Appendix A: Lessons from the Life of Pandita Ramabai

“Remember them that had the rule over you, men that spake unto you the word of God; and considering the issue of their life, imitate their faith.”

— Hebrews 13:7, ASV

The lessons below gather the themes of this book so that readers can return to them. Pandita Ramabai called herself a sweeper, and would have been uncomfortable being held up as a model. She wanted her life to point to the faithfulness of God. Each lesson therefore rests on Scripture, not on her example alone. The letter to the Hebrews tells us to consider how those who went before us lived and died, and to imitate their faith, not every detail of their lives.

1. Teach Your Daughters

Her father defied his caste to teach his wife and daughters, and everything Ramabai became grew from that. Children learn what their parents care enough to teach them. “Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way” (Deuteronomy 6:7, ASV).

2. Love the Truth More Than Approval

At Dwarka, as a girl, she saw no golden city, and would not pretend she did. All her life she preferred the truth to the good opinion of others. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32, ASV).

3. Suffering Does Not Make Us Kind; Grace Does

She warned that hunger and grief had hardened her heart, not softened it, and that only God could give her a heart that cared for others. “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26, ASV).

4. God Draws Those Who Cannot Find Their Own Way

Widowed at twenty-three, before she knew Christ, she wrote that if she was to come to God, “He must Himself draw me.” “No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him” (John 6:44, ASV).

5. Speak for Those Who Cannot Speak

She told a government commission that women were oppressed by men, when almost no Indian woman had a public voice. “Open thy mouth for the dumb, In the cause of all such as are left desolate” (Proverbs 31:8, ASV).

6. Christ Receives the Outcast

She was drawn to Christ by seeing Christians care for women society had cast out, and by the story of the woman at the well. “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst” (John 4:14, ASV).

7. Religion Is Not the Same as Christ

For eight years after her baptism, she said, she had “found the Christian religion” but “had not found Christ.” Many people still stop where she stopped. “The people that sat in darkness Saw a great light” (Matthew 4:16, ASV).

8. Salvation Is a Gift

“No caste, no sex, no work, and no man was to be depended upon to get salvation.” What she had tried for years to earn, she found was freely given. “But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, ASV).

9. Do Not Shut the Door

She would not hide her faith from those who wanted to hear, and in time she told her supporters plainly what her work had become. Honesty about faith can cost friends and still be right. “Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God?” (Galatians 1:10, ASV).

10. Begin It Yourself

When she wished someone would start a work of faith in India, she heard God ask why she did not begin it herself. Wishing that others would act is easy. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10, ASV).

11. Love the Wanderer

She was ready to leave the runaway girl at the Herna river, until she remembered how God had loved her while she was still a sinner. Mercy that waits for repentance is not yet the mercy of God. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3, ASV).

12. Prove the Lord

She fed hundreds, and then thousands, without endowment, guaranteed income, or bank account, and found God faithful. She invited her readers to test him as she had. “Prove me now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts” (Malachi 3:10, ASV).

13. Revival Begins with Ourselves

The prayer circle at Mukti prayed first for “the true conversion of all the Indian Christians, including ourselves.” “If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven” (2 Chronicles 7:14, ASV).

14. Love Is the Sign

In the excitement of the revival she insisted that “love, perfect divine love, is the only and most necessary sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1, ASV).

15. Give the Word Freely

She spent her last years translating the Bible into the language of ordinary women, and never allowed it to be sold. “Freely ye received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8, ASV).

16. Be a Sweeper

One of the most learned women of her generation called herself a sweeper, and spent her life gathering up those whom others had thrown away. “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, And lifteth up the needy from the dunghill” (Psalm 113:7, ASV).