Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing.
India came under direct rule of the British Empire in 1858, shortly after the Crimean War. Early on, Nightingale was optimistic that British colonial rule might bring benefits for India. In ‘Life or Death in India’ in 1874 she acknowledged some improvements in sanitary conditions had been made, but too slowly.
As time went on, she became discontent about the lack of progress. By 1888 she wrote:
“A curious and terrible book might be made of how we have tried to benefit the natives and sunk them deeper than they were before.”
Nightingale never visited India due to ill health but became an expert on the subcontinent. She campaigned for reform in India including improvements to irrigation, agricultural policy and rural land finance among others.
She was not afraid to criticize British rule and a letter to W.R. Robertson in 1880 she wrote:
“When one thinks that we take 20 million land revenue out of India’s agriculture and give nothing back, one almost wonders that there is not universal agrarian mutiny”.
In 1878 in ‘The People of India’ Nightingale condemned Britain for its disastrous mismanagement. She wrote:
“We do not care for the people of India… Between five and six million have perished in this famine… How can we realise what the misery is of every one of those figures: a living soul, slowly starving to death?”
Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India. In 1858 and 1859, she successfully lobbied for the establishment of a Royal Commission into the Indian situation. Two years later, she provided a report to the commission, which completed its own study in 1863. "After 10 years of sanitary reform, in 1873, Nightingale reported that mortality among the soldiers in India had declined from 69 to 18 per 1,000". Nightingale concluded that the health of the army and the people of India had to go hand in hand and so campaigned to improve the sanitary conditions of the country as a whole.
Mahatma Gandhi admired Florence Nightingale. He wrote a tribute to her in the newspaper Indian Opinion in 1905, praising her selflessness and “miraculous” reductions of death rates at Scutari Hospital in Constantinople during the Crimean War (1854-56).
The President of India honors nursing professionals with the "National Florence Nightingale Award" every year on International Nurses Day.