What Savitrimai Phule’s Legacy tells us about Savarna Feminism
Savitrimai Phule’s Legacy
Savitrimai Phule was an unparalleled pioneer of the Anti-Caste and Feminist movement as an educationist, social reformer, philanthropist, poet, anti-infanticide activist and liberationist.
Born on 3rd January 1831 in Maharashtra, she was married to 13-year-old Jyotirao Phule at the age of 9. The couple went on to challenge social injustices and caste inequity together and in doing so left behind a remarkable legacy, one that continues to be overlooked by many. Born into the Mali caste, the couple were considered shudra and hence prohibited from education by the oppressor castes.
On 1st January 1848, Savtrimai and Jyotiba Phule opened the first school for girls of all castes in Pune amidst fierce, humiliating and violent resistance from the oppressor caste community. She was the first woman to be a teacher and headmistress of a school in India. By 1851, they had 3 working schools. In 1852, she started the Mahila Seva Mandal to raise awareness about women’s rights. Savitrimai called for a women’s gathering where members from all castes were welcome and everybody was expected to sit on the same mat. In 1885, she opened the Home for the Prevention of Infanticide in her house, a place where Brahmin widows could deliver their babies safely. She simultaneously campaigned against child marriage, while supporting widow remarriage. Savitrimai founded the Satyashodak Samaj with Jyotiba, was the head of its women's section and chaired the annual session in 1893.
Failure to Honour Savitrimai Phule’s Legacy
Savitrimai Phule’s insurmountable contribution to Anti-Caste Feminist politics, academia and Indian feminism is seemingly absent from mainstream South Asian feminist narratives. Despite this legacy, South Asian feminists beyond caste studies fail to commemorate and honour her legacy in the way that other predominantly dominant caste feminist figures are.
For comparison, let’s look at the legacy of Pandita Ramabai, Savitrimai’s contemporary. The New York Times featured her in an article, “Overlooked No More: Pandita Ramabai, Indian Scholar, Feminist and Educator” acknowledging, “Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men, we’re adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times”. Historian Uma Chakravarti describes Ramabai in her biography, Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai, as the most controversial Indian woman of her times, as the rare woman who had learned Sanskrit, as well as the rare Brahmin to marry out of caste, and the rare widow who remained in public view, defying customs; as well as the rare Indian upper caste woman to decide on her own, to convert to Christianity. Pandita Ramabai was given the very title of “Pandita” and Sarasvati after being examined by the faculty of the University of Calcutta due to her “exceptional erudition and knowledge of Sanskrit texts”.
So on one hand, a Brahmin woman is feted for her mastery over the ancient Hindu liturgical language reserved for Brahmin men, on the other hand, a Bahujan woman is pelted with stones and dung for just going to school. Pandita Ramabai is written about not just by Indian feminists, but globally, whereas Savitrimai gets cursory lip service.
The Fault (Lines) in Mainstream Indian Feminism
This attitude of mainstream Indian feminists in not giving Savitrimai her dues is symptomatic of larger attitudes towards Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities and their issues. There are definite and multiple power imbalances based on gender identity, sexual orientation, caste, class, location, access, ability and other factors, which determine who takes up how much space, who speaks for whom, and who speaks over whom. It determines whose labour is acknowledged in the form of cultural and social capital, and whose views are generally taken seriously and amplified when a "feminist" stance is sought. There is a vast difference in the way that the general population, as well as mainstream feminists, respond to cases of sexual violence or police brutality when the victim belongs to a Dalit or Adivasi community. Unlike rape cases involving upper-caste victims, cases of caste-based sexual violence rarely mobilise large-scale nationwide protests for justice. They are often overlooked by mainstream media, as well as the mainstream feminist movement, which is mostly spearheaded by upper-caste women from economically privileged backgrounds. A perfunctory transient coverage is at best what is afforded to these cases as seen in the cases of Delta Meghwal, Disha, Dr. Payal Tadvi, and even Hathras.
A very clear instance of the split in the Indian feminist movement can be seen in the way 13 prominent feminists (including noted author and academic Nivedita Menon and All India Progressive Women’s Association secretary Kavita Krishnan) co-signed a statement on Kafila Blog criticising Raya Sarkar’s List of Sexual Harassers in Academia. The statement said that they were “dismayed” at the list. Its tone was seen as patronising, while the premise of the “support of the larger feminist community” suggested the writers felt ownership of the feminist movement. Others pointed out the shared caste and class of the accused and the feminists who signed the statement. Nivedita Menon responded to these criticisms with a rambling 7,300-word post titled “From Feminazi to Savarna Rape Apologist In 24 Hours”. Much of the post was devoted to establishing her credentials as a feminist and questioning the role of her – and her co-signees – caste in this debate. She went on to equate Anti-Caste feminists calling out “Savarna Feminism”, i.e. the privileging of upper-caste feminist narratives over those emerging from Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi (DBA) and other marginalised communities, with anti-feminist attacks by right-wing Hindu nationalist trolls. Finally, she ends by accusing Sarkar of single-handedly destroying "all trust within feminist politics for a long time to come". For Menon and many others, especially on the left, this attack on upper-caste feminism has led to a “destructive polarisation” within the movement and “the annihilation of mutual trust.”
