The remarkable Anandi Gopal Joshi, Gurubai Karmarkar, Dora Chatterjee.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: As visitors from all over the US flock here to visit the “Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation” exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, there’s important desi history that isn’t highlighted by the otherwise quite thorough showcase: that Indian American women were becoming physicians in the US as far back as 1886.
Three Indian women – Anandi Gopal Joshi, Gurubai Karmarkar, and Dora Chatterjee – all came to the US from India to earn their medical degrees at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, which is now known as the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, in the 19th century.
Joshi, who came during the 1880s and graduated with her degree in 1886, is not only the first Indian American woman on record to have obtained a medical degree in the West, but may also have been the first Hindu woman to set foot on American soil, according to Public Radio International.
Joshi and Karmarkar, who earned her degree in 1892, both hail from Maharashtra. Chatterjee, who graduated in 1901, was from Punjab. All three women returned to India immediately after receiving their degrees, and went on to work in the medical field there by seeking employment in hospitals and missions.
Joshi tragically died just one year after earning her degree, but nonetheless left an indelible mark on history, breaking down barriers for all Indian American physicians today.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, as of 2010 there were over 798,000 physicians in the US, with just over 30% of them, or 242,424 being female.
So, even by modern standards, female doctors are far less in number than their male counterparts, making it all the more remarkable that these Indian women accomplished what they did nearly more than 110 years ago.
Speaking to The American Bazaar, “Beyond Bollywood” curator Dr. Masum Momaya explained that she and her research team were aware of Joshi, Karmarkar, and Chatterjee when compiling possibilities for what the exhibition would display, but decided against showcasing them specifically in light of a broader feature that shined a light on the sheer magnitude of Indian Americans’ presence in the US medical field.
“We knew about them,” said Momaya, “but we wanted to focus more on Indian American history from the 1960s [onwards], as that’s when the majority of the Indian American experience really started happening. That’s when the floodgates of Indian immigration [into] America really opened up.”
Nevertheless, the exclusion of these women from “Beyond Bollywood” does not mitigate how incredible their achievements truly are. These pioneering women decided to pursue education at a time where it was simply not a priority for women (in fact, in several places throughout India, it still isn’t).
On top of that, they came to a completely foreign country through the help of a missionary in Philadelphia, earned degrees in one of the most difficult professional fields, and returned back to India to put their knowledge to use.
These three women have been memorialized, via photographs, at Drexel University. It’s high time that their accomplishments be recognized by the greater public, by the Indian diaspora across the US and other countries, and in their homeland itself.
[All photographs courtesy of Drexel University College of Medicine.]
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com