Jyotiba Phule

Also called: Jyotirao Phule, Mahatma Phule · Topic: Framing the Indian Constitution · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 5 "Print Culture and the Modern World"; Class 12, Ch 4 "Framing the Constitution"

Meaning

Jyotirao Phule (also called Jyotiba Phule or Mahatma Phule, 1827–1890) was a social reformer from Maharashtra. He fought against the caste system and for the education of women and lower castes, and in 1873 he founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth-Seekers). NCERT names him as one of the nineteenth-century reformers whose fight for equality and justice later shaped the ideals of the Indian Constitution.

Explanation

Background: a society divided by caste

• Phule was born in 1827 in the Pune region. His family belonged to the Mali (gardener) caste, which upper castes treated as low.
• In nineteenth-century Maharashtra, "low" castes and women were mostly kept out of schools, temples and public life.
• Phule saw caste as a man-made system of slavery, not a rule set by God.

His main work

• Education for girls and lower castes.
• In 1848 he opened a school for girls in Pune with his wife, Savitribai Phule.

• Later he also opened schools for children of the "untouchable" castes.

• Satyashodhak Samaj (1873).

• It worked for the rights of the shudras and ati-shudras, Phule's term for the lower castes and the "untouchables".

• It held marriages and other ceremonies without Brahmin priests.

• A new reading of history.

• Phule argued that Brahmins came from outside as "Aryans", and that the lower castes were the original people of the land who had been conquered.

• So he said the lower castes had a right to the land and to equal status.

• Writings.

• His best-known book is Gulamgiri ("Slavery"). In it he compared caste with slavery. He dedicated it to the Americans who had fought to free slaves.

• NCERT Class 10 dates Gulamgiri to 1871. Most other sources date it to 1873. In an exam, follow the date the question uses.

• He was given the title "Mahatma" in 1888, two years before he died in 1890.

How he links to the framing of the Constitution

• Phule died more than 50 years before the Constituent Assembly met. He had no direct part in writing the Constitution.
• But NCERT places him in the "longer pre-history" of the Constitution's ideals. The ideals of democracy, equality and justice grew out of nineteenth-century social struggles:
• the campaigns against child marriage and for widow remarriage,
• Vivekananda,
• Jyotirao Phule,

• Communists and Socialists, who organised workers and peasants.

• Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution on 13 December 1946 [2][3]. It promised "adequate safeguards … for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and Depressed and Other Backward Classes". This was the same group Phule had spent his life fighting for.

• The Assembly adopted the Resolution unanimously on 22 January 1947 [2][3]. It later became the basis of the Preamble [2].
• Dr B.R. Ambedkar called Phule one of his three gurus, along with the Buddha and Kabir. This is how Phule's ideas reached the drafting of the Constitution.

Results

• He started the non-Brahmin movement in western India. Later leaders carried it forward.
• He made caste equality and women's education part of public debate, decades before the national movement took up these issues.
• The Constitution's promises of equality and of safeguards for the depressed classes put into law what reformers like Phule had demanded for nearly a century.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: nineteenth century, colonial India (1827–1890).
• Region: Pune and the wider Bombay Presidency (Maharashtra).
• Key people: Jyotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule. Later links: Ambedkar, and Nehru, who moved the Objectives Resolution.
• How we know:
• Phule's own printed writings, especially Gulamgiri. NCERT Class 10, Ch 5 "Print Culture and the Modern World", uses him to show how print gave "low-caste" reformers a public voice.
• NCERT Class 12, Ch 4 "Framing the Constitution", names him among the sources of the Constitution's ideals.
• The Constituent Assembly Debates of 22 January 1947 record the adoption of the Objectives Resolution [3].

Don't confuse with

• Savitribai Phule: Jyotirao's wife and fellow worker. She taught in the 1848 Pune girls' school and is often called India's first woman teacher. She was not the founder of the Satyashodhak Samaj.
• Prarthana Samaj (Bombay, 1867): an upper-caste reform body linked with M.G. Ranade. It worked for religious reform and widow remarriage. The Satyashodhak Samaj (1873) was a non-Brahmin body that attacked Brahmin dominance directly.
• Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur: a ruler who supported the Satyashodhak movement after Phule's death. He was not its founder.
• Somnath Lahiri: also named in the same NCERT chapter, but he was a Communist member of the Constituent Assembly who said it worked "under the shadow of British guns". Phule died in 1890 and was never in the Assembly.

Prelims Hooks

• Satyashodhak Samaj, founded in 1873 by Jyotirao Phule.
• Gulamgiri was written by Jyotiba Phule. NCERT Class 10 dates it 1871; most sources give 1873.
• Phule and Savitribai Phule opened a girls' school in Pune in 1848.
• The Objectives Resolution was moved by Nehru on 13 December 1946 and adopted unanimously on 22 January 1947 [2][3]. It promised safeguards for the "Depressed and Other Backward Classes".
• Trap: Phule (died 1890) was not a member of the Constituent Assembly. NCERT names him only as part of the pre-history of its ideals.
• Ambedkar's three gurus: the Buddha, Kabir and Phule.

Mains Points

• The Constitution has Indian social roots. The Objectives Resolution's promise of justice, equality and safeguards for the depressed classes [2] wrote into law demands that Phule and other nineteenth-century reformers had already made. So the Constitution was not simply copied from Western texts. This supports Nehru's line: "We are not going just to copy."
• Caste is part of the history of Indian democracy.
• Phule turned caste from a religious matter into a question of power and rights.
• Through Ambedkar, this thinking shaped the Constitution's ban on untouchability and its system of reservations.

• This makes him useful in GS-I answers on social reform movements and their legacy.

• Print and social protest. As NCERT Class 10 shows, Phule used print to spread his ideas and challenge upper-caste control over knowledge. This is a good example of how print made public debate more democratic in colonial India.

Related concepts

• Objectives Resolution
• Somnath Lahiri
• Indian Councils Act 1909
• Edwin Montagu
• Government of India Act 1919
• Dyarchy
• Government of India Act 1935
• Federal Court of India
• Swami Vivekananda

Read more

• The Objectives Resolution and the vision of the Constitution