Stepped out of home to show women the way  

Annapurna Joshi, Sumati Mokashi, Durga Deshmukh, Madhavi Thatte, Sonu Pawar, and Jani Kardale… In a society stagnant in its dogmas in the 1850s' India, these girls attending a school was a revolutionary step. They were the first students of Savitribai Phule, India’s first woman teacher. Belittled, despised and ridiculed for stepping beyond the threshold of her home, Savitribai pioneered women’s education in India, which had been entirely monopolised by Brahmanical patriarchy.

Born in 1831 in the village of Naigaon, in Maharashtra’s Satara district, Savitribai came from the Mali community. At the age of nine, she was married to Jyotiba Phule, four years her senior. At the time, public education was a distant dream, and the education of lower castes was widely scorned. At the time of her wedding, Savitribai was unlettered, but Jyotiba taught her to read and write and later enrolled her in a teacher training program run by an American missionary. After completing her training, she began teaching girls at the Maharwada in Pune, becoming India’s first modern woman teacher.

Her curriculum was vastly different from what Brahmin teachers taught, as it included more than religious texts. It was forward-looking, covering subjects such as mathematics, science, and social studies. However, the Brahmanical hegemony fiercely resisted this advancement of the most downtrodden, unwilling to accept a lower-caste woman “polluting” education. Savitribai was often attacked with dung and stones as she walked to school, prompting her to carry an extra sari. Yet, she remained steadfast in her mission. Alongside Jyotiba, she opened 18 schools in the Pune region.

Her activism extended beyond education, centred around women’s rights. She led a strike against barbers to stop them from shaving widows’ heads, opened a care centre for pregnant rape victims, advocated for widow remarriage, and established a home for widows and abandoned children.

True to her lifelong commitment to social service, Savitribai Phule selflessly cared for patients during the bubonic plague outbreak of 1897. While tending to a sick 10-year-old at a clinic she ran with her adopted son, she contracted the disease and eventually succumbed to it on March 10, 1897, remaining a symbol of resilience and compassion in her final moments.