Jyotirao Phule

Jyotirao Govindrao Phule (popularly revered as Mahatma Phule) was born on 11 April 1827 in Katgun, Satara district, Maharashtra, belonging to the Mali (gardener) community. He received his education at the Scottish Mission High School in Pune, where exposure to Thomas Paine's 'Rights of Man' profoundly shaped his democratic outlook.

Recognising literacy and critical education as the essential preconditions for liberation from hereditary bondage, Phule, alongside his wife Savitribai Phule, founded India's first school for girls in Bhide Wada, Pune, in August 1848. Despite intense social opprobrium and conservative backlash, they opened subsequent schools for children of lower castes and untouchables.

In September 1873, Phule established the Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth-Seekers' Society), an association committed to rationalist inquiry, religious and social equality, and the elimination of priestly intermediaries. The society conducted marriages without Brahmin priests and advocated for the civic rights of agricultural labourers.

Phule was an influential writer and polemicist. In 'Gulamgiri' (Slavery, 1873), which he dedicated to the anti-slavery movement in the United States, he constructed a sweeping historical and mythological critique of Brahmanical hegemony, laying the foundational texts for modern anti-caste thought.