Savitribai Phule - First Female Teacher of India (3 January 1831 – 10 March 1897)

        Teaching is both a profession and an occupation, but more than that it is a service. This statement goes well with what the great philosopher Aristotle once stated “those who educate children well are more to be honoured than parents, because parents only give life, but teachers teach the art of living well”.  Yes, a teacher is a person who helps the students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue.  In the due process of teaching, a teacher presents the past, reveals the present and creates the future.  

       Since the ancient times, teaching is considered to be the hardest task and in the present day scenario it has almost become a complicated task as well.  One who knows the subject matter, cares about and does their best to understand the students is considered to be a good teacher. Further a teacher encourages good behaviour and learning through positive comments and actions. During the contemporary times, teachers are also supposed to be maestros of all technologies and personalizing separate paths for every single one of their students. 

    Our father of nation, Mahatma Gandhi says that “A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them. He who learns nothing from his disciples is, in my opinion, worthless. Whenever I talk with someone I learn from him. I take from him more than I give him”.  Even our former President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam always says that he is proud to be called as a “Teacher” rather than anybody else. Therefore, is important to assert here that a good teacher explains; the superior teacher demonstrates but the great teacher inspires.

        Being a teacher myself, I am extremely happy and proud to highlight in this video on one of the pioneering women personality – Savitribai Phule who is the first female teacher of India and popularly known as “Mother of Modern Girls’ Education”. She is a great teacher who inspired her students and made young women of her times to fight against gender discrimination and establishing their personal rights.  Savitribai Phule was not only a teacher but a great woman social reformer associated with the Satyashodhak Samaj in Maharashtra.  She relentlessly fought against the dominant caste system and worked towards the upliftment of the marginalized.  Savitribai Phule demanded dignity for all women, for which she worked her entire life.  The principles of humanity, equality, liberty and justice were of utmost importance to her.

Savithribai was born on 3^rd January, 1831 into a family of farmers in the Naigaon district of Maharashtra.  At the tender age of nine, she was married to a 12-year old Jyotirao Phule. She had a great love for learning as a child and her husband who was impressed by her thirst for learning, taught her to read and write. Becoming fond of teaching, Savithribai trained at Ms.Farar’s Institution in Ahmednagar and in Ms.Mitchell’s school in Pune. In 1847, she passed all her exams and became certified to be a teacher.  to become the first female teacher who inspired young girls of her time to pursue education. We have to remember that at that point of time, when grievances of women could hardly be heard, Savithribai Phule broke all the traditional stereotypes of the 19^th century to boost a new age of thinking in British colonized India.

Savithribai Phule emphasized the values of women’s education and improving women’s rights in India during British rule. In 1848, she along with her husband, started the first women’s school at Bhide Wada in Pune.  This school had only nine girls belonging to different castes. At the time, education for girls was considered a sin, and on her way to school, she was routinely harassed by orthodox men, who threw stones, mud, rotten eggs, tomatoes, cow-dung and dirt at her.  Because of these untoward incidents, she even carried an extra sari with her always.  During her troubled times, her husband stood behind her like a solid rock.

Due to the outrage at their work, Savithribai and Jyotiba Phule were thrown out of their house by Jyotiba’s father.  The couple resolute, moved and opened another school for adults in Pune for the Dalit-Bahujan community at the house of Usman Sheikh and his sister Fatima Sheikh.  They taught at the school with Fatima Sheikh, who became the first Muslim woman teacher of India.

In the same year of 1848, she also founded other schools for women.  For her, education was not simply alphabetical learning, but rather, an evolution of the mind itself.  Her innovative methods of teaching (telling short stories and reading poems) slowly attracted the common people, as the number of girls increased from 24 – 70 during 1849 – 50.  By 1851, Savithribai was running three schools with around 150 female students.  To prevent children from dropping out of school, she offered them stipends and introduced sports sessions which motivated the students to a great extent.  She is also said to have inspired a young student to ask for a library for the school at an award ceremony instead of gifts for herself. She inspired young girls to take up painting, writing and other activities. Parent-teacher meeting was conducted at regular intervals to make the parents aware of the importance of education and to encourage their children. She also took initiatives to reduce malnutrition in children by taking care of the health of each and every child in school. 

