — Proverbs 31:8 (ASV)

In 1882, with her baby, Ramabai moved to Poona, where her father had first heard a woman reciting Sanskrit. The city was divided. Reformers like the judge Mahadev Govind Ranade and the scholar R. G. Bhandarkar worked carefully for women's education and the remarriage of widows; the orthodox saw every change as an attack on Hindu society. The reformers welcomed her. Ranade's young wife said she had “amazing skill in winning the hearts of her hearers.”

Within months Ramabai founded the Arya Mahila Samaj, a society of women working to free women from child-marriage and “the bondage of ignorance.” It was one of the first organisations in India founded and led by a woman for women, and she did not soften her words. “Men look on us women as chattels,” she said. “We make every effort to deliver ourselves from this situation. But some will say that this is a rebellion against man, and that to do this is sin. To leave men's evil acts unrebuked and remain unmoved before them is a great sin.” The orthodox newspapers attacked her almost at once.

That September a British commission came to Poona to look into education in India. Ramabai, twenty-four, with no degree and no position, gave evidence. “I consider it my duty,” she said, “to the very end of my life, to maintain this cause, and to advocate the proper position of women in this land.”

In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the educated men of this country are opposed to Female Education and the proper position of woman. ... It is evident that women, being one-half of the people of this country, are oppressed and cruelly treated by the other half.

She asked for women doctors, because most Indian women “would rather die than speak of their ailments to a man.” The chairman had her evidence translated and printed.

That year a child-widow of about twelve was brought to her. She had been married at five, and her boy husband had died a few days after the wedding. Her mother-in-law would not look at her. “She said the girl had eaten up her son and was a great demon.” Ramabai took the girl in. “As I looked on that little figure,” she wrote, “my vague thoughts about doing something for my sisters in similar conditions began to take shape.” She would open a home for widows. When no one would fund it, she decided to train as a doctor in England.

For a high-caste Hindu, crossing the sea meant losing caste. For a widow to go with a toddler was almost unheard of. In the spring of 1883 she sailed anyway, with two-year-old Manorama and a young friend, Anandibai Bhagat. She was still not a Christian, though she had been reading the New Testament with an English missionary and listening to Father Nehemiah Goreh, a gentle Indian priest who, like her, had been born a Brahman.

Proverbs says, “Open thy mouth for the dumb, In the cause of all such as are left desolate.” In that old English, “dumb” means people who cannot speak. The child-widow could not speak for herself. Ramabai could, so she did.

You probably have more voice than someone near you: a kid who gets mocked, a classmate who can't speak the language well, someone being piled on online. Speaking up rarely makes you popular. Ramabai was attacked in the papers within weeks. But she knew that staying silent about wrong was its own kind of sin.

One thing to do this week: find one situation this week where someone is being treated unfairly and can't easily defend themselves. Say one true, calm sentence on their behalf, to the person doing it, to an adult who can help, or to the person being hurt.