Sisters of Mokama: The Pioneering Women Who Brought Hope and Healing to India
In 1946, six nuns from Kentucky made a journey to one of the poorest states in India to start a hospital and train women to become nurses.
This never before told story is being memorialized in a new book, “Sisters of Mokama.”
The author, Jyoti Thottam is also the senior opinion editor at the New York Times.
Thottam spent 20 years researching Nazareth Hospital, where a group of nuns from Kentucky came to bring aid to the local community after partition in India in 1946. Thottam learned about the sisters because her mother had trained with them at a time when girls in India did not generally leave home to take on such work. Thottam says her mother was born in 1946 right after partition when there was violence, food shortages and uproar across the country. She says it was a difficult, but transformative experience for her mother.