On account of the Birthday Celebration of 1st India’s Teacher Savithribai Phule, PADI organized a lecture on “SAVITHRIBAI PHULE AND EDUCATION for SOCIAL JUSTICE” on 3rd January 2020 at PADI Office, Mangalore. Dr. Ashalatha P, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Govinddas College Surathkal, Mangalore. Dr. Shobhadevi M.G., Member of PADI Governing Body presided over the Programme. Mr. Renni D’Souza, President of Child Welfare Committee, D.K. and Executive Director of PADI marked the foreword on the topic to the delegates. Cities Development thinkers, Social activists, NGO representatives, Educationalists, MSW Students, CHILDLINE & Media personnel were present in this programme.
Speaker, Dr. Ashalatha P explained the wonderful thoughts of Savithribai Phule. Savitribai Phule was an Indian social reformer, educationalist, and poet from Maharashtra. She is regarded as the first female teacher of India. Along with her husband, Jyotirao Phule, she played an important role in improving women’s rights in India. She is regarded as the mother of Indian feminism.
For all intents and purposes, both Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule recognised that education was one of the major board through which women and the depressed classes could become empowered and hope to stand on balance with the rest of the society.
In the social and educational history of India, Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and his wife Savitribai Phule stand out as an extraordinary couple. They were engaged in a passionate struggle to build a movement for equality between men and women and for social justice. The Phules also started the Literacy Mission in India between 1854-55. Phules started the Satyashodhak Samaj through which they wanted to initiate the practice of Satyashodhak marriage, in which no dowry was taken. Because of the role Phule played in the field of women’s education, she is also considered to be one of the “crusaders of gender justice,” also she was able to develop a voice and agency of her own, at a time when women were suppressed and lived a “sub-human existence”
In most of her poems, she advocated values such as humanism, liberty, equality, brotherhood, rationalism and the importance of education among others. In her poem titled, “Go, Get Education” she inspires through the below lines:
“Be self-reliant, be industrious
Work, gather wisdom and riches,
All gets lost without knowledge
We become animal without wisdom,
Sit idle no more, go, and get education
End misery of the oppressed and forsaken,
You’ve got a golden chance to learn
So learn and break the chains of caste.
Throw away the Brahman’s scriptures fast.”
She practiced the values in her personal life and become the reason in changing other’s life and succeeded in converting them with the human values affected positively. She is the founder of many Institutions like Orphanages, Educational Institutions, Libraries, Special Schools for differently abled, Old age homes, cultural forums, Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha, literally, “Child-killing Prohibition Home” for pregnant rape victims and helped deliver and save their children.
The model services and values, we can grasp in India’s constitution too…Savithribai Phule’s is model for the contemporary India, contemporary development Organisation, Social Activists, Movements, Educational Institutions.
Gathered representatives expressed that the movement to be continued to bring the value based just humane society with the model thoughts of Phule.
