Pandita Ramabai

Wise teacher

As a youngster, Ramabai helped bring in money by reciting the Hindu Scriptures in Sanskrit. She wrote in later life: ‘We all read Puranas [Hindu texts] in public places, but did not translate them or explain them in the vernacular. The reading of the sacred literature was in itself believed to be productive of great merit.’

For a Brahmin, begging and menial work were not options for earning a living. During the great famine of 1876–78, both her parents died from starvation. Living with her older brother, she became well known for her extraordinary intellectual abilities and teaching skill. It was at this time that the University of Calcutta gave her the title Pandita, meaning ‘wise teacher’, the first woman to be so honoured. Even so she sensed increasing hopelessness at the place of women in Hinduism.

Finding Christ

Back in India, she did indeed find the Lord Jesus. She wrote: ‘The Holy Spirit made it clear from the Word of God that the salvation which God gives through Christ is present and not something future. I received, I believed and I was filled with joy.’

She then undertook a lecture tour of the USA, where she was able to raise funds to realise her growing vision for a refuge for women in India. In 1889, she founded the Mukti Mission for destitute orphans, widows and single mothers, offering a Christian welcome to all, irrespective of caste, gender or wealth. It remains open to this day. In 1896 she famously organised a caravan of ox carts during a severe famine, rescuing thousands of young girls and widows.

Ramabai tells of how, in 1905, she ‘was led by the Lord to start a prayer circle’. Seventy people met to pray for the true conversion of all. They experienced an amazing Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. One of the consequences of this was a conviction of the power of the Scriptures in the language of ordinary people.

A remarkable legacy

We could present her as a token woman. After all, advances in 20th-century Bible translation were so often made by women. It was after the third Camp Wycliffe in 1936 that two single women went out together to work in Mexico. That may be the first time when an organisation sent out ‘unaccompanied’ women to work in that way. Women make up around two-thirds of the global Wycliffe work force.

Similar expansion of the work force came about when local workers began to take the lead in Bible translation. Ramabai was in the vanguard of both these advances, but she is no token. Her life story is as remarkable as any in the history of Bible translation. And her translation of the Bible into Marathi as spoken by lower-caste women is utterly inspirational. Could it be that she has not received international prominence because she was a woman, an Indian, and worked independently?

Intellectually brilliant, Ramabai was deeply familiar with suffering, hardship and opposition. Her life journey with its gradual discovery of Christ is heart-warming. The constant in her life was the quest for social justice for low-caste women. Only in her discovery of Christ did that quest find fulfilment. How fitting then that all this climaxed at the end of her life in a Bible translation that was crafted for an audience that others had considered not worth the bother.

Thank God for the remarkable life of Pandita Ramabai!

by David Morgan

David Morgan worked in multiple roles in Central Africa for 16 years; he then headed up Wycliffe’s training programme in the UK for 12 years and now works in a management role supporting Bible translation in Eurasia. He gives an annual presentation on Bible translation history at the School of Language and Scripture.