Remembering The Legacy Of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule

phule

Floral tributes to Mahatma Jyotirao Phule on his 126th Death Anniversary

Mahatma JyotiraoPhule the father of social revolution in Modern India. Among other things, he was the

  • Originator of the protective policy of reservations
  • Progenitor of the concept of right to compulsory primary education
  • Founder of the first-ever schools and libraries for Sudras, Atisudras and women.
  • First leader to unite the labourers and farmers
  • First to take up widow remarriages and prohibition of female infanticide on a mass level.
  • First crusader against Brahminical patriarchy
  • Founder of SatyashodhakSamaj to destroy social and religious slavery.

 

An activist, thinker, social reformer, writer, and theologian, he was one of the greatest people who shaped modern India. RamachandraGuha calls him the Agrarian Radical and places him as the third one in his list of the nineteen people who shaped modern India (The Makers of Modern India). Among Phule’s own works which illustrate his philosophy well are ShetkaryachaAsud (The Cultivator’s Whipcord) and Gulamgiri (Slavery).

He insisted on social equality in India and struggled upstream for it. It was due to his efforts years back that Bahujans and women have a better place in the society today. Taking forward the legacy of Mahatma JyotiraoPhule will be a true tribute to him on his death anniversary.

Great leaders have built our nation with high values & we are forever grateful to them.

Remembering the visionary reformer who insisted on women’s education in India, laid foundation of social equality and strove to overcome all the limitations to bring social revolution. Salute to his efforts for blending education and equality for a harmonious society.

While Mahatma JyotiraoPhule was sensitive to common gender problems faced by all women, he was also conscious of crucial differences among women based on caste and their place in the system of production. In ShetkaryachaAsud (The Cultivator’s Whipcord), Phule has shown how the women of toiling castes had to labour at home and in the fields, whereas the brahmin women work only at home and lead relatively comfortable life. Thus ‘the brahmin women are subject only to the power of tehbrahmin men, while the labouring women are doubly crushed as they are dominated by both the privileged caste men and the men of their own families’. He has brought out the glaring contrast vividly and poignantly in his poem ‘Kulambin’, ‘The Peasant Woman’. Here, Phule compares the hardships of a shudra woman – clad in rough, tattered sari balancing her tiny child on her back, who slogs from early morning to late evening both at home and then in the fields with the men, who has no time to comb her hair or bathe – with the cosy life of the ‘bejewelled bhatin’, the brahmin woman, ‘who does not have to work as a labourer, to tend the cattle, to collect cow-dung, to carry the sheaves of corn to the threshing floor’. A shudra woman more often than not has to work as a dasi in a brahmin’s home but a brahmin woman ‘does not grind the corn in the shudra’s house nor does she sprinkle water in the courtyard of the shudra, to earn her livelihood’. While the kulambin’s labour nourishes and sustains the whole society, including the ‘brahminbegger’, the bhatin does not look after shudra children, does not kiss them’. Phule is thus aghast that the brahmin woman, like her menfolk, despises the toiling woman as an inferior being and addresses her by various disparaging names.

Mahatma JyotiraoPhule with his great vision wrote about formers more than 130 years ago in his book ShetkaryachaAsud (The Cultivator’s Whipcord). Governments are changing but there is no change in lives of farmers. Although Phule wrote such facts about farmers, why haven’t they become popular? Why are the lives of farmers sad even now? Are the governments trying to put his works under the carpet? At least why are even the Bahujan leaders and intellectuals not seen trying to spread his works to masses?

People and organizations (political, non political, National, regional) speaks and writes about former’s but not soling their problems On behalf of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule & Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Educational Circle we are requesting all Social activists and progressive Organizations to come under one platform with the spirit of Mahatma JyotiraoPhule to fight for former’s

We will spread his ideology and take forward the legacy of Mahatma JyotiraoPhule. On this day, we on the behalf of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule & Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Educational Circle are announcing the opening of our humble library for Bahujan literature and history, intended to cement our Bahujan movement on firm ground in the long term, considering that education of the masses was of foremost concern for Phule. We request everyone to make the best use of this library which is free for everyone and shall ever be so.

Tata Sivaiah President,Mahatma Jyotirao Pule &KrantijyotiSavitribaiPhule Educational Circle, MSc Mathematics, University of Hyderabad.

 

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