Indian educator Fatima Sheikh

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In news– 191st birthday of Fatima Sheikh was observed on 9th January 2022.

A brief note on Fatima Sheikh-

She was India’s first Muslim woman teacher and was a colleague of Jyotiba Phule and his wife Savitribai Phule.
She was born on 9th January 1831 in Pune and was considered to be a feminist icon in pre-independent India.
She co-founded the Indigenous Library in 1848 which was one of India’s first schools for girls along with the Phules.
In Pune, Sheikh along with her brother Usman offered their home to the Phules, who had been evicted for attempting to educate people from the lower castes.
Along with Savitribai Phule, she taught communities of marginalized Dalit and Muslim women and children who were denied education based on class, religion, or gender.
The efforts that she put in, working alongside the Phules, to provide opportunities to those born in the lower caste, got recognised as the Satyashodhak Samaj (Truthseekers’ Society) movement.
In 2014, Sheikh’s achievements were featured by the government in the form of a profile in Urdu textbooks, along with other such exemplary and resolute educators of her time.

Jyotiba Phule-

He was born in the Mali family of Poona in 1827.
The Malis belonged to shudra Varna and were placed immediately below the peasant caste.
He was educated at a Marathi school with a three year break at a mission school in Poona.
Phule completed his English schooling in 1847.
He was married at a young age of 13 to a girl of his own community, Savithribhai Phule, who was chosen by his father.
He fought against the social stigma prevalent in the society during the nineteenth century.
He was the harbinger of unheard ideas for social reforms.
He wanted the British government to abolish Brahmin Kulkarni’s position, and a post of village headman (Patil) filled on the basis of merit.
Phule wanted the Brahmin bureaucracy to be replaced by non-Brahmin bureaucracy.
He organized lower castes under the banner of Satya Shodhak Samaj.
He started awareness campaigns that inspired the personalities like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi, who later undertook major initiatives against caste discrimination.
He wrote mainly in Marathi and that too in a Marathi meant for the masses.
In Brahmanache Kasab (1869) Phule has exposed the exploitation of Brahmin priests.
In Gulamgiri (1873) he has given a historical survey of the slavery of lower castes.
In 1883, he published a collection of his speeches under the title Jhetkaryarlcha Asud (The cultivator’s whip-cord) where he has analysed how peasants were being exploited in those days.
A text of his philosophical statement can be found in Sarvajanik Satyadharma Pustak (A book of True Religion For All) published in 1891.
Dhananjay Keer in 1974, penned down his biography titled, ‘Mahatma Jyotiba Phule: Father of Our Social Revolution’.
Maharashtra Krishi Vidyapeeth at Rahuri, has been renamed Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth.

Savithribhai Phule-

She was born on 3 January 1831 at Naigaon in Maharashtra’s Satara district.
Shei was not educated at the time of her marriage, as she was from a backward caste and a woman.
Savitribai Phule was taught by Jyotiba at their home.
Later, she took a teacher’s training course at an institute run by an American missionary in Ahmednagar and in Pune’s Normal School.
During that time there were only a few missionary schools which were “open to all” and Brahmins were the only caste group that received an education.
In this context Jyotiba and Savitri opened a school for women in 1848 which was the country’s first school for women started by Indians.
She then started teaching girls in Pune’s Maharwada, along with Sagunabai, a revolutionary feminist and a mentor to Jyotiba.
Savitribai was also a poetess and published Kavya Phule in 1854 and Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar in 1892.
In her poem, “Go, Get Education”, she urged the oppressed communities to get an education and break free from the chains of oppression.
In 1852, Savitribai started the Mahila Seva Mandal to raise awareness about women’s rights.
Savitribai called for a women’s gathering where members from all castes were welcome and everybody was expected to sit on the same mat.
Jyotiba and Savithribhai also started the Home for the Prevention of Infanticide in her house, a place where Brahmin widows could deliver their babies safely.
In the 1850s, the Phule couple initiated two educational trusts – the Native Female School, Pune and The Society for Promoting the Education of Mahars, Mangs and Etceteras.