Savitribai Phule is one of India’s most important personalities and is rightly called the country’s first feminist. As India’s first teacher, she dedicated her life to ensuring that education became a tool of empowerment for those who were historically denied access to social mobility – Dalits, Shudras and especially women. Together with her husband Jyotirao Phule, she worked to challenge the oppressive structures of caste and patriarchy, laying the foundation for equality, feminism and anti-caste activism in India.
Together with her husband Jyotirao Phule, she worked to challenge the oppressive structures of caste and patriarchy, laying the foundation for equality, feminism and anti-caste activism in India.
For me, reading Savitribai Phule’s work as a Dalit was not just an act of education; It was a deeply personal and introspective journey that saw me confront my own shame and awaken within me a sense of pride in my caste identity.
Savitribai’s revolutionary life
Savitribai Phule was born in 1831 into a Malian family. Her journey began when she married Jyotirao Phule at the tender age of nine. What is particularly interesting is how this personal relationship transformed into a revolutionary partnership that challenged the foundations of Brahminical patriarchy and the widespread oppressive societal norms of the time.
Source: FII
She learned to read and write together with her husband. At a time when women, let alone someone from a lower caste, were rarely treated as human beings deserving of respect or dignity, Savitribai did what was considered unthinkable for women – she became India’s first teacher. When upper-caste men threw cow dung and stones at her on the way to school, she wore an extra sari, changed her clothes and continued teaching. Such was the unwavering strength and resilience of her character.
Her work went far beyond education. She and Jyotirao created a safe haven for widows and outcast women, a radical act in a society that treated them as subhuman. Through her literary works and activism, Savitribai challenged the innate inequalities of her time and worked to build a society in which education can contribute to the emancipation of the marginalized and oppressed.
Read Savitribai in modern times
My journey with Savitribai Phule’s writings began like many others – with fleeting mentions in school textbooks, streets named after her, a few posts about her that one would find on her birthday, and nothing more. It was only when I delved deeper into anti-caste literature that I truly understood the profound power of their works and ideas and the lasting influence they had in laying the foundations of anti-caste activism and feminist thought in the Indian subcontinent.
Being a Dalit in India means living with a constant sense of contradiction. You are told you are the same, but you are treated as if you are not.
Being a Dalit in India means living with a constant sense of contradiction. You are told you are the same, but you are treated as if you are not. Sometimes it is explicit. Sometimes it’s subtle but unmistakable. One Google search and you can see numerous reports of your people being harassed and violated every day across the country. Either way, it makes you question your place in this landscape.
Source: FII
But Savitribai’s words gave me a sense of pride in my identity and a righteous anger at the injustice woven into our history. Here was a woman, a Dalit woman, creating a space for herself, publishing works at a time when women were not even allowed to speak, and working tirelessly to uplift others like her. Here was a woman who not only educated herself, but also helped others liberate her from an oppressive caste system.
In a poem by Savitribai Phule titled So Says Manu:
“They are stupid
who plow the land,
They are stupid
who grow it,”
That’s what Manu says.
Through religious commandments
The Manusmriti to the Brahmins narrates:
“Don’t waste your energy on agriculture!”
“Those who were born as Shudras,
All these Shudras!,
Pay in this life,
For the sins of their past lives”
This is how they create
A society based on inequality
That’s the inhuman trick,
Of these clever creatures.
She criticizes the inherent dogma of Manusmriti, ruthlessly rails against the caste system and demands to be heard.
Take the plight of the Shudras:
Pursued by “the gods on earth,”
For two thousand years
The eternal service of the Brahmins,
Became the plight of the Shudras.
Looking at their condition,
The heart screams its protest,
The spirit goes out,
I’m struggling to find a way out.
Education is the way
So that the Shudras can go,
Because education provides humanity
Liberation from an animal-like existence
It not only describes a history of oppression, but also names a reality that still resonates in our lives today.
It not only describes a history of oppression, but also names a reality that still resonates in our lives today. The intergenerational trauma inflicted on Dalits after thousands of years of oppression and subjugation keeps them bound to the same system that oppresses them. Savirtibhai understood the role of education in liberation from such a system.
Education as a means of liberation
For Dalits, education has always been both a place of humiliation and a ray of hope at the same time. But Savitribai believed in the power of education. She saw it not just as a tool for employment but as a weapon to dismantle caste and gender hierarchies.
Source: Diligent IAS
Your words continue to challenge and inspire:
If you have no knowledge, no training,
And you don’t long for it,
You have intellect but don’t work on it,
How then can one be called human?
Or inside Go get education:
Be independent, be hardworking
Work, gather wisdom and wealth,
Without knowledge everything is lost
We become animals without wisdom,
Stop sitting idle and educate yourself
End the misery of the oppressed and abandoned,
You have a golden opportunity to learn
So learn and break the chains of caste.
Quickly throw away the Brahmin’s writings.
Her vision of education was not just about one’s own intellectual development. It was about collective liberation. She understood that without education, the oppressed could never speak out against their oppression. This belief feels as radical today as it must have felt in their time.
Reading her works forced me to confront uncomfortable questions about my own relationship to education. How often, as I moved through academic spaces, from school to college, did I internalize the very hierarchies that Phule and countless others like her fought against? The journey to decolonizing my mind of internalized casteism was as much about unlearning as it was about learning.
Why their fight is still relevant today
Savitribai’s fight for education and equality wasn’t just about her time. Despite 77 years of independence, caste discrimination has not disappeared. In schools across India, Dalit children are still forced to sit separately. They are still ostracized by their fellow human beings, still treated as inferior and denied the dignity and respect that every human being is entitled to. Just last week, a Dalit student in Haryana died by suicide about harassment by university authorities. Another one a few days before that Minor Dalit boy killed himself after allegedly facing severe harassment in his village in Uttar Pradesh. The details of the horrific incident are too graphic and heartbreaking to recount here.
Caste discrimination is still widespread in this country. Dalit women in particular are at the crossroads between caste and gender and therefore face a double burden.
Caste discrimination is still widespread in this country. Dalit women in particular are at the crossroads between caste and gender and therefore face a double burden. Accordingly Current pollsThe literacy rate among the Scheduled Castes remains below the national average. With a literacy rate of 56.5% among Dalit women, only 23% have completed higher education. These aren’t just numbers – they’re a constant reminder of how much work still needs to be done.
Source: Satyagrah
Reading Savitribai, one can understand how ahead of her time and progressive her ideas were. She understood that education is not just about individual success, but about building a society where everyone has the opportunity to dream and thrive. Education is the only way to emancipate an oppressed society, an idea that Ambedkar took up years later when he said: “The progress of any society depends on the progress of education in that society.”
She carries on her legacy
So what does it mean to honor Savitribai today? It’s about more than just remembering her. It’s about living up to their values. It’s about speaking up, even if it’s uncomfortable. It’s about mentoring Dalit students, supporting Dalit women and fighting for an education system that is not only inclusive but also empowering. It’s about shining a spotlight on the stories of the marginalized and oppressed who live in the shadows.
It’s also about pride. About restoring a history that is often erased or ignored. It’s about understanding your place in this society, which is divided and built on a history so steeped in casteist and patriarchal norms.
Her legacy is not just something we look back on; It’s something we carry forward. It is in every Dalit child who walks into a classroom. It is in every woman who refuses to give in and stand firm. And it is in each of us who believes that a better, more equal world is possible – because she believed in it. And if she can work for it, so can we.
