Fatima Shaikh: Celebrated 19th-century educationist and associate of Savitribai Phule | File Photo
Mumbai: Was Fatima Shaikh, a nineteenth-century academician described as an associate of social reformers Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule, a fictional character?
Muslim academicians and social activists think Shaikh was a real person who helped the Phules during the backlash against the couple’s decision to open a school for backward communities. She is called the first Muslim woman educator of the 19th century.
Shaikh’s historicity has been questioned after Google created a special doodle earlier this month to commemorate her birthday. Writer Dilip Mandal recently stirred up a debate, claiming that Shaikh was a fictional figure invented by historians.
For a person who had revolutionary ideas about formal education and society, very little written material exists on Shaikh. There is no documentary evidence supporting Shaikh’s birth date – January 9. There are no known descendants of Shaikh’s who have claimed her legacy.
A letter from Savitribai Phule to her husband, written in October 1856, that mentions Shaikh, is probably the only document that names her/ However, academic and social groups said Shaikh was a real person who partnered with Phules in their pioneering education projects.
Pune-based Muslim Satyashodak Mandal, a group set up in 1970 to promote communal harmony and scientific temperament, has an award named after Shaikh – the Fatima Shaikh Karyagaurav Puraskar. Dr Shamsuddin Tamboli, president of Muslim Satyashodak Mandal, said that the absence of documents to support the existence of Shaikh could be because she was busy with her work and found no time to keep a diary or talk about her work. “That does not mean that she is an imaginary figure. Very little was known about Savitribai Phule before historians put together her story,” said Tamboli.
Zeenat Shaukat Ali, former head of Islamic studies at Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College, who received the Fatima Shaikh Karyagaurav Puraskar in 2019, said her research on Shaikh showed that the Phules established their school in 1848 at the home of Usman Shaikh, Fatima’s brother, in Pune. “The upper castes objected to a school for children from lower castes and they asked Jyotiba’s father to disassociate with him and his wife. The couple received support from the Shaikhs,” said Ali.
Though Tamboli does not believe that the Phules’ school was started at the Shaikhs’ home, he said that Fatima Shaikh and Savitribai Phule attended a training programme for teachers together.
Former Member of Parliament from Maharashtra, Hussain Dalwai, said that a letter written by Savitribai to her husband Jyotirao mentions Shaikh as a caregiver when the former was not well.
“People like Mandal do not know anything. His statement is an insult to not only Fatima Shaikh but also to the Phules and their followers,” said Dalwai who added that Savitribai and Fatima had attended a Christian missionary institution in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, to learn teaching skills. “A Telugu author has written a book on Shaikh and school books in Telugu-speaking areas have a chapter on Shaikh,” said Dalwai.
Ali said that the fictionalising of an important Muslim reformist was an attempt to erase a community’s history and its contribution to social progress.
