The Kiplings and India: A Collection of Writings from British India, 1870-1900

Rukhmabai (Rakhmabai, Rukhmibai)

Rukhmabai and her famous case, Dadaji vs. Rakhmabai, are credited with drawing attention to consent as part of the nineteenth-century debate on Hindu child marriage. Rukhmabai was born during the 1860s in present-day Maharashtra to Jayantibai and Janardhan Pandurang.  Four years after Rukhmabai's mother was widowed at the age of 19, Jayantibai's father, Harish Chandra Jadoji, arranged a second marriage for her with Dr. Sakharam Arjun. As Uma Chakravarti points out, even though Jayantibai's caste of Sutars (carpenters) allowed for widow remarriage, it was still highly unusual for a woman as old as Jayantibai who had already had a child to remarry. Dr. Sakharam was highly respected as a surgeon and social reformer, and saw to the education of his stepdaughter, Rukhmabai, within the home. The household expanded when at the age of "11 or 13" (disputed, Chakravarti) Dadaji Bhikaji (19 or 20) married Rukhmabai and came to reside at her family's house to undergo the education required as part of the marriage agreement by his father-in-law. Though the parties dispute how exactly this arrangement changed, they both confirm that the marriage was never consummated, and that Dadaji left the household after a time to stay with his maternal uncle.
After several failed attempts to persuade Rukhmabai's family into sending her to live with him, Dadaji filed suit in 1884 for restitution of conjugal rights.

Unique Education and remarried widow mother
Court Case against husband
child marriage issue of law, Pinhey's judgement
Letters in Times, responses of Queen, testimony on women's education, ramabai and malabari connection
after the case- "first" Indian woman to practice as a doctor
hung out at Oxford with Cornelia Sorabji - another first

Sources:
Antoinette Burton, "From Child Bride to 'Hindu Lady': Rukhmabai and the Debate on Sexual Respectability in Imperial Britain" (The American Historical Review, Oct. 1998)
Uma Chakravarti, Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai (Zubaan, Delhi reprint 2013)
Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law, and Women's Rights (Oxford UP, Delhi, 1998)