Jotiba Phule

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Jotiba Phule

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.

Gillian Wright, India Today, February 10, 2012

The 19th century Maharashtrian social reformer Jotiba Phule and his wife Savitribai had great ambitions for the Sudras and Ati-Sudras, and saw equal rights to education for all as the means to fulfil those ambitions. He and his wife ran schools, and stood up not just for widow remarriage but for a wide range of women's rights. However, Phule probably never imagined that he and Savitribai would become such potent symbols in 21st century India for the sections of society they represented. All over the country, educational institutions are coming up in their names. Incuding, beside the highway from Jaipur to Delhi, the Mahatma Jotiba Phule University.

Jotiba and Savitribai married when she was just eight years old.

They belonged to the Mali caste and spent their lives trying to clear the wasteland of caste and grow a healthy society. Their opponents in Maharashtra were the Brahmins, whom Phule believed had used religion to enslave other castes, especially the lower castes and untouchables. To fight back, Phule, who himself suffered oppression, used the pen. In his writings he ridiculed the scriptures that he was convinced were created as instruments of enslavement. His spirited and rational demolition of the Vedas, the Puranas, and the Laws of Manu [was noteworthy]. For Phule, Parashuram was a genocidal maniac and Vamana a deceiver and slimebag who destroyed the golden age of Bali. Phule mocks Brahma's giving birth to the four varnas by arguing that this meant he had vaginas in his mouth, arms, groin and legs and would have spent most of the month menstruating.

He did not feel any sympathy for the leaders of the nascent freedom movement. He owed his own education to a Scotsman and drew inspiration for his cause from the emancipation of slaves in the United States. He could have had little hope of justice from any caste Hindu-led organisation.

Although Phule derided Brahmanism, he remained a Hindu and is said to have adopted a boy who happened to be a Brahmin.