Three exceptional women of India (plus one) – Part Two

“Unfortunately Indian society is stratified:
patriarchy is the shroud that suffocates the whole nation,
but the underlying strands of caste and religion are equally oppressive.”
(Tishani Doshi)

 

Savitribai Jyotirao Phule

Indian society is constantly evolving, even if its vastness makes its progress fragmented and at a different pace.

Certainly, the caste system is not helping its evolution, no matter what Gandhi thought positively.

The caste system of Vedic origin of about three thousand years ago is commonly relaxed by the creator god Brahma. From the parts of his body come the castes: from his mouth come the brahmins, the caste of priests and intellectuals, from the arms the kshatriyas, the warriors, the nobles and the governors, from the belly the vaisyas, farmers and merchants, and from the feet the sudra, the sharecroppers and the servants. Finally, there are the dalits, who would be born from the dust of his feet, who are the outcasts, the scavengers, and the latrine cleaners. Even if in reality the castes would be more than three thousand.

In an essay, the Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy cites Bhimrao Ramji Ambekdar among her major influences and inspirations. The Indian writer has always fought against the caste system, and they cite as an example the terrible story of Surekha Bhotmange, a Dalit woman who did not have the same luck as Malala. Surekha was a Dalit woman who tried in every way to live a decent life with her family, cultivating the land, but who met a terrible end fuelled by the hatred of the community that lived around and who hated her as a “being inferior”.

Although modern society is trying to eradicate this ancient deeply racist system, even using different terms, ranging from the ancient “untouchable” to the more moderate “dalit” (“broken person”) to “disadvantaged caste”. But the result does not change, as Roy reports: “According to the National Crime Records Bureau, every 16 minutes a crime is committed against a Dalit by a non-Dalit; every day more than 4 untouchable women are raped by members of “higher” castes; every week 13 Dalits are killed and kidnapped. In just 2012, the year of the mass rape and massacre in Delhi, 1,547 Dalit women were subjected to violence and 651 Dalits were murdered. And these figures only account for the rapes and massacres. Not people who are stripped and paraded naked, those forced to swallow shit (literally), land grabbing, social ostracism, restrictions on access to drinking water.”

Their social struggles for greater dignity are always seen as an infringement of the secular peace that has been immutable since the dawn of Hindu society; therefore more and more Dalit Hindus are converting to other religions such as Buddhism precisely to escape a life of infamy and oppression. Even if today some Dalits have even managed to hold political positions in parliament or become business men or women, the caste system remains and is also exported by the devotees who live in other countries.

Savitribai Jyotirao Phule was a prominent Indian social reformer, educator, and poetess who played a pivotal role in the education and empowerment of women during the nineteenth century. Born in January 1831 in Maharashtra, Savitribai is considered an icon of the Dalit Mang caste together with B. R. Ambedkar or Annabhau Sathe.

Her life is incredible and it deserves to be told.

“Birds, animals, monkeys, human beings too,

All go through life and death

But if you gain no knowledge about this,

How then can you be called a human being?”

(Savitribai Jyotirao Phule)

Savitribai Phule was born on January 3, 1831, in the village of Naigaon in the Satara district of Maharashtra. Savitribai Phule was the youngest daughter of Lakshmi and Khandoji Nevase Patil, both of whom belong to the Malian community. She had three brothers. Savitribai was married to her husband Jyotirao Phule at the age of 9 or 10, while he was 13. Savitribai and Jyotirao had no children but, in 1874, they adopted a child from a Brahmin widow named Kashibai thus sending a strong message to the progressive people of society. The adopted son, Yashavantrao, became a doctor growing up. It is said that when he was looking for a wife, no one was willing to give him a girlfriend because he was born to a widow, so it was his mother who arranged his marriage to the daughter of her organization worker Dynoba Sasane in February 1889.

Savitribai was illiterate at the time of her marriage; it was her husband who gave her an education. She also enrolled in two teacher training programs; the first was in an institution run by an American missionary, Cynthia Farrar, in Ahmednagar, and the second was in a regular school in Pune, the neighboring city.

After completing her teaching studies, Savitribai Phule began teaching girls at the Maharwada in Pune.

Savitribai is recognized for having been the one who founded the first girls' school in Pune, in Bhide Wada, with her husband.

Together they taught children of different castes and managed to open a total of 18 schools, not only, but also a treatment center called Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha (“Child-killing Prohibition Home”) for pregnant rape victims, also helping the victims to give birth and help their children.

Unfortunately, the success of Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule drew much resistance from the local conservative community. It is said that Savitribai often went to her school wearing an extra sari to be able to change because she was attacked each time by people in the street with throwing stones or dung and verbal abuse. Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule lived in Jyotirao's father's house. However, in 1839, Jyotirao's father asked the couple to leave his home because their work was considered a sin according to the Manusmriti and its derived Brahmanic texts.

Savitrabai not only fought against caste and gender differences but also made great efforts to educate and emancipate child widows, campaigned against child marriages, advocated the re-marriage of widows and the abolition of the ancient rite of sati pratha, the Hindu custom in which the widow of the dead voluntarily sacrificed herself by sitting on his funeral pyre. Sati pratha was initially practiced mainly by some Kshatriya royal families but later spread to other castes.

Sati is another name for the goddess Uma, the first wife of Lord Shiva. The word Sati comes from the word “Satya” which means Truth in Sanskrit. Therefore, the word Sati means “the woman who is truthful” because Sati is a feminine word and is a counterpart to the masculine word Satya.

The original term for the practice was Sahamarana, which means to die together. It seems that the main reason for this custom was to not allow widows to remarry and, to some extent, the excessive love of the wives towards their husbands, since ancient times, the marriage of the widows is prohibited in Hinduism.

