The Kavya phule: A poetic composition of Savitribai Phule

 

The collection of “Kavya Phule” is the very first anthology of Savitribai’s poems, including 41 poetic compositions dealing with nature, social issues and teaching poems. It is reasonable to believe that she must have started penning them earlier, say when she was 20. Her poems are a diverse mix of the serious, the sensuous, the playful and the wishful. The woman that emerges is rational, modern, progressive, committed, confident and fun-loving. I have classified these descriptions into broad heads and tried to justify them by reproducing select verses from her work.

The Revolutionary Verses from the Kavya Phule

Selected verses from the following poems mirror Savitri’s understanding of the social realities of her time. She castigates the exploitation inherent in the system. Her language is direct, sharp and unsparing whether it raises the caste or gender question.

And you yearn not for the same,

You posses intellect but work not on the same,
How then can you be called a human being?
Birds, animals, monkeys, human beings too,
All go through life and death
But if you gain no knowledge about this,
How then can you be called a human being?
The Plight of the Shudras
Haunted by ‘The Gods on Earth’,
For two thousand years,
The perpetual service of the Brahmins,
Became the plight of the Shudras
Looking at their condition.
The heart screams its protest,
The mind blanks out,
Struggling to find a way out.
Education is the path,
For the Shudras to walk,
For education grants humanity
freeing one from an animal-like existence.
Should they be called Humans?
The woman from dawn to dusk doth labour
The man lives off her toil, the freeloader
Even birds and beasts labour together
Should these idlers still be called humans?
The Butterfly and the Bud
He just shatters her beautiful form
And ravages her like a storm
Sucks her dry of all her nectar
Lifeless, wasted he discards her…
 …Which flower bud? He conveniently asks
Forget the old and search anew is his task
Ways of the world deception and promiscuity
 I am aghast!

Go, Get Education

Be self-reliant, be industrious
Work, gather wisdom and riches,
All gets lost without knowledge
We become animal without wisdom,
Sit idle no more, go, get education
End misery of the oppressed and forsaken,
You’ve got a golden chance to learn
So learn and break the chains of caste.
Throw away the Brahman’s scriptures fast.
Rise, to learn and act
Weak and oppressed! Rise my brother
Come out of living in slavery.

Manu-follower Peshwas are dead and gone

Manu’s the one who barred us from education.
Givers of knowledge– the English have come
Learn, you’ve had no chance in a millennium.
We’ll teach our children and ourselves to learn
Receive knowledge, become wise to discern.
An upsurge of jealousy in my soul
Crying out for knowledge to be whole.
This festering wound, mark of caste
I’ll blot out from my life at last.
In Baliraja’s kingdom, let’s beware
Our glorious mast, unfurl and flare.
Let all say, “Misery go and kingdom come!”
Awake, arise and educate
Smash traditions-liberate!
We’ll come together and learn
Policy-righteousness-religion.
Slumber not but blow the trumpet
O Brahman, dare not you upset.
Give a war cry, rise fast
Rise, to learn and act.
The Greatest Wealth
Early in the morning,
Perform your ambulation,
Having become clean and tidy,
Pay your respects to parents and elders.
Remembering the name of God,
Immerse yourself in studies,
Waste not these precious days,
by insisting on going home.
Study hard, get educated,
Treat knowledge as your God,
Diligently take advantage of it,
Concentrating with all your heart.
Knowledge is wealth,
Greater than all riches,
Wise is considered he,
Who acquires it.
So says Manu…
“Dumb are they
who plough the land,
Dumb are the ones
who cultivate it”,
So says Manu.

Through religious diktats,

The Manusmriti to the Brahmin tells,
“Do not your energy, on agriculture, waste!”
“Those born as Shudras,
All these Shudras!,
Are paying in this life,
For the sins of their past lives”
Thus they create
A society based on inequality,
This being the inhuman ploy,
Of these cunning beings.