Rukhmabai: Google Doodle applauds one of India's first female doctors

Married off at 11, jailed at 20, a doctor few years later, she also worked to get the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 passed

Becoming the first practicing female doctor to being at the centre of a landmark legal case that led to the Age of Consent Act in 1891, Rukhmabai fought against all odds at a time when women in colonial India hardly had any rights to speak of.

On this day in 1864, she was born to Janardhan Pandurang and 15-year-old Jayantibai, in a community of carpenters. Her mother was 17 when Pandurang died. Seven years later, she got remarried to a widower named Dr Sakharam Arjun, as stated in the Better India.

Paying homage to Rukhmabai on her