Muthal Pengal

Between the 1850s and the 1950s, in a society that still sanctioned child marriage, kept women in gosha seclusion and remembered sati, a handful of women did the unthinkable: they became the first. The first doctors, the first engineers, the first to stand in professions, science among them, that had been fenced off for men.

Nivedita Louis followed forty-five of these pioneers through libraries and archives, and then beyond them, tracing descendants scattered across the globe and interviewing them about the women their families remember. Beside celebrated names such as Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy and Sathyavani Muthu stand women history very nearly mislaid: A. Lalitha, India’s first woman engineer, and Dr Sakkubai Ramachandran, the country’s first woman veterinarian.

Tamil women’s history had never been documented with such breadth. The book is available in English as Trailblazers, translated by Jayanthi Ramesh.