Telugu Christian Fellowship

of New Jersey

Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.(Mk. 16:15)

Pandita Ramabai, India's woman of the Millennium....
On cold nights Ramabai and her brother buried themselves in sand, lacking even a blanket. They were full of doubt, hungry for truth, and starving--but too high-caste to beg or work. Ramabai knew first hand how dreadful it is to worship gods who cannot see or hear. Her guru father longed for inward peace. In his search for it, he traveled from shrine to temple to sacred site, hoping to appease the gods. Before long, his money, jewels, and lands were gone, wasted on gifts to idols. When the money ran out, the priests no longer smiled. The family went hungry. They wandered on, their pilgrimmage a misery for Ramabai. The bright spot in her life was the love of her father who insisted she learn Sanskrit. In a land where women were reckoned lower than pigs, he took abuse for this decision. But Ramabai vindicated him; before she was twenty she could quote 18,000 verses of the Purana from memory and knew five languages.

The guru died of starvation, still without peace, entrusting Ramabai to the unknown God. Ramabai's mother and older sister soon followed in death. With her brother at her side, Ramabai continued the pilgrimmages. Four thousand miles later, "After years of fruitless service we began to lose our faith" in the Hindu gods.

Finally they dropped their quest and settled in Calcutta. Local Hindu scholars, astonished at Ramabai's learning, asked her to lecture to high-caste women on their Hindu duties. They named her "Pandita," meaning "learned." Studying the sacred writings, Pandita found them full of contradictions. They agreed only that women were worse than demons. Pandita could not believe this. Her father had taught her otherwise. She founded an organization to improve the lot of India's women, especially widows, who were often enslaved, forced into prostitution--or burned to death. She became a prominent female reformer. A missionary steered her toward Christ, but she rejected European-style churches because they did not adapt to India's customs. For a while, she joined a cult that combined Christian and Hindu beliefs.

Sure that God was prompting her to go to England, she went. In England she was baptized. Indians criticized this as a betrayal of her Hindu roots. Pandita did not agree. After training in the United States, she returned to India to educate Hindu girls and work among widows. Her efforts were funded by an American Christian committee.

Her behavior drew stinging criticism. Christians called her a traitor because she read Hindu scriptures aloud in Hindu temples. Proud of the long Hindu tradition, she answered that she always witnessed to what Christ had done for her. She might have argued that her critics read Homer and that Milton employed pagan symbols in his Christian epics. For their part, Hindus were outraged when her students asked for baptism. They accused Pandita of a secret agenda. She argued that she never pressured any student to become a Christian but only made the Bible available and demonstrated its truth by her life. However, from 1898 on, she ran an openly Christian school. She turned a family farm into a woman's refuge called Mukti, "Salvation."

At Mukti, on September 20th, 1899, Pandita laid the first stone of a place of worship. "The foundation of this building was laid in Christ," read the inscription. Ramabai, the former Hindu, who was now widely regarded as the greatest woman of India, designed the building and wrote its inscription herself. It spoke of Christ as the foundation of the church and of Christians as stones framed into the building. It quoted psalm 144:12:

....that our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace. In 1905, revival broke out in answer to Ramabai prayers. Over a thousand girls confessed their sins. The Holy Spirit came, and they said he burned in them like fire.