Even claiming that the Indian feminist movement’s "unity" is being threatened is a savarna construct and a sign of this privilege. There are Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi activists who have never bought into the idea of a singular "feminist movement". Menon dismisses the role of caste in this conversation by mocking the fact that people have pointed out that the signatories are savarna. There seems to be very little reflection on how the Kafila signatories may have played a part in the destruction of this trust, and why this trust was so fragile in the first place.
Indian Feminism or Savarna Feminism?
“Savarna feminism has dominated post-colonial theory and feminism in India. How many Dalit women have been given the opportunity to publish their own stories and their own theories in academia? Savarna feminists refuse to pass the mic to Dalit women but would rather speak for them, come up with words like ‘subaltern’, without Dalit academics and scholars being given the opportunity to write their own histories and theories about their own subjugation.”
Feminism in India has disproportionately focused on issues of concern to upper-caste, upper-class women. While large cross-sections of society have deeply benefited from the reforms brought on by these movements, a close examination reveals that the benefits are disproportionately skewed towards upholding the rights and agendas of upper-class, Hindu women.
Reeta Kaushik, a Dalit and Musahar (Dalit community from eastern Gangetic plain and the Terai) rights activist believes that the display of Savarna superiority is also evidenced by the way upper-caste feminist ‘allies’ often tend to dictate the Dalit feminist agenda and conveniently exclude the role of caste when talking about violence against the Dalit community. Manjula Pradeep says that the challenges of women from marginalized communities do not find a seat at the table of mainstream feminism. As a result, marginalized feminist programs fail to receive the necessary resources or representation that a national-level unified movement should afford them. She urges women to acknowledge sexual violence from an intersectional lens and poses the rhetorical question-
“When you are not gender-blind, how can you be caste-blind.”
She also thinks that true alliance and integration within the Indian feminist movement is only possible when upper-caste feminists align their sensitivity and sensibility with the everyday struggles of Dalit women. They also need to have Dalit leaders in their mainstream movement who can represent the Dalit agenda and be treated as equal stakeholders. To be true allies, upper-caste feminists must first acknowledge and accept Dalit women to be their true equals in every aspect of capability and intellect. Savarna women need to acknowledge Dalit women and their voices as equal to their own and let them guide their own agenda, instead of determining it for them. A real feminist who pledges to voice her opinion against patriarchy must first begin by dismantling the culture of caste-based discrimination in her own immediate environment.
The Burden of Dalit Feminists
Despite the performative activism of Savarna feminists, the responsibility of combating oppression and raising voices against Dalit-specific women’s issues has always rested on the shoulders of Dalit women. Dalit feminism operates as an independent movement and has yet to find integration or adequate representation in the mainstream Indian feminist agenda. As a result of continual marginalization on the national level, Dalit feminism and the mainstream feminist movement operate in mutually exclusive spaces. The Indian feminist movement, primarily spearheaded by urban, upper-class Hindu women, continues to focus on issues regarding divorce and custody laws, political representation, bodily autonomy (abortion laws), prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace, equal pay for equal work, legal recourse against marital rape, democratization of gender-roles, and equality in decision making within the familial hierarchy. All this while, Dalit feminists are still fighting for their right to life and their right to survive without sexual exploitation. This blatant exclusion of Dalit feminism from the modern-day Brahmanical feminist perspective reeks of a kind of neo-imperialistic hegemony enjoyed by upper-caste women over their feminist agenda. By not actively incorporating the voices of Dalit women, the upper caste women have passively been maintaining the status quo of ‘superiority’ within the inherently inequitable power dynamics that exist.
Even as we move into 2025, Priyanka Samy writes after the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, AWID Forum 2024- “Dalit women’s leadership not just reshaped the feminist movement but drove powerful alliances. Why then do we still have to answer the question: What is caste? While African feminists are advancing calls for reparations, Dalit feminist activists are still stuck in the quicksand of basic explanations of terminologies. This is not just frustrating but violent. It denies us the dignity of broader intellectual engagements. We are being denied what one could call an “equal cerebral opportunity”— the space to engage as equals on nuanced issues like the political economy of exclusion and reform among others. Instead, our labour is continually reduced to educating others, over and over, about a system that they don’t see as urgent enough to learn about on their own.”
This is why the mainstream feminist movement in India does not fully acknowledge the profound impact of Savitrimai Phule on all Indian women. Instead, her role is confined to the work done for “certain" communities. We need to understand that we cannot fight for “women’s rights" without acknowledging the intersections of gender and caste. One can hope that Savitribai Phule’s birth anniversary this month is a timely call to follow the lead given by Bahujan women in the fight for smashing Brahminical patriarchy.
