Jyotiba Phule was associated with
- (a)Trade Union Movement
- (b)Peasant Movement
- (c)Civil Disobedience Movement
- (d)Anti-caste Movement
Correct — D, Anti-caste Movement. Jyotirao Govindrao Phule (1827-1890) of Pune is the founding figure of the modern anti-caste movement in India. Every part of his life's work points the same way: he and Savitribai Phule opened a school for girls at Bhide Wada in Pune in 1848 at a time when education for Shudra and Ati-Shudra children and for women was effectively closed; in 1863 they opened a home for widows and a centre against infanticide; he campaigned for widow remarriage; and in 1873 he published Gulamgiri, 'Slavery', a frontal attack on caste which he dedicated to the American abolitionists. In the same year, on 24 September 1873, he founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, the Truth-Seekers' Society, whose programme was the rights of Shudras, Dalits and women, and which conducted marriages and other ceremonies without Brahmin priests on the argument that no intermediary was needed. The title 'Mahatma' was conferred on him in 1888. B. R. Ambedkar counted Phule as one of his three gurus, alongside the Buddha and Kabir — a fair measure of where he sits in the lineage of the anti-caste struggle.
- (a)Trade Union Movement — Wrong domain and largely the wrong period. Organised trade unionism in India is a twentieth-century development — the All India Trade Union Congress was founded in 1920, three decades after Phule's death in 1890. Phule worked on education, caste and the position of women, not on organising industrial labour.
- (b)Peasant Movement — Phule did write with real sympathy for the cultivator — his 1883 tract on the condition of the peasantry is well known — but he is not a leader of the peasant movement as the term is used in Indian history. That movement is an organised twentieth-century phenomenon: the All India Kisan Sabha was formed at Lucknow in 1936 with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati as its first president. Sympathy for a class is not the same as leadership of its movement.
- (c)Civil Disobedience Movement — The cleanest kill in the set, on chronology alone. The Civil Disobedience Movement began in 1930 with Gandhi's Dandi march — forty years after Phule died in 1890. He could not have been associated with it in any sense.
Nineteenth-century Indian social reform ran in two distinct channels. One, represented by the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal and the Prarthana Samaj in western India, was led by educated upper-caste men seeking to purge religion of specific evils — sati, child marriage, the ban on widow remarriage — while leaving the social order intact. The other, which Phule opened, began from the position that caste itself was the injustice, that the lower castes and women should lead their own emancipation, and that priestly authority could simply be dispensed with. That second channel is what 'the anti-caste movement' names. It runs forward through the non-Brahmin politics of western and southern India — the Justice Party, Periyar's Self-Respect Movement — and into Ambedkar's constitutional work.
A one-line 'was associated with' question is answered by matching a person to a movement's characteristic period and domain, and the fastest filter is the calendar. Phule died in 1890. The Civil Disobedience Movement is 1930, the All India Trade Union Congress 1920, the All India Kisan Sabha 1936 — all after his death, and all belonging to the organised mass politics of the national movement rather than to nineteenth-century social reform. Only the anti-caste movement is both contemporaneous with him and the thing he actually built. The wider habit worth forming is to store every reformer with four attributes: an organisation, a city, a publication and a date. For Phule that is Satyashodhak Samaj, Pune, Gulamgiri, 1873.
- Jyotirao Govindrao Phule (1827-1890) founded the Satyashodhak Samaj at Pune on 24 September 1873 to work for the rights of Shudras, Dalits and women.
- With Savitribai Phule he opened a school for girls at Bhide Wada, Pune, in 1848, and a home for widows and a centre against infanticide in 1863.
- His book Gulamgiri ('Slavery'), 1873, was dedicated to the American abolitionists; the title 'Mahatma' was conferred on him in 1888.
- Phule died in 1890 — before the trade union, peasant and civil disobedience movements of the twentieth century existed in organised form.
- B. R. Ambedkar named Phule one of his three gurus, with the Buddha and Kabir.
Phule died in 1890; three of the four movements listed were organised only in the twentieth century, which leaves the anti-caste movement as the only possible answer.
- Assuming a reformer sympathetic to peasants or workers therefore led their movement; the organised peasant and labour movements are twentieth-century formations
- Confusing Jyotiba Phule with Savitribai Phule, or the Satyashodhak Samaj with the Prarthana Samaj that Ranade led in the same city
- Ignoring the date filter — a leader who died in 1890 cannot belong to a movement that began in 1920 or 1930
UPPSC asks this as a direct 'was associated with' or as a match list pairing reformers with their organisations. UPSC prefers indirect routes — a descriptive passage to identify, or a set of movement-and-leader pairs to verify — so learn each reformer with the movement, the organisation, the city and the decade attached.
Consider the following pairs : Movement/ Leader Organization All India Anti- Mahatma Gandhi Untouchability League All India Kisan : Swami Sahajanand Sabha Saraswati Self-Respect : E, V. Ramaswami Movement Naicker Which of the pairs given above is/are correctly matched?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 1 and 2 only
- (c) 2 and 3 only
- (d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer(d) 1, 2 and 3
The same sorting exercise, done as pairs: it fixes the All India Kisan Sabha to Sahajanand Saraswati, which disposes of option (b) here, and places Periyar's Self-Respect Movement — the twentieth-century continuation of the anti-caste current Phule opened.
Consider the following statements with reference to the Justice Party : 1. The Justice Party opposed Congress by calling it a Brahmin dominated organisation. 2. It claimed the same communal representation for non-Brahmins as the Morley-Minto reforms had given to Muslims. Which of the above statements is/are correct ?
- (a) Both 1 and 2
- (b) Neither 1 nor 2
- (c) Only 1
- (d) Only 2
Answer(a) Both 1 and 2
Where Phule's current goes next. The Satyashodhak Samaj made non-Brahmin self-assertion a social movement in the 1870s; the Justice Party carried the same claim into electoral politics in the twentieth century, which is why UPPSC treats them as one continuous theme.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following pairs is correctly matched?
- (a)Jyotiba Phule — Prarthana Samaj
- (b)Swami Sahajanand Saraswati — All India Kisan Sabha
- (c)Lala Lajpat Rai — Satyashodhak Samaj
- (d)M. G. Ranade — Self-Respect Movement
Answer(b) Swami Sahajanand Saraswati — All India Kisan Sabha, formed at Lucknow in 1936. Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, Ranade is associated with the Prarthana Samaj and the National Social Conference, and the Self-Respect Movement was Periyar's.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The book 'Gulamgiri', an attack on the caste order dedicated to the American abolitionists, was written by
- (a)B. R. Ambedkar
- (b)Jyotirao Phule
- (c)Narayana Guru
- (d)E. V. Ramasamy Naicker
Answer(b) Jyotirao Phule — Gulamgiri ('Slavery') was published in 1873, the same year he founded the Satyashodhak Samaj.