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UPSC MAINS SOCIOLOGY SYLLABUS
Paper 2
Section A – (ii) Impact of colonial rule on Indian society :
(a) Social background of Indian nationalism.
(b) Modernization of Indian tradition.
(c) Protests and movements during the colonial period.
(d) Social reforms
Section B – (ii) Caste System:
(a) Perspectives on the study of caste systems: GS Ghurye, M N Srinivas, Louis Dumont, Andre Beteille.
(b) Features of caste system.
(c) Untouchability – forms and perspectives
Section C – (v) Social Movements in Modern India:
(a) Peasants and farmers movements.
(b) Women’s movement.
(c) Backward classes & Dalit movement.
(d) Environmental movements.
(e) Ethnicity and Identity movements
CONTEXT
On the 192nd birth anniversary of educationalist Savitribai Phule, tributes poured in from across the country this year (2023), as leaders saluted her spirit and relentless efforts towards empowering women and the underprivileged sections of society. Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid homage to “the indomitable spirit of our Nari Shakti” on her birth anniversary and tweeted, “…hers was a life devoted to educating and empowering women. Equally inspiring is her focus on social reform and community service”.
INTRODUCTION
Savitribai Phule, the social innovator who is considered to be one of India’s first modern feminists. Among her accomplishments, she is especially remembered for being India’s first female teacher who worked for the development of women and untouchables in the field of education and literacy. She relentlessly fought against the dominant caste system and worked towards the development of the marginalized.
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PIONEER IN WOMEN’S EDUCATION
The first indigenously-run school for girls in Pune (at that time Poona) was started by Jyotirao and Savitribai in 1848. Three Phule schools were in operation in 1852. That year she also started the Mahila Seva Mandal with the objective of creating awareness among women regarding their rights, dignity and other social issues. To check the school dropout rate, Savitribai started the practice of giving stipends to children for attending school. She conducted parent-teacher meetings at regular intervals to create awareness among parents on the significance of education so that they send their children to school regularly.
Savitribai used education as a cultural tool and strongly believed that education is only the path which liberates the people who are enslaved by the structure. Campaigning for social justice, ‘Awake, arise and educate, smash traditions – liberate’ was a common refrain used in her poems, emphasising on the negative roles traditions and caste equations played in oppression. In a poem titled ‘Go, Get Education’, she urges women to acquire an education in order to free themselves from the pains of subjugation.
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WORKING FOR MARGINALISED
In 1863, Jyotirao and Savitribai also started a care center called ‘Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha,’ possibly the first ever infanticide prohibition home founded in India. It was set up so that pregnant Brahmin widows and rape victims can deliver their children in a safe and secure place thus preventing the killing of widows as well as reducing the rate of infanticide. While Jyotirao advocated widow remarriage, Savitribai worked tirelessly against social evils like child marriage and sati pratha, two of the most sensitive social issues that were gradually weakening the very existence of women. She also made effort in bringing the child widows into mainstream by educating and empowering them and advocated for their re-marriage. Such pursuits also met with strong resistance from the conservative upper caste society.
She was also associated with a social reform society called ‘Satyashodhak Samaj’ founded by Jyotirao on September 24, 1873 in Pune. The objective of the samaj, which included Muslims, Non-Brahman, Brahmans, and government officials as members, was to free women, Shudra, Dalit and other less privileged ones from getting oppressed and exploited. Savitribai and her husband worked dauntlessly during the famines starting from 1876. They not only distributed free food in different areas but also launched 52 free food hostels in Maharashtra. Savitribai also persuaded the British government to initiate relief work during the 1897 draught.
FEMINISM OF SAVITRIBAI
Savitribai Phule was one of the crusaders of gender justice. She was the first Indian woman teacher and the first Indian to revolutionise the Indian education by opening it up to girls and to low-caste children. She was the first Indian to place universal, child sensitive, intellectually critical, and socially reforming education at the very core of the agenda for all children in India. Savitribai stood with Phule when he made mass education the focal point of his movement, and, he gave the highest priority to the education of women and low-caste children, in particular.
Phule seems to have sensed accurately that as there was inequality in the family, there could be no true equality in the society. Suppression of women, in traditional Hindu culture, went hand in hand with suppression of low castes and untouchables. She was modern India’s first woman teacher, a radical exponent of mass and female education, a champion of women’s liberation, a pioneer of engaged poetry and a courageous mass leader who took on the forces of patriarchy and caste certainly had her independent identity and contribution. She along with her husband realised that the Indian women are not a monolithic identity, and the issues of caste and gender are interrelated. Her thoughts show the sensitivity and understanding of the existing diversity of patriarchies in terms of castes in India with varying degree of women exploitation therein. Savitibai’s role in the anti-caste and women’s struggle is unique and unparalleled in a way among all the social reform movements in the nineteenth century as it linked patriarchy with caste.
WRITINGS AND PUBLICATIONS
The year 1854 was important as Savitribai published her very first collection of poems, called “Kabya Phule” (Poetry’s Blossoms), at the age of 23. All this happened at a time when women were neither seen nor heard in public, much less published! She published “Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar” (The Ocean of Pure Gems), another collection of what has come to be highly regarded in the world of Marathi poetry, in 1891. Apart from these two collections, Matushri Savitribai Phlenchi Bhashane va Gaani (Savitribai Phule’s speeches and songs), and letters written to Mahatma Phule were also published. She wrote numerous poems which were radical and revolutionary in nature. Her literary contribution changed the outlook and approach of feminist literature. She was an anti-caste activist who raised issues pertaining to caste and gender through her writings and speeches, as well as through direct intervention.
In one of the poems named ‘Agyan’, Savitribai wrote:
Just One enemy do we have today
Let’s thrash him and drive him away
The name of this enemy I shall tell
Listen carefully, harkens well
Ignorance!.