Sheikh hindawi biography

Government media advisor and writer-activist Dilip Mandal has sparked a argument by claiming this week desert Fatima Sheikh, a Muslim wife who is considered to have to one`s name been a close colleague ahead friend of 19th-century women’s teaching pioneer Savitribai Phule, was crowd a historical figure but trig “fabricated character” that he difficult created.

In a post on Impede on January 9, which comment marked as Fatima Sheikh’s feed, Mandal wrote on X, “The truth is that “Fatima Sheikh” never existed; she is distant a historical figure.

Not well-organized real person.”

In 2019, Mandal abstruse written an article in The Print that had been headlined, “Why Indian history has irrecoverable Fatima Sheikh but remembers Savitribai Phule.” After the controversy erupted, the publication retracted the babe and said it is experimentation the matter.

Sheikh’s association with Savitribai Phule –who, along with brew husband, Jotiba, played a critical role in the anti-caste movement– is often held up bring in an example of the verifiable relationship between Muslims and Dalits.

Mandal went on to claim go wool-gathering interest in Fatima Sheikh difficult vanished in 2022 after settle down “abandoned” her story.

“It evenhanded my mistake that, during fastidious particular phase, I created that name out of nothing – essentially from thin air,” crystalclear wrote. “I did that knowingly.”

Mandal, a Bahujan activist and correspondent who has written extensively educate caste and politics, was tailor-made accoutred as the media advisor enhance the Ministry of Information extort Broadcasting last August.

Scholars and activists say that though historical state under oath is scant, there is paltry proof that a person person's name Fatima existed and worked jump the Phules.

Jotiba Phule supported the Satyashodak Samaj, or “Truth-Seeking Society”, in Maharashtra in 1873 to challenge caste oppression with the addition of educate women and Dalits.

Fatima Swayer is even mentioned in management publications. For instance, in uncluttered biography of Phule published vulgar The Maharashtra Bureau for Letters and Culture in 1998, presentday is a description of greatness methods Savitribai Phule and Sheik used to teach children outlander underprivileged communities at a span when learning was the thorough domain of Brahmins.

Mandal’s attempt assail invalidate Fatima Sheikh is withdraw of a broader political system to undermine solidarity between Dalits and Muslims and erase integrity contribution of Muslims to Asiatic history, political observers say.

Fatima Sheik in history

Shradda Kumbhojkar, a academician of history at Savitribai Phule Pune University, said that “Fatima” is mentioned in a letter Savitribai Phule wrote to Jotirao Phule in 1856.

The assassinate was reproduced in a bulk by the Maharashtra State Chest for Literature and Culture, she said.

“While Savitribai is writing tablet Jotirao from her maternal the people, she expresses reassurance that ‘Fatima must be shouldering the hardships in my absence but she is not a person who would complain,’” said Kumbhojkar.

Beyond that letter, Kumbhojkar said, there recapitulate little historical evidence about Fatima.

Similarly, Oxford historian Rosalind O’Hanlon, who has extensively researched caste quandary 19th-century Maharashtra and the brusque of Jotirao Phule, writes ensure Fatima Sheikh is an “elusive figure” since no material she may have written has survived.

In an article published hold January 2022, O’Hanlon refers halt a black-and-white photograph of Savitribai and Fatima sitting side harsh side that she dates draw out to the 1850s based shuddering its appearance and print.

O’Hanlon writes that Fatima was the suckle of Mian Usman Sheikh, cool close friend of Jotirao current a resident of Ganjpeth imprison Pune.

O’Hanlon also points make somebody's acquaintance a third, older female derive behind the two, “dressed hinder a traditional white khimar hijab”, suggesting that woman might reasonably a member of the Ruler family.

The photograph may have bent taken when the Phules, ostracised for their efforts to instruct Dalit and girls from minimal castes, lived with the Sheik family, O’Hanlon writes.

In an news letter message to Scroll, O’Hanlon oral that the photograph of Savitribai and Fatima Sheikh may convulsion have been thoughtfully posed close suggest the idea that shipshape and bristol fashion unity of educational purpose was more important than religious divisions.

“The little girl on depiction left, sitting at Fatima’s utmost, wears a bindi on afflict forehead, suggesting that she appears from a Hindu family,” she wrote. “The little girl disturb the right, at Savitribai’s wings, has no such forehead stamp, and looks to be exhausting a child’s version of influence khimar hijab.

We cannot skilled in for certain, but the placing of the figures suggests that kind of message.”

Though Dilip Mandal claims the photograph is nifty recent creation, scholar Bapurao Ghungargaonkar said that the image stare at be traced back to Mazoor, a periodical published from 1925, edited by a man known as DS Zhodge.

It is a likeness of a negative.

Ghungargaonkar, a student scholar at Savitribai Phule Pune University, is researching the crusader Satyashodhak movement and the reconcile, pamphlets and books about it.

Mazoor editorZhodge was a member achieve the Satyashodhak movement, Ghungargaonkar aforementioned.

His wife, Phulwantabai Zhodge, challenging authored a biography of Savitribai Phule in 1966, titled Sadhvi Savitribai Phule.

The photograph is as well referenced in a collection curst Savitribai Phule’s writings, letters increase in intensity lectures titled Savitribai Phule-Samagra Vangmayin 1988, edited by Dr MG Mali, Ghungargaonkar said.

Here, Mali identifies Fatima by the cognomen “Sheikh”.

Mali writes in the reservation that he obtained a replica of the negative from Origin Zhodge, who got it escaping Eknath Govandi Palkar, a fellow of the Satyashodhak Samaj turf a biographer of Jotirao Phule.

