As we celebrate Women’s History this month, we look to pioneering women in Ayurveda, highlighting Yashoda Devi (1890-1942), who was a trailblazer, reshaping Women's Health in Ayurveda and improving women’s lives with Ayurvedic Medicine, at a time when as a woman, it was unprecedented.
Yashoda Devi took on a male dominated role in
Ayurveda to reshape and improve women’s health in Ayurveda at a time where not
many women were stepping up.
Beside Ayurveda being male dominated, India also had many
restrictions on women at the time. The early 1900s had restrictions on women's
access to education, political participation, property owning, and even
workforce participation.
In 1917, the woman’s suffrage movement came about to advocate
for independence from British rule to gain women’s rights. In 1921 the
provinces of Bombay and Madra were the first two to give limited voting to
women. This right began expanding through provinces through 1930. It wasn't
until 1947 that India was independent from British control and every adult
person was granted the right to vote. Considering the circumstances within
India at the time and how Ayurveda was already a primarily male dominated
field, it was extremely significant for Yashoda to speak out on women’s health
when women had many restrictions on them and the men dominating the field were trying
to silence her.
Yashoda lived in North India in the town of Dataganj in the Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh where she received Ayurvedic training from her father Pandit Dalchjand Mishra. She began her practice as a leading Ayurvedic Practitioner at the age of 16. She established her own Stri Aushadhalaya, a Female Ayurvedic Pharmacy in 1908, and her dispensaries grew in number to many other towns of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. She went on to be a prolific writer to reshape the view of women’s health in Ayurveda and touched on topics others hadn't gotten correctly for women. These topics encompassed a range of women, Ayurveda, and sexology. She exerted influence on women’s health, in particular, at a time when men were dominating Ayurvedic Medicine, she found them inadequate, and intrusive towards women thereby taking on that role. She became one of the most widely read women authors of her time, even editing important journals such as the Stri Chikitsak that was a journal on Ayurvedic treatment on women’s diseases. Although men at the time disagreed with her large role in Ayurveda, she was considered “every woman’s friend.”
Sources:
https://thewire.in/books/yashoda-devi-an-early-20th-century-pioneering-woman-ayurvedic-practitioner
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43081429
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1096&context=srhonors_theses