In 1852, Jyotiba Phule and Savithribai Phule were felicitated by the British government for their sustained and dedicated efforts in the field of education. Savithribai was declared as the best teacher.  She was the first Dalit woman, in-fact the first woman whose poems got noticed in the British Empire.  Her first collection of poems was Kavya Phule which made her to be considered as the mother of modern poetry stressing the necessity of English and education through her poems. 

Apart from the contribution towards women’s education, Savithribai was one of the first women activists in India who worked to combat gender discrimination in the society.  She brought about many social reforms and contributed a lot towards the empowerment of women in Indian society.  Savithribai Phule started Mahila Seva Mandal in 1852, which worked for raising women’s consciousness about their human rights, dignity of life and other social issues.  She went on to organize a successful barber’s strike in Mumbai and Pune against the prevailing practice of shaving of widow’s head.  On 28^th January 1853, the first ever infanticide prohibition home of India was started by Savithribai Phule. She also opened a care centre named ‘Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha’ for pregnant rape victims and helped them to deliver their children.  In 1863, first ever orphanage home was started by Jyotiba Phule and Savithribai Phule, which gave protection to pregnant widows.  On 28^th January, 1866 Vishnushastri inspired by Phule’s movement opened an institution to promote widow remarriage and it was named as Punar Vivahtojak Mandal. 

Phule’s family themselves adopted the son of Kashibai, a Brahmin widow in 1874 and again challenged caste boundaries as they often did.  He was named Yashwant Rao and went on to become a doctor. Together they set up 52 boarding schools for the welfare of orphaned children, worked in famine relief, set up a night school for workers and peasants and also opened up their household water tank to the Dalits, which was strongly opposed by their own community.

When Jyotiba Phule’s passed away on 28^th November, 1890 Savitribai showed the strength of her character when she lit her husband’s pyre, making it one of the rare instances when a wife lit the funeral pyre of her husband in India. She also took over the association of Satyashodak Samaj after Phule’s death, and presided over its meeting in 1893 at Saswad in Maharashtra.

When the world wide pandemic bubonic plague struck India in 1897, Savithribai helped the affected people in Pune along with her adopted son and in the process contracted the dreadful disease and died on 10^th March 1897.

With all these facts highlighted in this video, we can say that Savithribai Phule was a strong advocate of women’s rights and fought for women’s education in India.  Women's education and their liberation were her priority which, she thought, would break the cultural shackles in a male-dominated society, at a time when feminism meant nothing in Indian culture.  Every woman in India today owes Savithribai Phule for fighting towards women’s education in India during the British rule.  The University of Pune is renamed after her – and it is now known as Savithribai Phule Pune University.  Two books of her poems Kavya Phule (in 1934) and Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar (in 1982) were published posthumously.  Her legacy has been memorialized in statues, stamps, books and films.  She was one of the most important personalities in India whose sacrifices and daring clarion call against injustice to women slowly changed the social scenario of the Indian women in the later decades. 

Women’s education in India is indebted to the tireless work of Savithribai Phule.  They have been educationally empowered in the Indian society during the contemporary times and for this we all need to remember the struggle, contribution and sacrifice of Savithribai Phule for all of us and therefore she is a woman to be given a Big salute in History. 

 

 REFERENCES

1.Braj Ranjan Mani and Pamela Sardar, A Forgotten Liberator: The Life and Struggle of Savithribai Phule, Mountain Peak Publishers, 2015.

2.https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-savitribai-phules-impact-on-womens-education-in-india-6198439/

3.https://navrangindia.blogspot.com/2016/09/inspiring-woman-reformer-savitribai.html

4.https://velivada.com/2015/03/10/10-march-in-dalit-history-death-anniversary-of-first-lady-teacher-of-india-savitribai-phule/

5.https://velivada.com/2015/03/10/10-march-in-dalit-history-death-anniversary-of-first-lady-teacher-of-india-savitribai-phule/

6.https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/how-savitribai-phule-india-s-first-female-teacher-dealt-with-abusers-hell-bent-on-preventing-her-from-educating-girls-1633725-2020-01-03

7.Reeta and Vinit Raj, First Indian Women Teacher: Savithribai Phule, Educreation Publishing, July 2018.