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"Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India's First Women in Medicine" covers the journeys of India's first women doctors from the 1860s to the 1930s. The six women in this book battled colonialism, casteism, patriarchy and opposition from conservatives, including such surprising figures as Florence Nightingale ( who was opposed to women doctors) and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who did not believe in scientific education for women. Several travelled to the UK or the US to study, at a time when many Indian women never left the house or received an education. They broke caste rules, escaped child marriages, and divorced their husbands. They were harassed,ejected from universities, deprived of medals, assaulted and threatened. In their forgotten lives, lie many lessons for modern women.
Lady Doctors was published by Westland in the Indian subcontinent, under its Tranquebar imprint, in July 2021. It will shortly be published by Jacaranda in the U.K. It has sold over 15,000 copies, as of Dec 2022, and is now in its 6th imprint. Kavitha is represented by Jacaranda Literary Agency.
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To be published in the UK by Jacaranda Press in 2023. https://jacarandabooks.co.uk/
Awards
- Longlisted for the Tata Literature Non-Fiction Award
- Longlisted for The Times of India/JK Paper Auther awards for non-fiction
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Times of India
Historian Manu Pillai shares his top 5 reads of 2021
GQ India
Best Indian non-fiction list 2021
Reviews
The Telegraph, India:
"Kavitha Rao has done a stellar job in documenting the journeys of these women who should ideally be found in pages of Indian history books but rarely make an appearance. Read it to your little ones or read it for yourself in a moment of extreme need for inspiration. Lady Doctors will not disappoint."
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The Hindu:
Rao has done an excellent job of not merely documenting the stories of these women but also placing them in context so that the reader fully appreciates the force of their will to succeed in their goals.
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Mint:
Writer Kavitha Rao's riveting new book on India's 'lady doctors' revives the towering legacies of some of India's first women physicians.
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New Indian Express:
It is shocking that this legion of extraordinary women has been relegated to the forgotten nooks and crannies of history. Rao deserves a medal for her painstaking efforts to scour through the scanty material available on their lives and deeds to reconstruct their magnificent deeds and phenomenal achievements.
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Scroll:
Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India's First Women in Medicine is indeed an eloquent argument for women being the keepers of their own histories. Detailed, extensively researched, told with sensitivity and nuance, it will nevertheless be remembered for delivering that distinct pleasure – of a richly satisfying and compelling read.
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Open:
In this remarkable book, Rao paints a portrait of an India that was fighting for self-rule while simultaneously clinging to ultraconservative Hindu mores such as child marriage and sati. The fight to become a female doctor ran converse to Hindu society's desire for respectable, homebound women.
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Times of India
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The Tribune
To Rao's credit is her indepth research, whose seed lay in a Google Doodle dedicated to Rukhmabai. The forgotten lives of these pioneers will show light to modern women who still find themselves fighting prejudices all the time.
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