Type: Prelims Only

Teaching pioneer Fatima Shaikh was recently honoured with a Google Doodle on her birthday.

Fatima Sheikh

• Fatima Sheikh was an educator and social reformer, who was a colleague of the social reformers Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule.
• She is widely considered to be India’s first Muslim woman teacher.
• Fatima Sheikh was the sister of Mian Usman Sheikh, in whose house Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule took up residence.
• One of the first Muslim women teachers of modern India, she started educating Bahujan children in Phules’ school.

Association with Phules

• Under pressure from upper castes, Jyotirao’s father evicted Savitribai and Jyotirao from the family home in the late 1840s.
• With nowhere else to go, the Phules would find shelter at the house of Mian Usman Sheikh, where they would live till 1856.
• As many from their own community abandoned them, Fatima Sheikh and her brother stood strongly with the Phules and the mission to educate girls and bahujans.
• Sheikh met Savitribai Phule while both were enrolled at a teacher training institution run by Cynthia Farrar, an American missionary.
• She taught at all five schools that the Phules went on to establish and she taught children of all religions and castes.
• Sheikh took part in the founding of two schools in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1851.

Determined amidst opposition

• In Pune, a conservative bastion of culture and tradition, the very act of trying to educate the underprivileged caused uproar.
• It is said that the two women would often have stones and pieces of dung thrown at them while walking in the streets.
• Fatima specifically is said to have borne the wrath of both upper-castes and radical orthodox sections.

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Recently, 192nd birth anniversary of Savitribai Phule, w/o Jyotiba Phule (the pioneer of Satyashodhak Samaj) was celebrated.

Who was Savitribai Phule?

• A Dalit woman from the Mali community, Savitribai was born on January 3, 1831, in Maharashtra’s Naigaon village.
• Married off at the age of 10, her husband Jyotirao Phule is said to have educated her at home.
• Later, Jyotirao admitted Savitribai to a teachers’ training institution in Pune.
• Throughout their life, the couple supported each other and in doing so, broke many social barriers.

Pioneering first school for girls in India

• At a time when it was considered unacceptable for women to even attain education, the couple went on to open a school for girls in Bhidewada, Pune, in 1848.
• This became the country’s first girls’ school.

Opposition to Phules’ schools

• The Phules opened more such schools for girls, Shudras and Ati-Shudras (the backward castes and Dalits, respectively) in Pune.
• This led to discontent among Indian nationalists like Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
• They opposed the setting up of schools for girls and non-Brahmins, citing a “loss of nationality”, and believing not following the caste rules would mean a loss of nationality itself.
• Savitribai herself faced great animosity from the upper castes, including instances of physical violence.
• When serving as the headmistress of the first school in Bhide Wada, upper-caste men often pelted stones and threw mud and cow dung on her.

Phule’s role as a social reformer, beyond education

• Infanticide prevention: Along with Jyotirao, Savitribai started the Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha (‘Home for the Prevention of Infanticide’) for pregnant widows facing discrimination.
• Child adoption: The Phules also adopted Yashwantrao, the child of a widow, whom they educated to become a doctor.
• Reforms in marriages: Savitribai Phule also advocated inter-caste marriages, widow remarriage, and eradication of child marriage, sati and dowry systems, among other social issues.
• Denouncing Brahmanical ritualism: As an extension, they started ‘Satyashodhak Marriage’ – a rejection of Brahmanical rituals where the marrying couple takes a pledge to promote education and equality.
• Bubonic plague mitigation: Savitribai became involved in relief work during the 1896 famine in Maharashtra and the 1897 Bubonic plague. She herself contracted the disease while taking a sick child to the hospital, and breathed her last on March 10, 1897.

Savitribai’s literary works

• Savitribai Phule published her first collection of poems, called Kavya Phule (‘Poetry’s Blossoms’), at the age of 23 in 1854.
• She published Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar (‘The Ocean of Pure Gems’), in 1892.
• Besides these works, Matushri Savitribai Phulenchi Bhashane va Gaani (Savitribai Phule’s speeches and songs’), and her letters to her husband have also been published.

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The 205th anniversary of the Bhima-Koregaon battle was recently celebrated in all harmony at the Ranstambh (victory pillar) in Perne village in Pune.

Battle of Bhima-Koregaon

• The 1818 battle of Bhima-Koregaon, one of the last battles of the Third Anglo-Maratha War culminated in the Peshwa’s defeat.
• It was fought on 1 January 1818 between the British East India Company (BEIC) and the Peshwa faction of the Maratha Confederacy, at Koregaon at the banks of River Bhima.
• A 28,000-strong force led by Peshwa Baji Rao II while on their way to attack the company-held Pune were unexpectedly met by an 800-strong Company force of which 500 belonged to the Dalit community.
• The battle was part of the Third Anglo Maratha war, a series of battles that culminated in the defeat of the Peshwa rule and subsequent rule of the BEIC in nearly all of Western, Central, and Southern India.

Role of Mahar Community

• Back in the seventeenth century, the community was particularly valued by the ruler Shivaji, under whom Maratha caste identities were far more fluid.
• The value of the Mahars for military recruitment under Shivaji was noted by the social reformer Jyotirao Phule.
• The Mahars were not only beneficiaries of the attempt at caste unity under Shivaji but were in fact valued for their martial skills, bravery, and loyalty.

Mahars during Maratha Empire

• The position occupied by the Mahars under Shivaji, however, was short-lived and under later Peshwa rulers, their status deteriorated.
• The Peshwas were infamous for their Brahmin orthodoxy and their persecution of the untouchables.
• The Mahars were forbidden to move about in public spaces and punished atrociously for disrespecting caste regulations.
• Stories of Peshwa atrocities against the Mahars suggest that they were made to tie brooms behind their backs to wipe out their footprints and pots on their necks to collect their spit.

Why is the battle significant?

• The battle resulted in losses to the Maratha Empire, then under Peshwa rule, and control over most of western, central, and southern India by the British East India Company.
• The battle has been seen as a symbol of Dalit pride because a large number of soldiers in the Company forces were the Mahar Dalits, the same oppressed community to which Babasaheb Ambedkar belonged.
• After centuries of inhumane treatment, this battle was the first time that Mahars had been included in a battle in which they won.

Dr. Ambedkar’s association

• It was Babasaheb Ambedkar’s visit to the site on January 1, 1927, that revitalized the memory of the battle for the Dalit community.
• He led to its commemoration in the form of a victory pillar, besides creating the discourse of Dalit valor against Peshwa ‘oppression’ of Dalits.

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