189 Years After Savitribai Phule’s Birth, India Is Still Struggling With Women’s Rights. Everyone Needs To Hear Her Story
Updated January 03, 2020
Every couple of years, they say a hero is born. And while not all of them make it to the headlines or have blockbuster movies made about them, some of them make it to where it matters most – history and our hearts. And one such hero, in her own time and years after that today too, was Savitribai, a staunch feminist from the 18oos, in early Maharashtra who might have been one of the first women to have fought against the patriarchal notions of the society.
Born on 3 January 1831 at Naigaon in Maharshtra, Savitribai Phule in the India of today be slotted into the Other Backward Caste. She was married off to a 13-year-old Jyotirao Phule at the age of 9. A story that usually starts from child marriage is often the kind that doesn’t end well, but Savitribai was here to change that. Both her and her husband were denied an education due to their caste but that never deterred them from going after it. Her husband, with the patronage of two other people, studied till class 7. Taught by her husband Jyotiba at home, Savitri took a training teaching course and then went on to open a school for women at a time when even the concept of public schooling for all was yet to fully emerge.
Hell bent on the idea of fighting against the oppression faced by women and people belonging to a lower caste, Savitribai made equality and the fight for it, the sole purpose of her life very early on and today, 189 years later, it seems like the fight is still not over. Back then, her efforts to further feminism caused her to be shunned from the society. It is widely reported that she carried an extra saree with her to work because when she walked to her school, people throw stones and dung and abuses at her, but even their obvious hatred for her work was not enough to make her back down.
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From women’s education to child marriage, to widow remarriage, there wasn’t a cause that Savitri and her husband didn’t fight or champion for, in the hopes that things might change. And even though it hurts to say it, change is yet to come by despite so many years.
Almost two centuries after, we are still knee-deep in patriarchy and discrimination. Female foeticide is still rampant, women are still oppressed, many girls not given the chance to educate themselves. Little has changed. From caste killings to rape crimes, discrimination to corrupt justice systems, the only thing changed has been the era, because the root cause of these problems is yet to be dealt with. No wonder, Savitribai spent the better part of her life recognising the need to standing up against the unjust society.
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And maybe this is what we lack today, the India of today needs a Savitiribai to remind us just how important and worth the fight is. So today, on her 189th anniversary, let’s think back to the kind of path she had started paving for us so many years ago. We owe it to her, we owe it us and we owe it to the generations to come.
