SAVITRIBHAI PHULE

SAVITRIBHAI PHULE

Subject: History

Concept:

• Savitri Bai Phule was the social reformer of the 19th century who worked in the field of women education.
• At the age of 9, she was married to 13-year-old JyotiraoPhule.
• JyotiraoPhule, better known as Jyotiba, was also a social reformer who worked in the field of women education. Jyotirao educated Savitribai at home after their marriage.

Contributions

• In the 19th century, public education was limited and there were only a few missionary schools which were “open to all”. In this period, Jyotiba, at the age of 21, and Savitri, 17, opened a school for women in 1848.
• It was the country’s first school for women started by Indians.
• She also took teacher’s training course at an institute run by an American missionary in Ahmednagar and in Pune’s Normal School.
• She then started teaching girls in Pune’s Maharwada.
• Fatima Sheikh along with Savitribai went to the Normal School and they both graduated together. She was the first Muslim woman teacher of India.
• In the 1850s, the Phule couple initiated two educational trusts—the Native Female School, Pune and The Society for Promoting the Education of Mahars, Mangs and Etceteras—which came to have many schools under them.
• She published KavyaPhule in 1854 and Bavan Kashi SubodhRatnakar in 1892. In her poem, Go, Get Education, she urges the oppressed communities to get an education and break free from the chains of oppression.
• In 1852, Savitribai started the MahilaSeva Mandal to raise awareness about women’s rights. Savitribai called for a women’s gathering where members from all castes were welcome and everybody was expected to sit on the same mattress.
• She simultaneously campaigned against child marriage, while supporting widow remarriage.
• In 1863, they started a home for the prevention of infanticide in their own house, for the safety of pregnant, exploited Brahman widows and to nurture their children.
• In 1890, Jyotirao passed away. Defying all social norms, she lit his funeral pyre.
• After Jyotiba’s death in 1890, Savitribai carried forward the work of the organization Satya ShodhakSamaj and also chaired the annual session held at Saswad in 1893.
• She initiated the first Satyashodhak marriage—a marriage without a dowry, Brahmin priests or Brahminical rituals in 1873. Her adopted son, Yashwant, too, had a Satyashodhak inter-caste marriage.
• Her achievements were diverse and numerous, but they had a singular effect—posing a brave and pioneering challenge to the caste system and patriarchy.