SHE BECAME THE FIRST WOMAN IAS OFFICER AFTER CLEARING THE CIVIL SERVICES EXAMINATION IN 1950. IN AN INTERVIEW IN LATER YEARS SHE RECALLED HOW WOMEN IN A VILLAGE HAD GATHERED, JUST TO SEE HER.
MFathima Beevi, the first woman judge of the Supreme Court of India, definitely gave early indications of future greatness, when she became the first woman to top the Bar Council of India’s exam in
1950. She rose from an advocate in Kerala’s lower judiciary to becoming the munsif in the
Kerala Subordinate Judicial Services and a judge of the Kerala High Court in 1983, before becoming a judge of the Supreme Court in
1989. After her retirement from the Supreme
Court, Beevi first served as a member of the
National Human Rights Commission, before being appointed as Governor of Tamil Nadu in 1997. In a magazine interview in 2016, Beevi had pushed for more women to be included in senior judicial positions and said, “There are many women in the field now, both at the bar and in the bench…however, their participation is meagre...”
The daughter of a police officer, Priya Jhingan had always dreamt of donning the uniform. In 1993, she was enrolled as Cadet 001, technically the first woman recruit to join the Indian Army, along with 25 others. Flight Lt Harita Kaur Deol became India’s first woman Air Force pilot to fly solo, in 1994. She was 22. In 1972 Kiran Bedi was the only woman in a batch of 80, but undeterred by the challenges in front of her, went on to become the first woman IPS officer of India. In 1994, Bedi got the Ramon Magasaysay Award. In a magazine interview in later years, Bedi had said, “Even though the global community recognised my work, the police force that I served so diligently has never given me a merit certificate.”
It is said that Kalpana Chawla chose her own name at nursery school because her parents were yet to choose a formal name for her. After graduating from Punjab Engineering College, Kalpana moved to the US and was selected by NASA in December 1994. In 1997, she became the first Indian-born woman to fly in space.
Born in 1927, Anna Rajam Malhotra became the first woman IAS officer in 1951. In a newspaper interview in later years, Malhotra recalled how women in a village had gathered to see her when she visited on horseback. “... an old lady said, ‘she looks just like one of us’,”. CB Muthamma became the first woman to join the Indian Foreign Service in 1949. Later, she became the first Indian woman diplomat and the county’s first woman ambassador. When she felt had been overlooked for promotion, Muthamma brought a petition against the government of India at the Supreme Court, which was upheld by the Court.
Born in Lucknow in 1930, Leila Seth worked as a stenographer in Calcutta before moving to London with her husband. It was in London that she took up the study of law and passed the London Bar exam in 1958, and topped it. She returned to India soon after and started practising here and in 1991 became the first woman chief justice of a state high court (Himachal Pradesh). In a newspaper interview later, she had said. “In most cases, male lawyers/judges especially in upper Himachal had a feudal mentality... I would gently ask their opinions first before ‘imposing’ mine on them.”
Homai Vyarawalla was India’s first woman photojournalist. She was introduced to photography by her husband, Maneckshaw Vyarawalla, also a photojournalist. Her images were published in the Illustrated Weekly of India, before she on to work for the British Information Services. She is remembered for her photographs of the country during its transition from a British colony to a free country, post Partition. In a newspaper interview in later years she said about her work, “There are 15 people taking a photograph at the same time; each has his own style. But there’s only one who gets the right moment and the right angle.” In 2011, Vyarawalla received the Padma Bhushan. Last year in December, on her 104th birth anniversary, Google paid a tribute to her with a Doodle.