41 Facts About Jyotirao Phule

Jyotirao Govindrao Phule was an Indian social activist, businessman, anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra.

Jyotirao 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.

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

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

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

Govindrao married Chimnabai and had two sons, of whom Jyotirao Phule was the youngest.

The then backward Mali community did not use give much significance to the education and thus after attending primary school where he learnt the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, Jyotirao Phule was withdrawn from the school by his father.

Jyotirao Phule joined the other members of his family at work, both in the shop and in the farm.

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

In 1848, aged 21, Jyotirao Phule visited a girls' school in Ahmednagar run by Christian missionary Cynthia Farrar.

Jyotirao 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.

Jyotirao Phule taught his sister Sagunabai Kshirsagar to write Marathi with Savitribai.

Eleanor Zelliot blames the closure on private European donations drying up due to the Indian Mutiny of 1857, withdrawal of government support, and Jyotirao Phule resigning from the school management committee because of disagreement regarding the curriculum.

Jyotirao 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.

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

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

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

Jyotirao 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.

Jyotirao Phule sent his wife to get trained at a school.

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

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

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

Jyotirao Phule had to face punishment and was sentenced to jail.

Jyotirao 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.

Jyotirao Phule appealed for restablishment of the reign of mythical Mahabali which predated "Aryans' treacherous coup d'etat".

Jyotirao Phule proposed his own version of Aryan invasion theory 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.

Jyotirao 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.

Jyotirao 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.

Jyotirao Phule saw Vishnu's avatars as a symbol of oppression stemming from the Aryan conquests and took Mahabali as hero.

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

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

At an education commission hearing in 1882, Jyotirao Phule called for help in providing education for lower castes.

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

On 24 September 1874, Jyotirao Phule formed Satyashodhak Samaj to focus on rights of depressed groups such women, the Shudra, and the Dalit.

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

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

Jyotirao Phule owned 60 acres of farmland at Manjri, near Pune.

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

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

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

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