The title is a hint of all the roles Kamaladevi played in the changing face of India pre and post partition. I have read another book with the history of several Indian female doctors but although this begins around the same time and has a few mentions of other in women in that book as well as another which focused on a different role, this was a textbook on a whole other part in history.

It is only when I read books like this I realise how lacking our education in India is with regards to the diverse roles played by so many people ( men and women, especially women). It took me a while to work my way through this book because at its heart ( although well presented with emotion) it is all about facts. It is the kind of accompanying book I would recommend if I ever had to teach Indian history in high school ( or more realistically know someone teaching history ). It opened my eyes to the kind of smaller but impactful roles that certain women played in the freedom struggle and more importantly, defining how they saw the country post independence.

I cannot appreciate the details enough. The author speculated on some emotions of his subject but he provides enough information to make it more of an educated guess than literal guessing. There is focus in the laying out of the details. There is limited back and forth in time, only when a detail required it and I was thankful for that.

There are so many letters and communications as well as newspaper articles about this person I had never heard of before ( I was always a very average student in history class anyway and might have missed a mention). I would definitely recommend this to any Indian ( or non-indian) who would like a bigger picture about the four to five decades around the Indian independence.

Regular readers of history books will probably be able to do more justice to the book but for me I am just glad I came across it and got a chance to read it.

I received an ARC thanks to Netgalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience and slightly on my attachment to being Indian.