Paathai Amaithavargal

Gutenberg promised that his press would scatter the darkness of ignorance like a new star. In South India, between the 1850s and the 1950s, it did something he never imagined: it reached women, and through education set a century of emancipation in motion.

This companion to Muthal Pengal gathers the lives of thirty pioneers in politics, science and the professions: India’s first woman psychiatrist, its first woman cost accountant, the first woman to author a book in Tamil, its first woman venereologist. Each fought for a place that was hers by right, and earned it by sheer determination.

Armed with degrees and refusing to wait for permission, they cut paths for every woman who came after. The lesson has not aged. Available in English as Trailblazers 2, translated by Krishnapriya S.