Savitribai Phule

Savitribai Phule (born January 3, 1831, Naigaon [now in Maharashtra state], India—died March 10, 1897, Poona [now Pune]) was social reformer and pioneer of education for women in India. She was one of the first female teachers in India and opened several schools for girls with her husband, Jyotirao Phule. She also played a key role in the Satyashodhak Samaj (“Society of Truth Seekers”), a society founded by Jyotirao Phule in 1873 to promote social equality. Together the Phules challenged caste hierarchy and discrimination. Savitribai Phule is often cited as a role model for women’s empowerment and feminism in India.

Early life

Phule was born in a small village called Naigaon in the Bombay Presidency (now in Maharashtra state) in India. As was common at the time, she was married at the age of nine, to Jyotirao Phule, and she moved to Poona (now Pune) to live with him. Jyotirao Phule, himself a child at the time, had undergone primary education. He was impressed by his wife’s enthusiasm to learn and taught her to read and write. Savitribai Phule subsequently underwent training to be an educator at institutes run by Christian missionaries in Ahmednagar (now Ahilyanagar) and Poona. She became a qualified teacher in 1847.

Work in education and social empowerment

In 1848 Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule opened a pioneering school for lower-caste girls in Bhidewada, Poona, with six girls as their first students. She started a school for adults in 1849 and accepted students from all castes. Her work was met with widespread hostility from various strata of society, especially orthodox Brahmins who did not want any disruptions in the caste status quo. She was often verbally abused and had stones, mud, and dung thrown at her on the way to her school. She started carrying a spare sari with her to change into at the school.

In 1849 her father-in-law asked her and her husband to leave the family home, on the grounds that their empowering of lower castes was a sin in the eyes of the Brahmins. To minimize the dropout rates at the schools, she offered stipends to students. By 1851 the Phules were running three schools attended by more than 150 girl students. They opened a total of 18 schools for girls in the Poona region. Savitribai Phule was declared the best teacher in the Bombay Presidency by the British-run government in 1852.

In 1854 Phule opened a shelter for widows (legislation was passed in 1856 to allow remarriage for Hindu widows). In 1864 she built a larger shelter for widows, destitute women, and child brides cast aside by their families and provided education for them. She also campaigned against child marriage, infanticide, and sati (the practice of a widow immolating herself on her deceased husband’s pyre; abolished in 1829 but still prevalent in Phule’s time). Since lower castes were forbidden from using the common village well, Phule and her husband dug a well in their backyard for them. This move also caused a furor at the time. In 1874 she adopted Yashwant Rao, the son of a Brahmin widow, who delivered the baby at her shelter. He would go on to become a doctor.

Phule played a key role in the reform society called Satyashodhak Samaj (“Society of Truth Seekers”), founded by her husband in 1873. It aimed to promote social equality, unite and uplift lower castes, and reverse the socioeconomic inequality caused by the caste system. The society also emphasized the importance of education and encouraged people to conduct weddings without Brahmin priests, who until then were the only people with authority to preside over such ceremonies. Phule started the practice of Satyashodhak marriage, organized without a priest or dowry, in which couples took an oath in favor of education and equality.

Death and legacy

Jyotirao Phule died in 1890, and Savitribai Phule lit his funeral pyre, defying social conventions, which demanded that last rites only be performed by men. She continued to lead the Satyashodhak Samaj until her death by bubonic plague in 1897. She had set up a clinic for plague victims during an outbreak in the area but contracted the disease herself.

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Phule composed and published two sets of poems, Kavya Phule (1854) and Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar (1892). She also edited and published Jyotirao Phule’s speeches in 1856. In 1998 India Post released a postal stamp in her honor. In 2014 the state government of Maharashtra renamed the University of Pune as Savitribai Phule Pune University. On January 3, 2017, Google marked her 186th birth anniversary with a Google Doodle.