Portraits of Courage – Pandita Ramabai

It is a Christian biography of Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922). It follows her from her birth in a forest in the Western Ghats and her childhood as a pilgrim, through the famine that killed her family, her honours as a Sanskrit scholar in Calcutta, her marriage and widowhood, England and America, her school for widows in Bombay and Poona, the famine rescues of 1896–1900, the founding of Mukti at Kedgaon, the 1905 revival, and her translation of the Bible into Marathi. It draws mainly on her own writings.

She was a Brahman woman, taught Sanskrit by her parents, who was acclaimed by the pandits of Calcutta in 1878 and became one of the first Indian women to campaign publicly for women's education and the rights of widows. She became a Christian in England in 1883, founded the Sharada Sadan school for widows in 1889 and the Mukti Mission at Kedgaon in 1897, rescued thousands of girls from famine, and translated the Bible into everyday Marathi.

In her 1907 Testimony she wrote that at her baptism in 1883 she had found 'the Christian religion' but 'had not found Christ, who is the Life of the religion.' About 1891, after reading the Bible itself rather than books about it, she came to an end of herself and surrendered to Christ, and found salvation as a free gift. The book takes that distinction seriously.

Her school for widows had been promised as religiously neutral. When girls began attending her private prayers and some declared faith in Christ, the Hindu reformers on its advisory board, including M. G. Ranade and R. G. Bhandarkar, resigned, and thirty-one pupils were withdrawn. The book gives both sides: the reformers' reasonable sense of a broken understanding, and Ramabai's refusal to shut the open door of her own room.

The revival at Mukti began in June 1905, before the Azusa Street meetings of 1906, and it influenced Pentecostal movements elsewhere, including in Chile. But speaking in tongues at Mukti came later, in December 1906, after news of Azusa Street arrived. Ramabai herself taught that love, not tongues, was the one necessary sign of the Holy Spirit.

No. Julia Smith had published a translation of the whole Bible into English in 1876, and Marathi Bibles existed before Ramabai's. Hers was the first translation of the Bible into colloquial Marathi, made for village women, and she was among the first women anywhere to translate the whole of Scripture from the original languages. The complete edition was published after her death.

Each chapter opens with a passage from the American Standard Version (1901) that carries its theme, from 'A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows' to 'there can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus', and further passages are woven through the story, including verses Ramabai herself quoted. Every quotation was checked against the ASV text.

At the beginning. The preface and introduction explain the sources and the three ways Ramabai has been remembered — as reformer, saint, and missionary; the chapters then follow her life in order. Appendix A gathers lessons from her life, Appendix B is a study guide for groups, Appendix C a chronology, and Appendix D a note on sources and on popular claims the book corrects.