Question

very long speech on savitribai fule......

Answer 1

Savitribai Jyotirao Phule was born on January 3, 1831 at Naigaon, about 50 kms from Pune. She was the eldest daughter of mother Lakshmi and father Khandoji Neveshe Patil. In 1840, at the age of 10, she was married to Jyotirao, who was 13 at the time. After marriage Savitribai and Jotiba lived in a Dalit-working class locality in Pune. Jyotirao educated his wife at home and trained her to become a teacher. The responsibility of Savitribai’s further education was taken up by Jyotirao’s friends Sakharam Yeshwant Paranjpe and Keshav Shivram Bhavalkar (Joshi). Savitribai also had taken teacher’s training at Ms. Farar’s institute in Ahmednagar and in the Normal School of Ms. Mitchell in Pune.

Savitribai went on to become India’s first woman teacher and headmistress. It is her struggle and story that marks the beginning of modern Indian women’s public life in India.

The extraordinary couple was engaged in a passionate struggle to build a movement for equality between men and women and a fight against the caste system. They dedicated their lives to spreading education and knowledge. They started the first school in the country for girls and the ‘Native Library’. In 1863, they started a ‘home for the prevention of infanticide’ in their own house, to ensure the safety of pregnant and exploited widows. They also established the Satyashodhak Samaj (Society for Truth Seeking), initiating the practice of marriage without dowry or overt expenses. They were against child marriage and supported widow remarriages. They had no children of their own but adopted a child of a Brahmin widow, educating him and arranging an inter-caste marriage.

Savitribai and Jotiba built a revolutionary social education movement for shudra and atishudra women of the country. After starting the school in 1848 and training Savitribai Phule, Jotiba started a school for the Mahars and the Mangs. But within six months, his father threw them out of the house and the school work came to an abrupt halt. Govande came to Pune and took Savitribai with him to Ahmednagar. After she came back, Keshav Shivram Bhavalkar took up the responsibility of educating her. Jyotirao and Savitribai focused on providing girls and boys vocational and practical education, to make them capable of independent thought. They believed that an industrial department should be attached to the schools where children could learn useful trades and crafts and be able to manage their lives comfortably and independently.

They insisted that ‘education should give one the ability to choose between right and wrong and between truth and untruth in life.’ They took special efforts to create spaces where the creativity of boys and girls could bloom. Their success is evident from the fact that young girls loved to study under their guidance, so much so that their parents would complain of the girls’ dedication to studies.