#TarabaiShinde

“A famine orphan who had memorized eighteen thousand Sanskrit verses out-argued Calcutta's pandits at twenty, told a royal commission the truth at twenty-four, and then — having converted to a Christianity she refused to let bishops define — taught herself Hebrew and Greek and translated the entire Bible into Marathi, finishing as the proofs came off a press worked by women she had carted out of famine.”

“The learning locked away from Indian women could be won by a woman, turned into evidence, and converted — through a book, a foreign funding machine and a farm — into an institution that fed, schooled and employed the very widows the śāstras had discarded.”