Talk to Savitribai Phule
Marathi reformer who faced hostility to teach girls in Pune
1831–1897India (Maharashtra; born Naigaon, Satara; worked in Pune)
Marathi teacher, poet and social reformer, born on 3 January 1831 at Naigaon in Satara district and married as a child to Jotirao Phule, who taught her to read. She trained as a teacher and with Jotirao opened a school for girls at Bhide Wada in Pune in January 1848, later schools for children of the lowest castes, a home for pregnant widows and their newborns (1863), and took part in the Satyashodhak Samaj. She published the poems Kavyaphule (1854) and died on 10 March 1897 in Pune while nursing plague patients.
Talk to Savitribai out loud in the Yuga app.
Questions to ask
- What was it like to teach girls in Pune in 1848?
- How did you cope with the abuse on the way to school?
- Why did you start a home for widows and newborns?
- What did Jotirao Phule mean to you as a teacher and partner?
- What would you want today's girls to know?
Which Savitribai picks up
- 1848Pune (Bhide Wada). Aged 17, teaching the first class at the girls' school that she and Jotirao have just opened in Bhide Wada on 1 January 1848 with a handful of girls, in the face of angry public disapproval.
- 1852Pune. Aged 21, after three schools have been opened, being honoured by the colonial education authorities, including at a public felicitation, while orthodox opposition continues.
- 1863Pune. Aged 32, opening the Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha, a home where widows could give birth in secret, and where infanticide could be prevented.
- 1868Pune. Aged 37, with Jotirao opening the household well to untouchables, as accounts record, and speaking up against caste at work and in the neighbourhood.
- 1893Saswad. Aged 62, three years after Jotirao's death in 1890, presiding over a conference of the Satyashodhak Samaj.
- 1897Pune (Hadapsar). Aged 66, running a plague clinic with her adopted son Yashwant during the 1897 outbreak, helping the sick and the poor.
Questions about Savitribai
- Who was Savitribai Phule?
- Marathi teacher, poet and social reformer, born on 3 January 1831 at Naigaon in Satara district and married as a child to Jotirao Phule, who taught her to read. She trained as a teacher and with Jotirao opened a school for girls at Bhide Wada in Pune in January 1848, later schools for children of the lowest castes, a home for pregnant widows and their newborns (1863), and took part in the Satyashodhak Samaj. She published the poems Kavyaphule (1854) and died on 10 March 1897 in Pune while nursing plague patients.
- Can you talk to Savitribai with AI?
- Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Savitribai, set in Pune, 1848. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
- Is that really Savitribai's voice?
- No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
- What did Savitribai say about education as liberation?
- Savitribai urged in her poems that the oppressed castes and women should seek education as the way out of ignorance and subjugation. Source: Kavyaphule (Marathi poems), 1854; later poems in Savitribai Phule Samagra Vangmay (ed. M. G. Mali, 1988).
- What did Savitribai say about caste and Brahminical dominance?
- Savitribai joined Jotirao Phule in the Satyashodhak Samaj in rejecting priestly mediation and caste hierarchy, and in rejecting the authority of the Vedas as used to justify them. Source: Satyashodhak Samaj, founded 24 September 1873; Jotirao Phule, Gulamgiri, 1873, as the shared platform.
- What did Savitribai say about Widows and infanticide?
- Savitribai supported the 1863 home where widows and unmarried pregnant women could give birth without public shame, and cared for the children. Source: Notice of the Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha, 1863; the account of the adoption of Yashwant, son of a widow, in her biographies.
How Savitribai talks
Plain, vivid and stubborn; a teacher's voice that explains by example and rhythm, and a poet's habit of balancing opposites. She is modest about herself and unyielding about the cause. She speaks to listeners as pupils, but invites them to answer.