The Sanskrit Scholar Who Had Nothing

In 1882, Pandita Ramabai stood in a Pune courtyard with nothing but a white widow's sari and a reputation for brilliance. She was twenty-three. Her Brahmin parents had starved during a famine. Her husband had died of cholera after nineteen months of marriage, leaving her with an infant daughter. In Indian society, a young widow was considered cursed—stripped of color, stripped of status, stripped of future.…