CHRISTIANITY TODAY, a Christian magazine founded by Billy Graham and published from Illinois, US, has paid rich tributes to four ‘incredible’ Christian women who changed India.
In an article written by Surinder Kaur on March 8, the magazine has outlined the lives and works of Pandita Ramabai, Hilda Mary Lazarus, Cornelia Sorabji and Neidonuo Angami.
While Pandita Ramabai, Hilda Mary and Cornelia Sorabji are known to the Church in India, Angami from a headhunting tribal family in Nagaland is relatively little known in Christian circles in the country.
Neidonuo Angami was born on October 1, 1950, in the midst of conflict. Her home, Nagaland, had declared itself as an independent state, sparking conflict between the Nagas and the Indian military.
The Angamis were a Christian family, like the majority of their neighbors. (The community collectively are known as the Angami Nagas.) Angami became a police officer and later a teacher, founded the Naga Mothers’ Association along with a few likeminded people in 1984. NMA fought against social problems such as drug addiction and alcoholism.
Pandita Ramabai was born into a Hindu Brahmin family in the jungles of Karnataka. She converted to Christianity in her 20s. A famine took the life of her husband and spurred a crisis of faith in her life.
In a chance encounter in 1882, she met Father Nehemiah Goreh, a Catholic priest, who preached the Gospel to her. Later while she went to England to pursue her studies, Ramabai said: “Father Goreh preached to me from India. His humble sweet voice has pierced my heart.”
In 1881, she founded the Arya Mahila Samaj, a women’s organization that advocated for women’s education, including the training of female teachers and administrators, and for the elimination of practices such as child marriage.
Cornelia Sorabji was born in Nashik, Maharashtra, in 1866 to Zorastrian parents who had converted to Christianity. Sorabji was the first woman to graduate from Bombay University, the first Indian woman to study law at Oxford University, and the first female lawyer in India. She was also the first woman to practice law in both India and Britain.
Sorabji worked alongside Pandita Ramabai, and in 1929, she gave up her law practice to devote her time entirely to social work.
Hilda Mary Lazarus was born in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, in 1876. She grew up in a devout Christian family that had converted to the faith two generations before from the Brahmin Hindu background.
Her father, Daniel Lazarus, was a respected educator and author and served as the principal of Canadian Baptist Missionaries (CBM) School.
Hilda Lazarus entered Madras University years before the prestigious university officially opened its doors to women in 1915. She later earned a medical degree and gold medal for exceptional work in midwifery from Madras Medical College.
Read the article in Christianity Today.
