Pandita Ramabai and the Temples That Breathe

In 1889, Pandita Ramabai opened the doors of Sharada Sadan in Pune, India, a refuge for child widows and girls rescued from temple prostitution. Ramabai, a Sanskrit scholar who had converted to Christianity, understood something the culture around her refused to acknowledge — that a human body is never merely an object for another's use.

She had watched young girls discarded by a system that treated their bodies as commodities. Hindu temple rituals had consecrated these children to deities, but Ramabai saw a deeper consecration available. She taught each girl that her body was not a thing to be bartered, shamed, or exploited. It was, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, a temple of the Holy Spirit — purchased not with silver or temple offerings, but with the blood of Christ Himself.

By 1900, over 1,500 women and girls lived under her care at Mukti Mission. Ramabai did not simply rescue their bodies from abuse; she helped them understand whose they were. "You are not your own," Paul insists. "You were bought at a price." Ramabai made that theology breathe in the lives of broken women who had never been told their bodies mattered to God.

Every person sitting in your pew this Sunday carries a body that belongs to the One who paid everything for it. The question is not what we are free to do with it, but how we might honor the One who dwells within.