Savitribai Phule (1831–1897) was an Indian educator, poet and social reformer from Maharashtra. Born into a Mali (farming) caste family, she became India’s first female teacher and co-founded the country’s first school for girls in 1848. Her work challenged caste, gender and the assumption that education belonged to some children and not others.
Savitribai Phule's theory/approach
Savitribai Phule’s argument stemmed from the question of who gets to learn is a power question, not a capability question. Brahminical social order denied education to women and to lower-caste communities because learning would destabilise the hierarchy. Phule understood this clearly.
Her approach was built around practice driven by a consistent principle. She believed that education changes the conditions of a person’s life, what they can demand, refuse and imagine. A child who can read has options. A child who cannot read has only what others decide to give them.
She even opened a care home for widows and destitute women in 1853, arguing that no child survives without a mother who is safe (Omvedt, 1994).
Education as a civil rights act
In 1848, Savitribai and her husband Jyotiba Phule opened the first school for girls in India at Bhidewada, Pune, alongside reformer Sagunabai Kshirsagar (Britannica, 2024). They were thrown out of their family home for doing it. The school was funded from their own savings. By 1851, they ran three schools in Pune with approximately 150 students (Drishti IAS, 2024).
This matters to early childhood because it is the first recorded instance in India of a formalised, structured educational setting for young girls regardless of caste. The British colonial government eventually recognised the schools and awarded Jyotiba a ceremonial shawl. Savitribai received nothing.
She walked to school every day while people threw stones and dung at her. She carried a spare sari and changed when she arrived. She taught anyway.
Kavya Phule: Poetry as pedagogy
In 1854, Savitribai published Kavya Phule (Poetic Blossoms), her first collection of poetry written in accessible Marathi using the abhang form. This was a deliberate choice, as she wanted to write for women who had never been addressed as people capable of thought.
The poems deal with nature, education and caste. She exhorts readers to break caste-based slavery and to see learning as liberation. Her second collection, Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar (1892), was more explicitly political.
Dr Christian Novetzke, a Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Washington, and currently writing a book on Phule’s thought, argues that Savitribai understood English as a vernacular that could undermine Brahminical authority over Sanskrit (Novetzke, 2023). Upper castes controlled Sanskrit. English was the leveller.
Phule was also among the earliest writers to use the term “Dalit” in print as a self-affirming identity rather than a marker of degradation.
The Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha: Early childhood welfare before the term existed
In 1853, Savitribai and Jyotiba opened the Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha, an infanticide prevention home that was built specifically for widows who were pregnant as a result of rape, so their children would not be killed at birth.
This is an early childhood intervention in the most direct sense. She understood that a child’s survival depends entirely on whether the mother is protected. She understood that infant death in this context was not a private tragedy but a structural outcome of how widows were treated under caste patriarchy.
She adopted one of the children born at the home; Yashwant, the son of a Brahmin widow, and raised him as her own son. He became a doctor. He was with her when she died.
The role of the educator in Phule's practice
Phule trained as a teacher at two normal schools: one run by an American missionary, Cynthia Farrar, and another under Ms. Mitchell (Britannica, 2024). Her own education happened at home, taught by Jyotiba, at a time when teaching a woman to read was considered a social transgression.
Her understanding of the educator’s role was grounded in presence and accountability. She did not theorise the teacher as a facilitator of child-led inquiry, in the way Froebel or Montessori would. She theorised the teacher as someone who shows up in adverse conditions.
She led the women’s wing of the Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth Seekers), co-founded with Jyotiba in 1873 to fight caste-based discrimination, and used that platform to argue directly for women’s education at scale.
Links to practice:
Phule’s foundational principle that access to education is the first right, before all others, is now embedded in international frameworks including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 28) and the Sustainable Development Goal 4 on quality education. What those frameworks do not always say is that access is a matter of who the school is actually designed for.
In India today, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme and the Right to Education Act (2009) are downstream consequences of the argument Phule made in 1848. She is recognised on Pune University’s official name, Savitribai Phule Pune University, though her work is not yet a standard part of early childhood teacher training curricula in most Indian states.
How might she extend her theory today?
Phule’s question: “Who does this school serve?” applies directly to AI in education. Most AI learning tools are designed around the child who already has a stable home, a native-language interface and a parent who can supervise. That is not the majority of the world’s children. If she were writing today, she would ask what the default settings assume, and whose child those assumptions were built around.
Links or challenges to other pioneers
Phule’s work pre-dates Maria Montessori’s Casa dei Bambini (1907) by nearly sixty years. Both insisted that young children from marginalised backgrounds were capable of rigorous learning given the right conditions. Where Montessori focused on the prepared environment and child-led inquiry, Phule was arguing for the right to be in the room at all.
Her work also challenges the Western-centric framing of early childhood as a field that emerged from Europe.
Key takeaways:
- Savitribai Phule co-founded India’s first school for girls in 1848, at 17 years old, while facing active social hostility.
- By 1851, she and her husband Jyotiba ran three schools with approximately 150 students; they went on to open 18 schools in total.
- Her 1853 infanticide prevention home was one of the earliest maternal and early childhood welfare interventions in India.
- Her poetry, published in 1854, addressed caste and education as a single argument.
- She died in 1897 carrying a plague-infected child to hospital. She had contracted the disease herself.
Critical considerations:
- Phule’s work is still not part of mainstream early childhood teacher education in most countries. Why not?
- Her contribution is often framed as “Indian history” rather than as universal early childhood theory.
- Jyotiba is frequently cited first. Savitribai is frequently described as supporting his work. Is that an accurate account of what the evidence shows?
- The Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha addressed child survival through maternal safety. How much of current early childhood policy still separates those two things?
Explainer:
Abhang: A form of devotional poetry from the Marathi-language literary tradition, typically associated with the Varkari movement. Savitribai used the form to reach audiences who were familiar with devotional verse but had no access to formal literature.
Caste: A hereditary social classification system in South Asia that historically determined occupation, marriage, education and social status. Lower-caste communities, including Dalits (formerly described by the colonial term “untouchables”), were explicitly excluded from formal education in 19th-century India.
Dalit: A self-identifying term used by communities historically classified as “untouchable” within the caste system. Savitribai Phule is among the earliest writers documented to have used this term in print.
Satyashodhak Samaj: The Society of Truth Seekers, founded by Jyotiba Phule in 1873 to challenge caste discrimination and promote social equality. Savitribai led its women’s wing.
References
Asher, M. (2016). The Legacy of Savitribai Phule. New Delhi: Zubaan.
Britannica (2024). Savitribai Phule. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Savitribai-Phule
Drishti IAS (2024). Savitribai Phule. Available at: https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-news-analysis/savitri-bai-phule
Mhatre, U. (trans.) and Dhara, L. (ed.) (2012). Kavyaphule: Poetic Blossoms. Mumbai: Dr. Ambedkar College of Commerce and Economics.
Novetzke, C.L. (2023). ‘Mother English’: Savitribai Phule on Caste Patriarchy and the Ideology of the English Vernacular. In N. Zaidi and H. Harder (eds.), Language Ideologies and the Vernacular in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia. New Delhi: Routledge India.
Omvedt, G. (1994). Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India. New Delhi: SAGE.
Scroll.in (2021). Savitribai Phule: The firebrand intellectual who powerfully used the term ‘Dalit’ in her poetry. Available at: https://scroll.in/article/1007802/savitribai-phule-the-firebrand-intellectual-who-powerfully-used-the-term-dalit-in-her-poetry
Reference this article
Calamur, J. 2026. An introduction to Savitribai Phule. The Voice of Early Childhood. Available at: www.thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/introduction-savitribai-phule/
