Student Education Repository (மாணவர்கள் கல்விக் களஞ்சியம்): Today (January 3, 1831) is the birthday of Savitribai Phule, India's first female teacher and social reformer.

Sunday, January 3, 2021

Today (January 3, 1831) is the birthday of Savitribai Phule, India's first female teacher and social reformer.

Today (January 3, 1831) is the birthday of Savitribai Phule, India's first female teacher and social reformer.

Savitribai Jyotirao Phule was born on January 3, 1831, into a farming family in Nikon, a small town in the Satara district of the Maratha state. He married Jyotirao Pule (13) in 1840 at the age of 9, as was the custom at the time. Jyotirao Pule joined his wife Savitribai in the struggle against caste and female oppression. They have no children. They adopted and raised Yashwant Rao, a child of a Brahmin widow. In 1846, for the first time in the history of India, Jyotirao Pule started a school for girls and educated the Sutras and Adi Sutras with Savitribai and a girl named Fatima Shaikh. Later in 1848 Savitribai trained as a teacher. Back in 1848 Savitribai started a school in Pune with 9 students and worked as its headmaster. About 6 months later the school was closed and relocated.

Conservatives and upper castes vehemently opposed Savitribai's educational work. They threw mud and faeces at him and gave him many harassments. Every day when he went to school he wore old clothes and took a change of clothes in his bag and when he reached his destination he took a bath and changed clothes and worked. He worked academically in many hardships. Savitri Boy led the largest protest in 1863, mobilizing barbers to condemn the beheading of widows. He remarried widows in the 18th century when there was a community that was reluctant to wholeheartedly accept those who remarried in the 21st century. He ran a boarding school for 52 children orphaned by the famine of 1870. In 1897, Savitribai Phule and his adopted son Yashwant set up a hospital to treat plague victims.

The hospital was located in a non-infected area outside the town of Sasane Mala (Hadapsar) near Pune. Savitribai took the patients to the hospital for treatment. The cruelty of untouchability was so high at that time that water was denied to the downtrodden people. So they went a long way and saw that there was an environment to collect water and allowed all the oppressed people in their homes to fetch water. Savitribai Phule is also a good poet. The modern style of poetry in Marathi begins with his poems. Professor Tom Wolfe, who specializes in research on global studies at the University of Delhi, refers to Savitribai Pule as the `Mother of Modern Education and Female Education in India 'in the world magazine Aigos.

In 1892, Savitribai published a book of poems entitled 'Flowers of Poetry', which emphasized the need for education and anti-caste sentiments. Since education was only for a particular community, history has become what they wrote for themselves. The classic service and charity that every Indian deserves to be remembered have gone unnoticed in the pages of history. Last year in 2017, Google set up a special 'Google tool' for his birthday. Education is for everyone today Savitribai Pule's birthday should be celebrated as Girls' Education Day as history needs to be recreated.

Savitribai Phule, India's first female teacher and social reformer, passed away on March 10, 1897, at the age of 66, at the age of 66. In recognition of female social reformers, the Government of Maharashtra instituted an award in the name of Savitribai Pule. In 2015, the University of Pune was renamed Savitribai Phule University. On March 10, 1998, the Indian Postal Service issued a postage stamp in his memory.

Source By: Wikipedia

Information: Ramesh, Assistant Professor of Physics, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti, Trichy.