Savitribai Phule's 186th birth anniversary commemorated by Google Doodle

Google Doodle is paying homage to Savitribai Phule with a Google Doodle showing the social activist urging a group of women towards a school. Savitribai Phule was an educator and a social worker who urged for the education of women, during British India. Phule founded India’s first women’s school in Pune, and was also India’s first woman teacher. Every year, January 3 is celebrated as Savitribai Phule Jayanti, with programs held for women’s empowerment in her honour.

Savitribai Phule was born in Naingaon in 1831. She was only nine years old when she was married to her husband, Jyotirao Phule, who was then fourteen years old. Jyotirao Phule encouraged Savitribai Phule to study. Later on, both husband and wife became social activists who fought for the rights of the downtrodden in Indian society, including those facing discrimination based on caste, women, widows and farmers. Savitribai Phule wrote a number of poems for the upliftment of dalits and women. Some of her poems can be read online here. This is a graphic novel illustrating the life of Savitribai Phule.

The adopted son of Savitribai Phule and Jyotirao Phule, Yashwantrao opened up a clinic to care for patients affected by the third pandemic of bubonic plague, that raged for a hundred years. She was personally taking people to the clinic and caring for them, and contracted the deadly disease in the process. She died on 10 March 1897, because of the plague.