Maanya Anand Week 3

I will be summarising chapter 4 and 5 from Understanding Caste by Gail Omvedt. Chapter 4 talks about Jyotiba Phule and the developments he made in education for women. He was considered as one of the first feminists who encouraged his wife to educate herself and teach young girls. Moreover, even when his wife was unable to bear children, he refused to divorce her which in that time was considered to be a very bold move. Further, he encouraged English education of women and their studies. Around the same time, there were women like Tarabai and Ramabai along with Savitribai Phule who were also encouraged into education and took up educating people, especially women around them. Ramabai, for example was an upper caste Hindu Brahmin but converted to Christianity. Even then she accepted the idea of India with Hindu. Within this sphere, they attempted to include women education, which included women belonging to different castes, including the backward castes. But somehow, they continued to exclude Muslim women from this inclusion. However, the women who came up later to fight for the education of other women maintained their identities as Brahmins and upper castes rather than shunning the ideas of Hinduism to fight for the rights of women, basically they had to come to a compromise, either to fight for lower castes education or women's education.