One of the first two women to graduate in the British Empire, she became a Calcutta doctor, raised eight children, and operated on the day she died.
In the 1880s, a Bengali woman who wanted to be a doctor was up against the university, the medical college, most of her society and a good part of the press. Kadambini Basu got past all four. She was the first woman to pass the University of Calcutta's entrance examination. In 1882 she and Chandramukhi Basu became the first women graduates in India, and among the first anywhere in the British Empire. Then she won admission to Calcutta Medical College, which had never trained an Indian woman.
She qualified in 1886, which made her one of the first two Indian women trained in Western medicine. Wanting fuller qualifications than her Indian diploma gave her, she sailed to Britain and came back with three more. After that she practised for thirty years, spoke at the Indian National Congress, and ran a household of eight children. On 3 October 1923 she carried out an operation and died that same day, aged 62.
A life of firsts
The lifeline
1861
Born 18 July in Bhagalpur, daughter of the Brahmo headmaster Braja Kishore Basu
1882
Passes the BA with Chandramukhi Basu: India's first women graduates
1883
Marries the reformer Dwarkanath Ganguly and enters Calcutta Medical College
1886
Qualifies as a Graduate of the Bengal Medical College
1893
Returns from Britain with licentiates from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin
1923
Dies in Calcutta on 3 October, hours after performing an operation
By the numbers
The measure of her
2
Women in the University of Calcutta's first graduating pair: Kadambini and Chandramukhi Basu
3
British medical licentiates she added to her Indian degree: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin
1 of 6
She was one of the first six women delegates to the Indian National Congress, Bombay, 1889
8
Children she raised while keeping up a full medical practice
What she opened up
The deeds
1882
Graduated from the University of Calcutta. Only a few years earlier the university had been closed to women.
1883
Entered Calcutta Medical College eleven days after her wedding. Her husband backed her campaign for admission.
1888
Joined the Lady Dufferin Hospital in Calcutta on a salary of 300 rupees a month.
1890
Addressed the sixth Indian National Congress in Calcutta, the first woman ever to speak there.
1895
Travelled to Nepal to treat the Queen Mother, a measure of how far her reputation had spread.
1914
Presided over the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj's Calcutta session held in honour of Gandhi.
Slandered, then celebrated
Recognition
In her lifetime
Conservative Bengal treated a working woman doctor as a scandal
The Bengali journal Bangabasi all but called her a whore
Her husband sued, and the editor was sent to prison for six months
Her Indian diploma was a lesser grade, so she went to Britain for fuller licences
Today
Honoured with a Google Doodle in India on her 160th birthday, 18 July 2021
The Star Jalsha TV serial Prothoma Kadambini (2020) dramatised her life
A bust of her stands in Kolkata's Birla Industrial & Technological Museum
Widely remembered as one of India's first women physicians
From a reforming town to the capital
Bhagalpur & Calcutta
She was born on the Ganges at Bhagalpur, where her father ran the school. Her family came from Chandsi in Barisal, now in Bangladesh. In Bhagalpur her father helped start one of India's earliest women's organisations, and she was sent to Brahmo girls' schools in Dacca and Calcutta. Calcutta was the city she spent her life trying to change, and in the end it was where she practised.
1863
Bhagalpur Mahila Samiti founded, co-led by her father
1835
Calcutta Medical College founded; she was one of its first women students
30
Years of practice between her 1893 return and her death
"…appropriately enough the most accomplished and liberated Brahmo woman of her time."
— David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (1979)
