The
great-grandson of the British Prime Minister Lord Shelburne (later 1st Marquess
of Lansdowne), a peerage of Scotland, Henry
Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th h Marquess of Lansdowne KG GCSI
GCMG GCIE PC was born in 1845. He was to
serve as the fifth Governor General of Canada, Viceroy of India, Secretary of
State for War, and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In 1917, during the
First World War, he wrote to the press (the "Lansdowne Letter")
vainly advocating a compromise peace. We are to know him as Lord Lansdowne was
appointed Viceroy of India in the same year he left Canada. The viceroyalty,
which he held from 1888 to 1894, was offered to him by the Conservative prime
minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury and marked the
pinnacle of his career. He quelled a
rebellion in 1890 and is recorded for his
attempt in 1893 to curtail trial
by jury was, however, over-ruled by home government. His divisive policies exacerbated tensions between Hindu
and Muslims !
There
are cases and landmark cases ~ this one of a 10 year old girl, Phulmoni Dasi
will long be remembered. The Phulmoni
Dasi rape case was a case of child marriage and subsequent marital rape in
India in 1889, that led to the
conviction of the husband in 1890 and triggered several legal reforms.
The
Age of Consent Act, 1891, also Act X of 1891, was a legislation enacted in
British India on 19 March 1891 which raised the age of consent for sexual
intercourse for all girls, married or unmarried, from ten to twelve years in
all jurisdictions, its violation subject to criminal prosecution as rape. The
act was an amendment of the Indian Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure,
Section 375, 1882, ("Of Rape"), and was introduced as a bill on 9
January 1891 by Sir Andrew Scoble in the Legislative Council of the
Governor-General of India in Calcutta. The
case was supported by President of the
council, the Governor-General and Viceroy Lord Lansdowne.
While an 1880 case
in a Bombay high court by a child-bride, Rukhmabai, renewed discussion of such
a law, the tragic death of this eleven-year-old
Bengali girl, Phulmoni Dasi , due to forceful intercourse by her 35-year-old
husband in 1889, necessitated intervention by judiciary.
Rukhmabai (
November 22, 1864 - September 25, 1955), was an Indian woman who became one of
the first practicing women doctors in colonial India. She was also at the heart
of a landmark legal case described above She herself was married off at the age of
eleven to a nineteen year old groom Dadaji Bhikaji Raut. She however continued
to live in the house of her widowed mother Jayantibai who then married
Assistant Surgeon Sakharam Arjun. When Dadaji and his family asked Rukhmabai to
move to his home, she refused and was supported in her choice by her
step-father. This led to a long series of court cases from 1884, a major public
discussion on child marriage and on the rights of women. Rukhmabai wrote numerous
letters in the newspapers under the pseudonym A Hindu Lady, winning the support
of many and when she expressed a wish to study medicine, a fund was created to
support her travel and study in England at the London School of Medicine. She
subsequently went to England and returned to India as a qualified physician and
worked for many years in a women's hospital in Rajkot.
To honour her on her 153rd birthday, Google has dedicated its doodle
showing a lady with a stethoscope around her neck, surrounded by women patients
and nurses in a hospital.
In a petition to
the Bombay High Court in March 1884, Dadaji plead to restore conjugal rights of
the husband over his wife, and the court in its judgement directed Rukhmabai to
comply or to go to prison. Rukhmabai refused and told the British India Court
that she would suffer imprisonment rather than entering into conjugal
relationship with her husband. Apart from being a doctor, Rukhmabai also worked
for social causes. She wrote boldly against child marriage and women’s
seclusion (purdah). On September 25, 1955, at the age of 91, Rukhmabai breathed
her last.
Tailpiece : Elizabeth Blackwell (1821 – 1910) was the first
woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, as well as the first
woman on the UK Medical Register. She was the first woman to graduate from
medical school, a pioneer in promoting the education of women in medicine in
the United States; her sister Emily was
the third woman in the US to get a medical degree.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
22nd
Nov. 2017.
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