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Context: Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari has recently received flak for his remarks on the social reformist couple Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule.

Mahatma Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule:

• The social reformist couple work towards female education and empowerment, and towards ending caste- and gender-based discrimination.
• They strove to oppose child marriage and also organised widow remarriages.
• Savitri at the age of ten was married to Jyotirao, who was thirteen years old at the time. Jyotirao started to educate his wife at home and trained her to become a teacher.
• In 1848, the Phules started a school for girls, Shudras and Ati-Shudras in Poona.
• In 1853, Jyotirao-Savitribai opened a care centre for pregnant widows to have safe deliveries and to end the practice of infanticide owing to social norms.
• The Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha (Home for the Prevention of Infanticide) started in their own house in Pune.
• The Satyashodhak Samaj (The Truth-Seeker’s Society) was established on September 24, 1873 by Jyotirao-Savitribai. The Samaj advocated for social changes, including economical weddings, inter-caste marriages, eradication of child marriages, and widow remarriage.
• The Phules were popularising female education, establishing an institutional structure of schools in India.
• In Bhida Wada school established by Savitribai Phule, she hired Fatima Begum Sheikh, who was the sister of Jyotiba’s friend Usman Sheikh. Fatima became the first Muslim woman teacher in the country.

About Mahatma Jyotiba Phule:

• He was the first to establish an orphanage for the underprivileged.
• He was an Indian social activist, thinker, anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra.
• His work extended to many fields, including eradication of untouchability and the caste system and for his efforts in educating women and exploited caste people.
• He was bestowed with honorific Mahātmā titleby Maharashtrian social activist Vithalrao Krishnaji Vandekar in 1888.
• A Pune-based newspaper, Deenbandhu,provided the voice for the views of the Satyashodhak Samaj.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-who-are-the-phules-what-is-the-row-around-maharashtra-governors-remarks-on-them-7805497/

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