Fatima Sheikh’s 191st Birthday :  Google Doodle Celebrates Indian educator and feminist icon Fatima Sheikh Birthday

Ritu raj Fatima Sheikh was an Indian educator, who was a colleague of the social reformers Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule. Fatima Sheikh was the sister of Mian Usman Sheikh, in whose house Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule took up residence. One of the first Muslim women teachers of modern India, she started educating Dalit children in Phules’ school. Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule along with Fatima Sheikh took charge of spreading education among the downtrodden communities.

Sheikh met Savitribai Phule while both were enrolled at a teacher training institution run by Cynthia Farrar, an American missionary. She taught at all five schools that the Phules went on to establish and she taught children of all religions and castes. Sheikh took part in the founding of two schools in Bombay in 1851.

On 9 January 2022, Google honoured Fatima with a doodle on her 191st birth anniversary.

Google Doodle Celebrates Indian educator and feminist icon Fatima Sheikh Birthday

Fatima Sheikh, an Indian educator and feminist icon widely regarded as the country’s first Muslim woman teacher, is the subject of today’s Google Doodle. In 1848, Sheikh co-founded the Indigenous Library with social reformers Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, one of India’s first schools for girls.

Pune, India’s Fatima Sheikh was born this day in 1831. After the Phules were evicted for trying to educate people from lower castes, she and her brother Usman opened their home to them. Opened under the Sheikhs’ eaves, the Indigenous Library is now open to the public. Savitribai Phule and Fatima Sheikh taught communities of marginalised Dalit and Muslim women and children who were denied education based on class, religion, or gender in this area.

India’s lower castes were given educational opportunities by the Satyashodhak Samaj (Truthseekers’ Society) movement of the Phules. Sheikh, a lifelong supporter of this movement for equality, went door-to-door in her community to invite the underprivileged to learn at the Indigenous Library and escape the rigidity of the Indian caste system. Sheikh and her allies defied the efforts of the upper classes to humiliate those involved in the Satyashodhak movement.

Her storey has been historically overlooked, but the Indian government shed new light on her achievements in 2014 by including other trailblazing Indian educators’ profiles in Urdu textbooks. Sheikh