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Today a girl in Pune can walk to school without anyone noticing. In 1848 a young woman walking to teach girls there was pelted with mud and stones. Savitribai Phule kept walking. Her story is often told in a sentence or two. This post sets out what the sources actually record, and why it still matters to any student who has been told a subject is not for them.
Who was Savitribai Phule?
Savitribai Phule was a teacher and social reformer in 19th-century Maharashtra. A 2024 article in the journal Education 3-13 describes her as the first female school teacher in India, who, with the support of her husband and mentor Jyotirao Phule, played a pivotal role in educating Indian girls in colonial India, and who worked for the education of the oppressed classes as well.
Much of the detail of her early work comes from Dhananjay Keer's biography of Jyotirao, Mahatma Jotirao Phooley: Father of the Indian Social Revolution, first published in 1944, which quotes newspapers and reports from the 1850s. The facts below follow Keer.
How did the first school start?
In 1848, Keer writes, Jyotirao visited girls' schools run by an American mission in Ahmednagar and came back to Pune determined to start one of his own. The school met in the house of a man named Bhide in Budhwar Peth, and taught reading, arithmetic and the elements of grammar. Girls from the communities that orthodox society barred from learning were among its pupils.
No other teacher would help, so Jyotirao turned to his wife, whom he had taught to read at home. Keer records that a teacher at a government Marathi school in Pune, Keshav Shivram Bhavalkar, also took on the work of teaching her.
The opposition was fierce. According to Keer, opponents threw mud, dirt and stones at Savitribai on her way to the school. The first school lasted only five or six months. When Jyotirao's father drove the couple out of the family home, the school had to close.
What happened to the schools after that?
The Phules did not give up. Keer quotes a report describing a new girls' school opened on 3 July 1851 in Chiplunkar's Wada in Budhwar Peth, with 8 girls on the rolls at first. The number soon rose to 48. Savitribai became its head mistress and, the report says, had volunteered to teach without pay. The harassment continued, and a peon was employed to walk her to and from school.
In the last week of June 1853, John Warden, President of the Board of Education, visited the girls' schools run by the Phules' society. Keer quotes him as saying that the total number of girls on the rolls was 237, with an average attendance of 200 across the three schools.
Savitribai outlived her husband. Keer records that she died of plague in Poona (now Pune) in 1897.
What can a student take from Savitribai Phule's way of working?
Her circumstances were nothing like a student's today, and her courage is not something a study tip can copy. But a few habits in her story carry over.
Teach what you have just learned. Savitribai taught soon after learning herself. Explaining a topic to a younger sibling or a friend is one of the quickest ways to find out what you really understand. Our post on learning by teaching explains why.
Start small and keep going. The first school closed within months. The next one started with eight girls. Progress came from restarting, not from a perfect first attempt.
Do not let other people decide what you can learn. If someone has told you girls are not good at physics, or that a subject is beyond your background, treat it as an opinion, not a fact. Parents can read our post on girls' confidence in maths and physics.
Find the people who will help. Savitribai had Jyotirao and a fellow teacher who gave his time. Look for the teacher, senior or study partner who will answer your questions.
For more Indian women who studied when it was rare, read our post on Anandibai Joshi and her medical studies. If you are starting a hard subject with little help around you, Fermi's AI tutor can work out what you already know and build a plan for the session, so you have a first step.
This week, teach one topic you learned recently to someone else, and note which questions you could not answer.
