A movement to bring down the statue of James Marion Sims is escalating in the part of the world that has just witnessed a coast-to-coast solar eclipse. Yes, we are talking about the US. Hailed often as the ‘Father of Modern Gynecology’, Sims used enslaved African-American women in the 1800s for unauthorised experiments. He performed genital surgery on non-consenting women without anesthesia because according to him “Black women don’t feel pain”.
In recent months, women of colour have advocated for the removal of Sims’ statue outside the New York Academy of Medicine, as it pays unnecessary honour to a man who was inhumane and unethical. As we celebrate Madras Day on this side of the world, taking pride in everything from kaapi to karuvaadu and marana mass to marina, I ask for us to at least remember two Madras women who changed the face of medicine in the country. One, Durgabai Deshmukh (yes, the name is familiar — Google maps can tell you why).
Freedom fi ghter and founder of a host of organisations, Durgabai also started the Andhra Mahila Sabha. One of the fi rst organisations to care for both children and the elderly, the Sabha also ran a nurse-midwife training programme. Over the years, the Andhra Mahila Sabha has expanded to offer education and healthcare services at affordable cost for the underprivileged. Two, Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy, the founder of ‘Avvai Home’ a shelter for women and children and the backbone of founding the Adyar Cancer Institute.
Besides being a social reformer, she is India’s fi rst female medical practitioner. She studied at the Madras Medical College from 1907 to 1912 — the fi rst woman in the country to be a member of the legislature and fi rst woman in the world to become the vice president of a legislature. She was the founder of Women’s Indian Association (WIA) and was one of the important governing bodies of the Madras Corporation. The legacies of these two women continue to live till date through the organisations they founded. While hundreds of lives are being touched by their initiatives, there’s not much left behind to remember these women by.
The original house that was bought by Durgabai stills serves as the administrative building of the Sabha, but it is the hotel run by the Sabha that is the landmark; her name rings a bell more often than not in relation to traffi c jams on Durgabai Deshmukh Road. Dr Muthulakshmi’s house inside the grounds of Avvai Home in Adyar is dilapidated and in dire need of repair.
I am not asking to build statues for these women, but the least we can do is to remember them more than once a year, visit the organisations they founded, and preserve the places they lived in as an ode to their lives. In these times, its easy to forget. In celebrating Sims, we forget what he did, by forgetting these women, we will have nothing to celebrate. After all, these are women who made the city their home, and gave to us a home called Chennai.
(The writer is a city-based activist in-your-face feminist and a media glutton)