Kadambini Ganguly (born Kadambini Basu) was one of the first two Indian women to graduate from a university and the first woman to practise Western medicine in India. She was born on 18 July 1861 in Bhagalpur, then in the Bengal Presidency of British India and now in Bihar. Her family originally came from Chandshi in Barisal, now in Bangladesh. She belonged to a Bengali Kulin Kayastha family. Her father, Braja Kishore Basu, was a school headmaster and an active member of the Brahmo Samaj. He believed in women’s education and social reform at a time when both were widely opposed. In 1863, when Kadambini was still a toddler, he helped found the Bhagalpur Mahila Samiti, often described as the first women’s organisation in India.
Kadambini received an English education unusual for a girl of her background. She studied at the Brahmo Eden Female School in Dacca and later at Hindu Mahila Vidyalaya in Calcutta, which was renamed Banga Mahila Vidyalaya and then merged with Bethune School. In 1878 she became the first woman to pass the University of Calcutta entrance examination. That success helped open further courses at Bethune College. In 1882 she and Chandramukhi Basu passed the Bachelor of Arts examination of the University of Calcutta. They were the first two women graduates in India and in the British Empire. Their degrees were conferred in 1883.
After graduation she decided to study medicine. Conservative opinion, including some teachers at Calcutta Medical College, opposed the idea of a woman entering the institution. With support from her husband and from officials who favoured limited medical education for women, she was admitted in 1883–84, becoming the first woman student at the college. She married Dwarkanath Ganguly on 12 June 1883, eleven days before joining the medical college. He was a Brahmo reformer, a teacher, and a widower about seventeen years older than she was, with children from his first marriage. The marriage shocked many conservatives, including some Brahmos, because of the age difference and because she continued her studies as a married woman.
Kadambini completed her medical course in 1886. She passed the written papers but was failed by one mark in a practical component by an examiner opposed to women in medicine. She was therefore not given the full MB degree. Instead she received the Graduate of Bengal Medical College (GBMC) diploma, which still allowed her to practise Western medicine. In the same year Anandibai Joshi obtained a medical degree in the United States, but she died of tuberculosis in 1887 before she could establish a practice. Kadambini thus became India’s first practising woman doctor of modern medicine.
In 1888 she was appointed to the Lady Dufferin Women’s Hospital in Calcutta on a salary of 300 rupees a month, a substantial sum then. She also built a private practice, working especially as a gynaecologist and treating women who would not consult male doctors. Florence Nightingale, writing in 1888, noted with admiration that Kadambini had continued her studies after marriage and childbirth and had missed almost no lectures.
Conservative newspapers attacked her. The Bengali paper Bangabashi implied that a woman who practised medicine and moved about independently was of loose character. Dwarkanath Ganguly sued for libel. The editor was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison. Kadambini treated the episode as a challenge rather than a reason to withdraw.
In March 1893 she sailed alone to Britain for further qualifications, leaving her family in the care of relatives. Within a few months she obtained three diplomas: Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (LRCP), Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Glasgow (LRCS), and Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Dublin (LFPS). She was the first Indian woman to earn this combination of British medical qualifications. She returned to India and continued hospital and private work. In 1895 she travelled to Nepal to treat the Queen Mother.
Kadambini combined medicine with public life. In 1889 she was one of the first six women delegates to the fifth session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay. The next year she spoke at the sixth session in Calcutta and became the first woman speaker at a Congress meeting. She later served as the first president of the Transvaal Indian Association, formed in connection with the campaign against anti-Indian laws in South Africa. After the Partition of Bengal she helped organise a women’s conference in Calcutta in 1906–07. In 1914 she presided over a Brahmo Samaj session held in honour of Mahatma Gandhi. She also supported the campaign that led to the Age of Consent Act of 1891, which raised the age of consent for girls from ten to twelve.
She and Dwarkanath had eight children in all, including his children from the earlier marriage. Among them, Jyotirmayee became a freedom fighter and Prabhat Chandra a journalist. A stepdaughter married Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, grandfather of the filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Despite a large household, Kadambini continued to practise until the end of her life. She was also known for needlework. Dwarkanath died in 1898. Kadambini died in Calcutta on 3 October 1923, after performing an operation the same day. She was 62.
Her life cut against the grain of caste custom, gender custom, and colonial professional barriers. She was among the first women to sit a university entrance examination, among the first two women graduates of the British Empire, the first woman admitted to Calcutta Medical College, the first Indian woman to practise Western medicine in India, and the first woman to address the Indian National Congress. She obtained advanced British medical diplomas while raising a large family and facing public slander. Later generations have marked her with a Google Doodle on her 160th birth anniversary in 2021 and with Bengali television serials based on her life. Calls continue for medical institutions and textbooks to give her a more visible place. Her record remains that of a woman who treated patients, raised children, spoke in public, and refused to accept that education and professional work were closed to her sex.