Aside from that, the woman who burns herself on her husband's funeral pyre is believed to achieve goddess status. Some people also believed that that woman had committed sins in her past life and being widowed was a cause.

Savitribai and her adopted son, Yashwant, opened a clinic to treat people affected by the third world pandemic of the bubonic plague in 1897. The clinic was opened in an area not contaminated by the plague, but this did not save Savitribai who died a heroic death to save Pandurang's son Babaji Gaekwad: in fact, after knowing that Gaekwad's son had contracted the plague in the Mahar settlement outside Mundhwa, Savitribai Phule rushed to help him by carrying him on her back to the hospital. On the way, Savitribai Phule caught the plague and died on 10 March 1897.

Savitrabai was an inspiration to the girls she taught over years, encouraging them to engage in activities such as writing and painting. One of the essays written by a Savitribai student named Mukta Salve became the face of feminism and Dalit literature during that time. She organized parent-teacher meetings at regular intervals to create awareness among parents of the meaning of education so that they regularly sent their children to school.

She always worked with her husband to eradicate the custom of untouchability and the caste system, gain equal rights for people of the lower castes, and reform Hindu family life. The couple opened a well in their home for the untouchables at a time when the shadow of an untouchable was considered unclean and people were reluctant to even offer water to the thirsty untouchables.

She was also associated with an organization called “Satyashodhak Samaj” founded by Jyotirao on September 24, 1873 in Pune. The goal of the Samaj, which included Muslims, non-Brahmins, Brahmins and government officials as members, was to free women, sudras, dalits and other less privileged people from being oppressed and exploited. Savitribai worked as a leader in the women's section and after her husband's death on 28 November 1890, she became the president of the Samaj.

 

Lastly, her career as a writer and poet should also be mentioned.

Savitribai Phule published “Kavya Phule” in 1854 and “Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar” in 1892, as well as a famous poem called “Go, Get Education” in which she encouraged the oppressed to achieve their freedom through education.

To conclude and celebrate Savitrabai's incredible life, work, and courage, I report here the lines from her most famous poem, on education, recalling once again that she was the voice of an untouchable.

“Be self-reliant, be industrious

Work, gather wisdom and riches,

All gets lost without knowledge

We become animals without wisdom,

Sit idle no more, go, get an education

End misery of the oppressed and forsaken,

You’ve got a golden chance to learn

So learn and break the chains of caste.

Throw away the Brahman’s scriptures fast.”

(Savitribai Jyotirao Phule)

    

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

The last woman I want to tell you about is who is considered a pioneer of feminism and women's liberation in South Asia.

Rokeya Khatun, known by all as Begum Rokeya, was born in 1880 to a Bengali Muslim family in the village of Pairaband, Rangpur, in the Presidency of Bengal, the ancient agency of British India. Her ancestors served in the army and the judiciary during the Mughal regime. Her father, Zahiruddin Muhammad Abu Ali Haidar Saber, was a zamindar and a multilingual intellectual. He was married four times; his marriage to Rahatunnessa Sabera Chaudhurani led to the birth of Rokeya, who had two sisters and three brothers, one of whom died in infancy. Her elder sister Karimunnesa wanted to study Bengali, the language of the majority of Bengalis, against the wishes of her family who preferred to use Arabic and Persian as means of education and communication. Ibrahim, her brother, taught English and Bengali to her sisters.

Rokeya, at the age of 18, married 38-year-old Khan Bahadur Sakhawat Hossain in 1898 after the death of his first wife. As a liberal, he encouraged Rokeya to continue learning Bengali and English. She encouraged her to write too and, on his advice, she adopted Bengali as the primary language for her literary works.

Rokeya began her literary career in 1902 with a Bengali essay entitled “Pipasa” (thirst). She later published the books Matichur (1905) and Sultana's Dream (1908) before her husband died in 1909.

Five months after her husband's death, Rokeya founded a high school, calling it Sakhawat Memorial Girls' High School. She initially settled in Bhagalpur, a traditionally Urdu-speaking area, with five students, then after a dispute with her husband's family over the property, she was forced to move the school in 1911 to Calcutta, where the Bengali language was spoken: she ran the school for 24 years.

Rokeya was also the founder, in 1916, of the Anjuman-e-Khawateen-e-Islam (Association of Muslim Women), active in carrying out debates and conferences on the status of women and on education. She supported reform, particularly for women, and believed that parochialism and excessive conservatism were the main culprits for the relatively slow development of Muslims in British India.

Rokeya believed that education was the central precondition for women's liberation, establishing the first school aimed primarily at Muslim girls in Calcutta. It is said that she went from house to house by convincing the parents to send their girls to her school in Nisha. Until her death, she ran her school despite the criticism and hostility of society.

In 1926, Rokeya chaired the Bengal Women's Education Conference convened in Calcutta, the first significant attempt to bring women together in support of women's rights to education. She was engaged in debates and lectures on the advancement of women until her death on December 9, 1932, from heart problems, on her 52nd birthday.

Rokeya Day is celebrated on 9 December in Bangladesh. On 9 December 9, 2017, Google celebrated her 137th birthday with a Google Doodle.

Rokeya's tomb in Sodepur was rediscovered thanks to the efforts of the historian Amalendu De. It is located within the campus of Panihati Girls' High School, Panihati, Sodepur.

The Rokeya statue is located on the premises of Rokeya Hall, at the University of Dhaka

Rokeya is considered the feminist pioneer of Bengal.

 

It's a pity, I conclude, that in so many celebrations that are held in the Bengali community in Rome or in Italy, the figure of this woman is never properly remembered. I hope that December 9 will also be a special day for the Bengali community of the diaspora.

 

Here ends this short journey through the exceptional lives of women who have given so much to art, culture, education, and empowerment of women and the oppressed.

Italian version