Dhanvanti Rama Rau

She was born Dhanvanthi Handoo in 1893 in Hubli, in present-day Karnataka, into a Kashmiri Brahmin family, and grew up speaking Kannada. After schooling in Hubli she moved to Madras and studied at Presidency College, graduating with a bachelor's degree in arts and receiving the Griggs Gold Medal in English.

In Madras she met and married Benegal Rama Rau, an economist and diplomat who later served as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Their daughter was the writer Santha Rama Rau.

Rama Rau began her working life as an assistant professor at Queen Mary's College, Madras. In 1917 she was among the founders of the Women's Indian Association, alongside Annie Besant and Margaret Cousins, which campaigned on the social, economic and political position of Indian women.

In 1932 she led the Indian delegation to the congress of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship in Berlin, at the request of Sarojini Naidu. In 1946 she was elected president of the All India Women's Conference.

In 1949 she started the Family Planning Association of India, which promotes family planning and sexual and reproductive health and is the Indian affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. FPA India's own history records her as a founder member of the association, alongside Avabai Bomanji Wadia, who is described on the organisation's site as founder and president emeritus. In 1952 the Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood was held in Bombay, at which the International Planned Parenthood Federation was formed; Rama Rau co-founded it with Margaret Sanger and served as joint president.

Her memoirs were published under the title An Inheritance.

Rama Rau was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal by the British government for her work with women's associations, and the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 1959.[2][3][4][5]