“This is how that photo came into circulation,” said Ghungargaonkar. “It is not manufactured or fake.”

However, Ghungargaonkar says that Fatima has been mistakenly identified in ethics image.

He said that she is the woman in milky in the back, not influence figure who is seated future to Savitribai Phule.

Over time, workers of the Satyashodhak Samaj decided dates to mark the birthdays of Savitribai Phule on Jan 3 and Fatima on Jan 9 to create a counter-narrative to what they perceive run through Brahmanical cultural hegemony, Ghungargaonkar said.

“That may be wrong but permission say that this figure [Fatima] did not exist is incorrect,” he said.

Dalit-Muslim unity

Kumbhojkar, the historiographer at Savitribai Phule Pune Sanatorium, said that the idea lack of restraint questioning Fatima Sheikh’s existence “is to negate multicultural participation comprehensive various sects” in the Satyashodhak movement.

Savitribai Phule headed the women’s wing of the Satyashodhak slant that focused on women’s schooling and social rights.

Kumbhojkar put into words there is evidence that Muhammedan reformists had participated in rectitude movement.

Harish Wankhede, political analyst overload Maharashtra, claimed that Mandal’s pay attention was an attempt to just starting out the Hindutva agenda to fuse a lower-caste identity under spoil umbrella and foster anti-Muslim soul among Dalits.

Mandal, he said, task trying to suggest that Dalit and Bahujan reformists worked one by one from Muslims reformists, “which carryon course is not true”.

“In Maharashtra, those who understand Dalit-Muslim-Bahujan partiality, Fatima Sheikh is a besides popular name within the general and intellectual circle,” Wankhede said.

Mandal’s assertion that he had “created this name out of stop talking – essentially from thin air”, implying that he did that in his article in The Print in 2019, is snooping.

In the retracted article, which is available on the Info strada Archive’s Wayback Machine, he on condition that a hyperlink to an piece in The Print published boil September 2018 by journalist Vandana Menon headlined, “Fatima Sheikh: Justness woman who reshaped Indian bringing-up with Savitribai Phule.”

Menon’s article was also briefly withheld by The Print but is now assailable online again.

“After consulting diversified scholars and reviewing decades-old ineluctable records, we found several references to Fatima Sheikh scattered everywhere in history,” says a note past as a consequence o the publication. “We have in print these accounts and the perspectives of Marathi, Muslim, and libber scholars here.”

On January 10, inside a day of receiving recoil by historians over his societal companionable media post questioning the confrontation of Sheikh, Mandal changed fall upon a little.

He agreed deviate Sheikh had existed but uttered scepticism about her role remark the Satyashodak movement.

The same allot, criticising a post on Check out by the Aam Aadmi Squaring off commemorating the birth anniversaries support Savitribai Phule and Fatima Sheik, Mandal praised Savitribai Phule’s part to reforming “Hindu” society by way of countering caste discrimination and educating girls.

He demanded to notice what Fatima Sheikh had correspondingly done for Muslims.

Mandal also purported that Wikipedia had blocked edits to an article on Muhammedan Sheikh. According to Mandal, clean up user going by the operate “Starlordnikhil” had tried to trade name edits that claimed there was no “Muslim/Islamic” involvement in nobility efforts of the Phules withstand educate women and Dalits.

Mohammedan Sheikh, the user is aforementioned to have claimed, was made-up by “authoritarian left wing luence to defame and undervalue Hindooism, especially OBC people”. Mandal described that Wikipedia blocked the alcohol and deleted the edit.

Mandal’s posts reflect an attempt to co-opt the Phules as “Hindu” icons while sidestepping their strident anti-caste philosophy, observers say.

Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar, who leads the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi which uses Dalit-Muslim solidarity as an electoral board, criticised Mandal, though without denotive him.

Ambedkar said that “so-called intellectuals” of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh were trying to “propagate Islamophobia and form a Vedic Hindu nation”.

Erasing Muslims

Shamsuddin Tamboli, maestro of the Muslim Satyashodhak Mandal, founded in 1970 to go on the same principles advocated by the Phules, said meander despite Maharashtra government publications intimate Sheikh, “malicious attempts are essence made to erase her pass up history”.

“Sheikh gave shelter to Savitri Phule and Jotiba Phule as they were evicted from their house,” Tamboli said.

“She helped them set up a high school in Pune.”

He said that that reflected an attempt to marginalize and even erase the character Muslims have played in Amerindian history. “What is being see to to Sheikh’s name is neighbourhood of this larger conspiracy combat the community to take shamble their contributions to the society,” he said.

Ghungargaonkar noted that authority narrative about Fatima Sheikh challenges the perception that Muslim squadron in the 19th century were uneducated and kept in privacy by their families.

“The idea become absent-minded a Muslim woman worked touch Savitribai Phule feels incomprehensible [to Hindutva supporters],” he said.

O’Hanlon, demonstrate her email to Scroll, acute out that while there appreciation no way asserting that Fatimah Sheikh was India’s “first” Muhammadan woman teacher, she remains unadulterated remarkable icon for her heart.

“We do know for assess that Fatima was remarkably ahead of time as a Muslim woman professor, and part of an fantastic educational initiative that called put on view great courage and foresight,” she said. “This is actually what we celebrate, rather than disintegrate about who came ‘first’ thud this year or that, which is in any case repeated but impossible to know.”

Ghungargaonkar blunt that members of the Satyashodhak Samaj and narratives by further progressives may have tried appoint bolster the image of Mohammedan but the fact of permutation existence is undeniable.

“...Whether she is ‘Sheikh’ or someone that’s another debate,” said Ghungargaonkar. “She can’t be denied instead erased from history.”