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Savitribai Phule

Savitribai Phule was born in Naigaon village in Satara district to her mother LaxmiBai and father Khandoji Navse Patil on 3 January 1831. Her father was the village chief. Savitribai was just nine years old when she was married to JyotiRao Phule (age thirteen) in the year 1840.
Savitribai Jyotirao Phule was a social reformer, who, along with her husband, Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, played an important role in improving women's rights in India during the British Rule.
Savitribai was the first female teacher of the first women's school in India and also considered as the pioneer of modern Marathi poetry. In 1852 she opened a school for Untouchable girls.

However, apart from all these oppositions, Savitribai yet continued to teach the girls. Whenever Savitribai went out of her house, groups of orthodox men would follow her and abuse her in obscene language. They would throw rotten eggs, cow dung, tomatoes and stones at her.
She would walk meekly and arrive at her school. Fed up with the treatment meted out to her, she decided to give up. But it was because of her husband that she continued with her efforts. He told Savitribai that Jyotirao, who was working for women's education, had started the first girls' school and required women teachers to assist him.
Savitri realised that along with education it was necessary to work on other social fronts, to build up the self-esteem and confidence of women. She also campaigned against some cruel social practices. Many girls who were married off young would be widowed by the age of twelve – thirteen. After the death of their husbands, either they would have to take Sati (a practice of burning the widow on the funeral pyre of the husband) or their head would be clean shaven to make them ugly and unattractive to other men. These helpless women, with no rights to denial, would be easy targets for depraved men. The resultant pregnant widows would be scared of being ostracized by the society and the suppression that the child would have to suffer, and would resort to suicide or killing the new born.To counteract this situation, JyotiRao started a home for the pregnant widows and orphaned children to stop this carnage. Savitri ran the home capably. She considered all the children in the orphanage like her own.
Savitribai worked relentlessly for the victims of plague, where she organized camps for poor children. It is said that she used to feed two thousand children every day during the epidemic. She herself was struck by the disease while nursing a sick child named Pandurang Babaji Gaikwad who lived on the outskirts of 'Mundva' village and died on 10 March 1897 at 9 pm.

 
 
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