It is difficult to give a single dominant description to Muthulakshmi Reddi, whose legacy still stands tall.
Tuesday's Google Doodle commemorated the 133rd birth anniversary of Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi, who apart from being the first woman legislator in British India, also was instrumental in the establishment of the Adyar Cancer Institute in Chennai and the abolishment of the devadasi system in the Madras Presidency. She was conferred with the Padma Bhushan in 1956.
Her birth anniversary is observed as 'Hospital Day' by the Tamil Nadu state government.
Dr Reddi was a multifaceted personality whose legacy cannot be pinned down to merely one category. She was among the earliest Indian women to graduate college, become a doctor and specialise further as an oncologist. She is also noted for her drive towards women's emancipation and for the Avvai Home for orphaned girls and destitute women in Chennai.
Dr Reddi was born in the princely state of Pudukottai in what is now Tamil Nadu. Her mother was a devadasi, who attempted to stop her education when she attained puberty. It was already unusual at the time for girls to go to school after puberty, but Muthulakshmi went on to apply to the Maharaja's High School.
Her application was opposed by the principal on the grounds of her gender but also her background as the daughter of a devadasi. However, she convinced the Maharaja of Pudukottai to back her case and graduated from there.
She was admitted to the historic Madras Medical College and graduated in 1912, and was appointed the first woman house surgeon at the Government Maternity Hospital in Chennai. She went to London in 1925 to specialise in oncology.
She married Dr Sundara Reddi in 1914, with an agreement that she would be free to chart her own career path.
She was nominated to the Madras Presidency Council, which was the legislative upper house, in 1927, was picked to be the first woman deputy president. She backed a number of pieces of legislation to do with women's rights, especially the curbs on the devadasi system. However, the bill against the devadasi system was put into cold storage by the then Congress government of Madras Presidency after Dr Reddi resigned from the Council in 1930 in support of MK Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha. The devadasi abolition bill was finally passed by the Madras Legislature in 1947, just over a month after Independence.
She helped found the Women's Indian Association in 1917, and was closely associated with Annie Besant and Sarojini Naidu. She also founded Avvai Home close to the Theosophical Society in 1931, to house and educated orphaned girls, and destitute and abandoned women.
Speaking at the centenary celebrations of the Madras Medical College in 1935, Dr Reddi proposed the establishment of a cancer super speciality hospital. But the idea was scoffed at and received little traction. It would finally come to fruition in 1954, with the establishment of the Adyar Cancer Institute by the Women's Indian Association, which is today recognised by the Government of India as an Institute of Excellence.
Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi was part of a band of elite women born in British India who were in many different ways trailblazers in their own fields, all of whom were extremely unusual for their time. Her memory is commemorated not merely by the list of her achievements on a piece of paper but also by the institutions she has left behind, which are not part and parcel of the landscape of the city of Chennai that was Madras.
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