Fatima Sheikh
#WomensHistoryMonth
Fatimah Sheikh (1831–1900) was India’s first Muslim female teacher who helped set up the country’s first girls’ school.
Fatima was born to a family of handloom textile merchants. Due to the Agra famine in 1837–38, her family migrated to Malegaon, but her parents died early. Later, she and her brother Usman Sheikh moved to Poona (today’s Pune), where Munshi Gafar Baig, an Urdu and Persian scholar, became a father figure to them.
Because Fatima knew how to read and write, Usman encouraged her to take up a teacher training course. Fatima met Savitribai Phule, a Dalit woman, when both were enrolled at a teacher training institution run by Cynthia Farrar, an American missionary.
When Savitribai and her husband Jyotirao Phule were told by his father to vacate their ancestral house because he disapproved with them teaching the lower castes, the Dalits and women, it was Fatima and her brother Usman — who was a friend of Jyotirao — who opened the doors of their house for the Phules.
It was in the same building where Savitribai opened the first girls’ school, called the Indigenous Library, in 1848 in Pune.
Fatima taught at all five schools that the Phules went on to establish, teaching children of all religions and castes. She also took part in the founding of two schools in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1851.
As a lifelong champion of this movement for equality, Fatima went door-to-door to invite the downtrodden in her community to learn at the Indigenous Library and escape the rigidity of the Indian caste system. She was going against both, the upper caste Hindus as well the conservative Muslims.
The upper-caste people reacted vehemently and even violently to their effort to educate the lower caste and women. They pelted stones and even threw cow dung at Fatima and Savitribai. But both women remained undeterred.
The close friendship between Fatima and Savitri was one of respect, compassion and synergy. Savitri would often mention Fatima in her letters to Jyotirao with affection and concern.
Fatima taught at all the five schools the Phules opened, and continued to teach until 1856.
However, little else is known about Fatima’s life. There are extremely few reliable sources, and it is unclear what happened to her after 1856.
Sources:
Feminism in India–Remembering Fatima Sheikh: A Woman Lost In History
Why Indian history has forgotten Fatima Sheikh but remembers Savitribai Phule
Fatima Sheikh: The woman who reshaped Indian education with Savitribai Phule
Remembering Fatima Sheikh, the first Muslim teacher who laid the foundation of Dalit-Muslim unity
