On December 5, 2023, Bhide Wada, an old, dilapidated historic building located at 257 Budhwar Peth in Pune City, was demolished by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). The structure housed the first indigenous girls’ school of modern India, established by Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule in 1848. The state government plans to set up a national memorial on this site to commemorate the Phule couple’s significant contribution to modern India.
For decades before its demolition, Bhide Wada stood as a modest and self-effacing structure to onlookers and people in the bustling neighbourhood. Bystanders who were oblivious to its historical significance may have thought of it as just another dilapidated building in the pool of many such structures in the neighbourhood that required immediate repair and renovation.
A few years ago, the PMC identified this building as “dangerous and unsafe” for everyday use. Irrespective of its introverted and unassuming appearance from the outside, Bhide Wada represented a significant chapter in the history of modern India. Even after the closure of the school founded by Jyotirao Phule, Bhide Wada was an important centre of public activism in the 19th and 20th centuries. It frequently attracted prominent public figures, including Mahadev Govind Ranade and Dayanand Saraswati. Bhide Wada was a site that changed the lives of Savitribai and Jyotirao forever to become leading crusaders of equality and public education. Therefore, Bhide Wada cannot be simply forgotten as a monument of a bygone era, as it instrumentally paved the way for new political and cultural articulations in modern India. In a society that is overwhelmingly dominated by the practices of caste prejudices, caste discrimination and caste-based violence, Bhide Wada is a monument of alternative expression.
Bhide Wada, owned by the Bhide family, was constructed in a thriving business district of Budhwar Peth when the Peshwas ruled Pune before their eventual defeat in 1818. Wada (cottage)-like structures, constructed in different Peths or localities, became a familiar sight across the city in the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the members of the Bhide family, Tatyasaheb Bhide, a strong sympathiser and a friend of Jotirao Phule, wanted to help him set up a school. He was impressed by the latter’s passion and gave two rooms of his family cottage for the school premises.
The establishment of this school irked many traditionalists and deeply distressed Savitribai, Jyotirao, and their supporters. Here, Savitribai rose to the occasion and played a pivotal role that changed the course of women’s educational activism in modern India. She was initially educated by Jyotirao and later completed teacher training courses to become a teacher and headmistress of the school located at Bhide Wada.
Although the Bhide Wada school was a short-lived experiment, it created a long-lasting legacy. With time, the Phule couple established more than 18 schools across Pune. Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule became leading voices of radical anti-caste activism. Satyashodhak Samaj, founded by Jyotirao, was actively involved in voicing the grievances of the peasants, women, non-Brahmins, and the untouchables. Before launching the Satyashodhak Samaj in 1873, Phule established himself as one of the most potent critics of social conservatism and religious nationalism in Western India. Therefore, to understand the import of Phule’s activism and his radical stance against caste and patriarchy, the history of Bhide Wada cannot be forgotten. It set the tone for new voices of cultural expression that also foregrounded a new language of politics in modern Maharashtra.
Busts of Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule. Photo: Priyanka bhise/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Over time, the ownership of the 2,500 sq ft Bhide Wada changed from one owner to the other in the 20th century. We find a reference to the sale deed of 1924 that mentioned the transfer of the land from Sadashiv Narayan Bhide to the Mavadikar family. Subsequently, Bhide Wada was sold in two phases to Pune-based Poune Merchants Co-operative Bank in 1969 and 1972. In 2000, the bank requested a real estate firm to redevelop the property. After substantial redevelopment, the work was halted by a stay order in 2005.
The interesting aspect of this entire chronicle of Bhide Wada is how some historical sites associated with Dalit-OBC assertions have been conveniently forgotten in post-independence India. It took more than 50 years after independence for the state institutions to recognise the importance of Bhide Wada. In 2006, after continuous demands from different quarters across Maharashtra, the PMC and the state government finally proposed a plan to set up a national monument to commemorate the contributions of the Phule couple. After 13 years of protracted legal battle with its occupants, the site was finally handed over to the PMC through the Supreme Court’s intervention in November 2023.
That monuments like Bhide Wada are ignored highlights how histories of anti-caste and Dalit-Bahujan politics are still rendered unacceptable to mainstream frameworks. The Dalit-Bahujan attempts at memorialisation are often ridiculed and treated as manifestations of emotional and irrational deifications. It is no coincidence that until 1990, there was no portrait of Ambedkar in the central hall of the parliament. Simultaneously, it was only after continuous campaigns conducted across Maharashtra from the 1980s onwards that the historical sites associated with Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule were converted into protected monuments. On the other hand, unlike Bhide Wada, Ambedkar’s monuments in Maharashtra seldom depend on state patronage and support. Monuments like Chaitya Bhoomi and Deekshabhoomi have become significant sites of assertion that help the erstwhile untouchables navigate beyond stigma and humiliation. Therefore, the memorialisation of the monuments associated with the anti-caste movement is essential for Dalit and OBC movements to steer through dominant interpretations of culture. Creating such sites of memorialisation also helps democratise the overall political and cultural ambience.
Therefore, the monuments like Bhide Wada are not just physical structures. They can pose a real challenge to the dominant forms of power. On the contrary, if Bhide Wada becomes a temple of deification of Savitribai and Jyotirao, it will generate counterproductive results. In the new context, whatever affirmative feelings it evokes, there is a greater risk of such sites becoming banal and apolitical locations of identity creation.
Prabodhan Pol teaches at Manipal Centre for Humanities MAHE, Manipal (Karnataka).
