Google Doodle Honors Feminist Icon and Educator Fatima Sheikh
Google is honouring educator and feminist hero Fatima Sheikh, generally regarded as India’s first Muslim female teacher, with a doodle today.
Sheikh co-founded the Indigenous Library, one of India’s earliest schools for females, in 1848 with fellow pioneers and social reformers Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule.
Fatima Sheikh was born in Pune on this day in 1831.
She resided with her brother Usman, and after the couple was evicted for attempting to educate individuals from lower castes, the brothers opened their house to the Phules.
Under the Sheikhs’ roof, the Indigenous Library opened. Savitribai Phule and Fatima Sheikh educated communities of oppressed Dalit and Muslim women and children who had been denied an education because of their class, religion, or gender.
As a lifetime supporter of the equality struggle, Sheikh went door-to-door inviting the oppressed in her community to learn at the Indigenous Library and escape the rigidity of the Indian caste system.
She faced stiff opposition from the dominant classes, who sought to humiliate those participating in the Satyashodhak movement, but Sheikh and her friends persisted.
In 2014, the Indian government highlighted Fatima Sheikh’s accomplishments by included her profile in Urdu textbooks with other trailblazing educators.
Joladkudligi urged the Karnataka government to teach the younger generation about Fatima‘s legacy, pointing out that the Maharashtra government included a brief lesson on her in their Bala Bharati textbook in 2014.