Kadambini Ganguly (18 July 1861 – 3 October 1923) was one of the first two women to graduate from an Indian university and among the first Indian women to practise Western medicine. She was also one of the first women to speak from the platform of the Indian National Congress. She practised as a doctor in Calcutta for more than three decades while bringing up eight children.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Kadambini Ganguly (née Basu) |
| Born | 18 July 1861, Bhagalpur, Bengal Presidency (now in Bihar) |
| Died | 3 October 1923, Calcutta (aged 62) |
| Field | Medicine |
| Education | Bethune College (B.A., 1883); Calcutta Medical College (GBMC, 1886); qualifications from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin (1893) |
| Known for | One of India’s first two women graduates; pioneer woman physician |
| Spouse | Dwarkanath Ganguly (m. 1883; died 1898) |
Early Life
She was born at Bhagalpur, where her father, Braja Kishore Basu, was a school headmaster. He belonged to the Brahmo Samaj and had helped start one of the first women’s organisations in India. The family came from Barisal in eastern Bengal.
Education
She studied in Calcutta at the school that merged with Bethune School. In 1878 she became the first woman to pass the entrance examination of the University of Calcutta. Bethune College opened its degree classes with her as its first student. In 1883 she and Chandramukhi Basu took the B.A., becoming the first women graduates in India and in the British Empire.
Medicine
She decided to study medicine. Calcutta Medical College had never admitted a woman, and some of its teachers were opposed. Her teacher and mentor Dwarkanath Ganguly, a Brahmo reformer whom she married in June 1883, campaigned for her admission, and she entered the college in 1884.
One professor, hostile to women students, is said to have failed her by a single mark in his subject. She was therefore awarded not the M.B. degree but a college diploma, the GBMC, in 1886, which allowed her to practise. She was appointed to the Lady Dufferin Women’s Hospital in Calcutta.
To silence doubts about her qualifications she sailed for Britain in 1893, leaving her children with her elder sister, and returned within months with three diplomas, from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin. She then built a large private practice, visiting patients in their homes by carriage, and was called to attend the royal family of Nepal.
The Libel Case
In 1891 the conservative Bengali journal Bangabasi attacked her character, calling her by implication a woman of loose morals for working outside the home. She and her husband took the editor to court. He was fined and sentenced to six months in prison.
Public Life
- **Congress:** In 1889 she was one of six women delegates to the Bombay session of the Indian National Congress. At the Calcutta session in 1890 she moved the vote of thanks, becoming the first woman to address the Congress.
- **Women’s causes:** She worked for the women labourers of the Assam tea gardens, whose conditions her husband had exposed, and helped organise a women’s conference in Calcutta after the partition of Bengal in 1905.
- **Indians abroad:** She presided over a Calcutta association supporting Gandhi‘s struggle in South Africa.
- **Mine workers:** In 1922, with the poet Kamini Roy, she went to Bihar and Orissa to inquire into the conditions of women working in coal mines.
Personal Life
Dwarkanath was a widower seventeen years her senior, and the marriage was criticised even among Brahmos. She brought up eight children. He died in 1898. Her stepdaughter Bidhumukhi married the writer Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, the grandfather of Satyajit Ray.
She remained at work to the end. On 3 October 1923 she returned home from an operation and died that evening.
Featured image: Kadambini Ganguly. Photo by an unknown photographer, in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
