The Song of the Women


"The Song of the Women" is an 1888 poem by Indian-born English writer Rudyard Kipling, published in Indian newspaper The Pioneer on 17 April and shortly thereafter in other papers. It was written in support of Lady Dufferin’s Fund, which provided medical aid to Indian women denied access to male doctors.
It was originally published with a prose heading quoting from an address "of the women of Utterpara" to Lady Dufferin. In the poem, the women of India ponder about how to express their gratitude, asking the wind to send Lady Dufferin their blessings and thanks.

Background

The latter half of the 19th century was an age of social reform for Indian women, with efforts made to address such issues as female illiteracy, purdah, female infanticide and child marriage. Around the 1860s, Western women such as Mary Carpenter and Annette Ackroyd took an active role in advancing female education in India.
Prior to the departure of Lady Dufferin from Britain in 1884 with her appointment as Vicereine of India, she was asked by Queen Victoria to investigate the possibilities of providing medical relief to Indian women, whose suffering the Queen was reported to be deeply concerned by. Lady Dufferin concluded that "taking India as a whole, its women were undoubtedly without that medical aid which their European sisters are accustomed to consider as absolutely necessary," with there being an "urgent need" for relief and "readiness for co-operation." She subsequently established her fund, also known as the National Association for supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India, to provide such aid. Her fund, or association, trained women medical staff to tend to women not permitted to see male doctors.
Hidden from the world, Indian women had no voice among either their indigenous countrymen or English men. Kipling privately sympathised with them, believing that “the Indian treatment of women” constituted “the main obstacle to closer relations between the natives and their rulers” and cited zenana, suttee, “infant marriage... enforced widowhood” and prostitution which women were subjected to. Kipling greatly admired Lady Dufferin's advocacy for the rights of Indian women even as he objected to Lord Dufferin's support for the fledging Indian National Congress.
Kipling's later 1892 novel The Naulahka written with Wolcott Balestier likewise concerns the denial of health care to Indian women.