186th Birth Anniversary of Savitribai Phule

Google Doodle honours Savitribai Phule on her 186th birthday 
Google paid tribute to Savitribai Phule on her 186th birth anniversary. (Photo courtesy: Google)

Google's homepage today shows a woman embracing several others with a motherly grace. The woman on the Google Doodle today is Savitribai Phule, the pioneer of women empowerment in India. Born today in 1831, she is considered one of the most important figures in social reform movement in Maharashtra.

Savitribai Phule, along with her husband Jyotirao Phule, founded the first women's school in Bhide Wada in Pune in 1848. She became the first woman teacher and headmistress in the whole country. In 2014, the University of Pune was named Savitribai Phule University in her honour.

Phule spoke and worked against caste and gender-based discrimination of people. She was married at the young age of nine to 13-year-old Jyotirao. Later in her life she stood up against the plight of women. She protested against widows shaving their heads and also opened a care centre, Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha, for pregnant rape victims to help them with labour. The couple's adopted son was also born to a Brahmin widow.

Phule was also a poet, her poems were also about discrimination , illiteracy and other ills of the society.

She opened a clinic with her son Yashwantrao Gupta to help those affected by the bubonic plague. She caught the disease herself while treating the patient and later succumbed to it on March 10, 1897.