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.
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.
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. 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 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.
Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy.