Early 1900s India was a place where your gender determined what you could be in life. That nation could not stomach the thought of, trivial as it was, common as it is today, a woman pursuing the sciences. This antediluvian thought though, this kind of restriction was only the cause of a temporary disruption Mary Poonen Lukose’s path to glory.
It is inescapable irony that India’s first woman Surgeon General Mary Poonen Lukose was not allowed to study science. Born in Ayamanam (incidentally, Arundathi Roy’s backdrop in the God of Small Things) in Kottayam in 1886, Mary was so bright, she topped the matriculation exam. Nevermind how bright she was, her gender was a disqualifier as Maharaja College in Tiruvananthapuram declined her admission to the sciences. Only a temporary detour, Mary went on to get a degree in history, becoming the first woman from Travancore to graduate from Madras University in 1909.
However, her family could afford to send her to London to pursue medicine, and she was the first Indian woman to graduate in Medicine from the University of London, according to an article published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) as part of a compendium of Modern Asian Studies. She earned an MBBS from the University of London in 1915, trained in obstetrics and gynaecology, and studied paediatrics at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Reports of her life, rendered through an autobiographical account, Trailblazer, released in 2020, record Mary as working hard in Dublin at the Rotunda Hospital, coping with the increasing work load created by the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914. When her mentor and guide, her father passed away in 1916, Mary was shattered; she had to take a call on whether she would continue in England or come back home to serve her people. She, of course, decided to come home and blazed a path of glory, only long forgotten. She returned to Travancore in 1916 as its first woman doctor.
The CUP article further quotes from an autobiographical note penned by Mary herself: “In her autobiographical essay, Mary Poonen Lukose reflects on her decision to become a doctor. She traces it to her early experiences helping out in hospitals where her father worked as a doctor, and to his example and influence on her. ‘As I grew up, he made it a point to instill into me the spirit of service to humanity.’
The article further notes that the style of her 1916 job application, her requests for references, and the correspondence surrounding it suggest that she was aware of the fact that her qualifications were exceptional for an Indian woman of her time.
Mary Poonen Lukose went on to build the scaffolding of modern public health in Travancore, one that can be attributed to the many advances that Kerala has achieved today in health care indicators. Her work helped lay the ground for what we now celebrate as the “Kerala model” of health—fronting strong primary care, institutional childbirth, public health outreach, and unusually good social indicators. Acknowledging her contributions, in the 2018 budget speech, the finance minister of the State said, on record, in the House: ‘Dr. Mary Poonen Lukose is one of the most talented people in the development of Kerala’s health system.’
At the Women and Children Hospital in Thycaud, Mary worked as an obstetrician and superintendent, initiating daughters of local birth attendants into training midwifery, an attempt to subsume traditional midwifery into scientific deliveries and maternal care. Some historic references to her indicate she performed Travancore’s first Caesarean section before 1920, reportedly sometimes working only by the light of a hurricane-lamp light.
As Surgeon General from 1938, she was responsible for 32 government hospitals, 40 dispensaries, and 20 private institutions. In colonial era India, this could be notched up as a mega achievement for a woman, not only in health care, but also an administrator. Mary also founded a tuberculosis sanatorium in Nagercoil, and established the X-Ray and Radium Institute in Tiruvananthapuram.
It was not only for the issue of providing women adequate health facilities that she lent her voice, but was equally vociferous on women’s political rights. She herself, in 1922, was nominated to Travancore’s legislative council, becoming the State’s first woman legislator.
But Mary was a multi-splendored person, capable of achievements across sectors. As the nuns sing in the Sound of Music of Maria the reluctant nun: How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Mary co-founded the Tiruvananthapuram branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association and served as its president for 50 years. She was also a member of two professional bodies, the Indian Medical Association and the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India.
Many honours came her way, including the Vaidyaśāstrakuśala by the Maharaja of Travancore in 1935, and the Padma Śhri in 1975, just a year before her death at the age of 90.
Mary is part of a legacy of tall women in Indian health care that helped sculpt systems that are propping the nation up today, including Muthulakshmi Reddy, Kadambini Ganguly, and Anandi Joshi. They are the forebearers who chipped away at the glass ceilings that prevented them from rising, and cleared the ladder for women who came after them, though history has not given them their due space.
But it is now time for reparation, it is time to say their name loud. Say her name: Say Mary Poonen Lukose, so every one can hear, and celebrate.