34 Facts About Jyotiba Phule

1.

Jyotirao Phule, known as Mahatma Jyotiba Phule was an Indian social activist, thinker, anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra.

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2.

Jyotiba Phule's work extended to many fields, including eradication of untouchability and the caste system and for his efforts in educating women and oppressed caste people.

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3.

Jyotiba Phule is regarded as an important figure in the social reform movement in Maharashtra.

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4.

Jyotiba Phule was bestowed with honorific Mahatma title by Maharashtrian social activist Vithalrao Krishnaji Vandekar in 1888.

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5.

Jyotirao Jyotiba Phule was born in Pune in 1827 to a family that belonged to the Mali caste.

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6.

Jyotiba Phule was born on the day of Jyotiba's annual fair.

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7.

Jyotiba Phule joined the menfolk of his family at work, both in the shop and the farm.

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8.

Jyotiba Phule participated in the customary marriage procession, but was later rebuked and insulted by his friend's parents for doing that.

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9.

In 1848, aged 21, Jyotiba Phule visited a girls' school in Ahmadnagar, run by Christian missionaries.

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10.

Jyotiba Phule realized that exploited castes and women were at a disadvantage in Indian society, and that education of these sections was vital to their emancipation.

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11.

Jyotiba Phule taught Sagunabai Kshirsagar to write Marathi with Savitribai.

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12.

Jyotiba Phule watched how untouchables were not permitted to pollute anyone with their shadows and that they had to attach a broom to their backs to wipe the path on which they had traveled.

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13.

Jyotiba Phule saw young widows shaving their heads, refraining from any sort of joy in their life.

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14.

Jyotiba Phule saw how untouchable women had been forced to dance naked.

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15.

Jyotiba Phule made the decision to educate women by witnessing all these social evils that encouraged inequality.

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16.

Jyotiba Phule began with his wife, every afternoon, Jyotirao sat with his wife Savitribai Phule and educated her when she went to the farms where he worked, to bring him his meal.

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17.

Jyotiba Phule championed widow remarriage and started a home for dominant caste pregnant widows to give birth in a safe and secure place in 1863.

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18.

Jyotiba Phule's orphanage was established in an attempt to reduce the rate of infanticide.

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19.

Jyotiba Phule killed the baby after giving it birth and threw it in a well, but her act came to light.

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20.

Jyotiba Phule tried to eliminate the stigma of social untouchability surrounding the exploited castes by opening his house and the use of his water-well to the members of the exploited castes.

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21.

Jyotiba Phule recast Aryan invasion theory of history, proposing that the Aryan conquerors of India, whom the theory's proponents considered to be racially superior, were in fact barbaric suppressors of the indigenous people.

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22.

Jyotiba Phule believed that they had instituted the caste system as a framework for subjugation and social division that ensured the pre-eminence of their Brahmin successors.

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23.

Jyotiba Phule saw the subsequent Muslim conquests of the Indian subcontinent as more of the same sort of thing, being a repressive alien regime, but took heart in the arrival of the British, whom he considered to be relatively enlightened and not supportive of the varnashramadharma system instigated and then perpetuated by those previous invaders.

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24.

Jyotiba Phule considered them to be a form of false consciousness.

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25.

Jyotiba Phule is credited with introducing the Marathi word dalit as a descriptor for those people who were outside the traditional varna system.

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26.

At an education commission hearing in 1882, Jyotiba Phule called for help in providing education for exploited castes.

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27.

Jyotiba Phule asked for special incentives to get more lower-caste people in high schools and colleges.

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28.

On 24 September 1873, Jyotiba Phule formed Satyashodhak Samaj to focus on rights of depressed groups such women, the Shudra, and the Dalit.

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29.

Jyotiba Phule established Satyashodhak Samaj with the ideals of human well-being, happiness, unity, equality, and easy religious principles and rituals.

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30.

Apart from his role as a social activist, Jyotiba Phule was a businessman too.

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31.

Jyotiba Phule received contracts to provide labour for the construction of the Katraj Tunnel and the Yerawda Jail near Pune.

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32.

One of Jyotiba Phule's businesses, established in 1863, was to supply metal-casting equipment.

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33.

Jyotiba Phule was appointed commissioner to the then Poona municipality in 1876 and served in this unelected position until 1883.

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34.

Jyotiba Phule's akhandas were organically linked to the abhangs of Marathi Varkari saint Tukaram.

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