Obituary
Dr Renuka M. Sharma
11 December 1958 – 31 October 2002
Renuka Sharma’s untimely death has saddened her many friends and admirers in Australia, India, the United States, and various South-East Asian countries where she worked as a medical adviser, psychotherapist, feminist philosopher, social activist and much more besides.
The word ‘charismatic’ is now perhaps devalued because of its misuse, but if it is possible to speak of a quietly effective, utterly charming, and formidably intelligent charismatic person, then Renuka was such a person. She radiated human goodness and compassion in all of the diverse fields in which she worked.
Nietzsche says somewhere that beautiful things teach us hope, and one might say that a beautiful human being like Renuka is a kind of sacrament of hope.
The daughter of a well-known Indo-Fijian political figure, the Hon. C.P. Sharma, and Taramati Singh, Renuka arrived in Melbourne in 1976 and studied medicine (and philosophy) at Monash University. She graduated in 1982 and began further studies in psychotherapy in Australia and the U.S. She subsequently published a well-received book on empathy in psychoanalysis and began intensive therapy and counselling work with ethnic minority and immigrant women which led to her establishing the South Asian Woman’s Study and Support Network.
This, in turn, involved her in work with a United Nations-based Third-World women’s consultative committee on gender rights and justice and resulted in the publication of two anthologies of essays on gender issues in South and South-East Asia. Again, this theoretical work was backed up by a grass-roots practical medical and child welfare involvement with the people of a village outside Bangalore.
All this time Renuka was writing on a bewildering variety of issues – infanticide, the dowry custom, bride burning, suttee or widow self-immolation, colonial mental health, the Hindu theory of non-dual consciousness and Yoga and the alleged homo-eroticism of the nineteenth century Bengali saint Sri Ramakrishna [q.v. Sophia, Vol. 40 No. 2, 2001, pp. 77–82].
Just before she died Renuka completed a major section on feminist ethics and justice for a large international work on cross-cultural ethics. She also continued her work on empathy and the role of the emotions in a psychoanalytical perspective. Her friends wondered how she kept her poise and serenity in the midst of all this frenetic activity. One reason is that she was supported in everything she did by her beloved and indefatigable husband Purushottoma Bilimoria who has much the same formidable range of interests and achievements in East-West philosophy.
At Renuka’s funeral a family friend read a haiku composed in her honour:
Beautiful face, mind heart
The dark/Shadow…
The wakening in brightness.
Brightness, radiance, luminosity, are the exact words for the spirit of Renuka Sharma. Her ashes were taken to India where they were scattered in the sacred rivers.
Max Charlesworth
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Founder-Editor of Sophia
Sophia also owes special gratitude to Renuka Sharma for finding and suggesting the present cover image for Sophia from her collection on feminine divinities.[Eds]
