True Warrior of Great India – Savitribai Phule
Name: Savitribai Phule Day to Remember – Birth Anniversary – 3rd January 1831 Why to Remember: Savitribai Phule, India’s first female teacher, Headmistress & Play a vital role in improving women’s rights in India. She Founded: India’s first school for girls called Bhide Wada in Pune in 1948. She Advocated: values such as humanism, liberty, equality, brotherhood, rationalism, and the importance of education among others through her works. Books She wrote: Her books of poems “Kavya Phule” and “Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar” were published in 1934 and 1982. Icon: Along with B. R. Ambedkar and Annabhau Sathe, Phule has become an icon in particular for the backward classes. Heroic Death: An Heroic death trying to save the life of Pandurang Babaji Gaekwad’s son, carried him on her back to the hospital where she caught the Plague.
Savitribai Phule was an Indian social reformer, educationalist, and poet from state Maharashtra (India) . She was born on 3 January 1831 in the village of Naigaon in Satara District, Maharashtra (India). She is the first female teacher of India. At the time of her marriage Savitribai was an illiterate. She was educated at their home.
Along with her husband, Jyotirao Phule, she played an important and vital role in improving women’s rights in India. She is regarded as the mother of Indian feminism. Savitribai Phule and her husband activist and social reformer, founded one of the first Indian girls’ school in Pune, at Bhide Wada in 1848. She worked to abolish the discrimination and unfair treatment of people based on caste and gender. She is regarded as an important figure of the social reform movement in Maharashtra.
In her last days of life Savitribai and her adopted son, Yashwant, opened a clinic to treat those affected by the worldwide Third Pandemic of the bubonic plague when it appeared in the area around Nalasopara in 1897. The clinic was established at stern outskirts of Pune, in an area free of infection. Savitribai died a heroic death trying to save the son of Pandurang Babaji Gaekwad. Upon learning that Gaekwad’s son had contracted the Plague in the Mahar settlement outside of Mundhwa, Savitribai Phule rushed to his side and carried him on her back to the hospital. In the process, Savitribai Phule caught the Plague and died on the morning of 10 March 1897.
A philanthropist, an educationist, Ture Warrior, Phule was also a prolific Marathi writer.
