Dhanvanthi Rama Rau

The Third International Conference, Bombay, 1952 held by Family Planning Association India. Avabai Wadia (reading message), Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, Margaret Sanger.

Dhanvanthi, Lady Rama Rau (1893–1987) was founder and president of the Family Planning Association of India. She is perhaps better known as the wife of Sir Benegal Rama Rau, the noted civil servant, and the father of Santha Rama Rau, the writer.

Biography

Dhanvanthi was born into a Kashmir Brahmin family as Dhanvanthi Handoo. However, she was born and brought up in Hubli (now in Karnataka) and was therefore conversant with Kannada, her husband's language. After schooling in Hubli, she moved to Madras to join the Presidency College, from where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in arts.

In Madras, she met and married the distinguished economist and diplomat Sir Benegal Rama Rau a Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin and a south Indian from a distinguished family.^[1] Her husband was a high-ranking civil servant and a member of the extremely elite Indian Civil Service, and it is to this circumstance that Dhanvanthi owes her own career as a social worker. She served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Indian Government in 1959, mainly for being a smart, confident, English-speaking woman with a strong personality.^[2] Her memoirs have been published under the title An Inheritance.

References

↑ DHANVANTHI RAMA RAU (1893–1987)
↑ "Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. 2015. Retrieved July 21, 2015.

Padma Bhushan award recipients (1954–59)

1954	Homi J. Bhabha Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Mahadeva Iyer Ganapati Jnan Chandra Ghosh Radha Krishan Gupta Maithili Sharan Gupt R. R. Handa Amarnath Jha Ajudhiya Nath Khosla Kariamanickam Srinivasa Krishnan Husain Ahmad Madani Josh Malihabadi Vaikunthbhai Mehta Vallathol Narayana Menon A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar Palden Thondup Namgyal V. Narahari Rao Pandyala Satyanarayana Rau Jamini Roy Sukumar Sen Satya Narayana Shastri M. S. Subbulakshmi Kodandera Subayya Thimayya

1955	Fateh Chand Badhwar Lalit Mohan Banerjee Suniti Kumar Chatterji Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Surender Kumar Dey V. R. Khanolkar Sunder Das Khungar Rameshwari Nehru Prana Krushna Parija Madapati Hanumantha Rao Maneklal Sankalchand Thacker Attur Rangaswami Venkatachari

1956	Rukmini Devi Arundale Rajshekhar Basu Dhyan Chand Malur Srinivasa Thirumale Iyengar Nawab Alam yar jung Bahadur Pushpavati Janardenrai Mehta C. K. Nayudu Muthulakshmi Reddi Kanwar Sen Vir Singh K. Srinivasan Mahadevi Varma Tiruvadi Sambasiva Venkataraman

1957	Bhikham Lal Atreya Balasaraswati Alagappa Chettiar Hazari Prasad Dwivedi Abid Hussain Mushtaq Hussain Khan Lakshmi N. Menon Radha Kumud Mukherjee K. Covilagam Kutti Ettan Raja Andal Venkatasubba Rao Shrikrishna Narayan Ratanjankar Shyam Nandan Sahay Govind Sakharam Sardesai K. A. Nilakanta Sastri Basiswar Sen Siddheshwar Varma

1958	Salim Ali Vijaya Anand D. P. Roy Choudhury Jeahangir Ghandy N. S. Hardikar Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar Allauddin Khan K. P. S. Menon A. C. N. Nambiar Kuvempu Poola Tirupati Raju Kamalendumati Shah Rao Raja Hanut Singh Rustom Jal Vakil Surya Narayan Vyas Darashaw Nosherwan Wadia

1959	Sisir Bhaduri Ramdhari Singh Dinkar Ali Yavar Jung Hansa Jivraj Mehta Pammal Sambandha Mudaliar Tiruppattur R. Venkatachala Murthi Tenzing Norgay Bhaurao Patil Jal Gawashaw Paymaster Dhanvanthi Rama Rau Nirmal Kumar Sidhanta Mysore Vasudevachar Bhargavaram Viththal Varerkar Ghulam Yazdani

1954–59 1960–69 1970–79 1980–89 1990–99 2000–09 2010–19

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/12/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.