The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has demolished the dilapidated structure at Bhide Wada. The civic body now plans to build a grand national memorial of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule.
- PMC is planning to build the national memorial at Bhide Wada where India’s first school for girls was started by Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule in 1848.
- Bhide Wada is located at the Budhwar Peth area of Pune. The Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court had recently cleared the way for PMC to build the national memorial at the site and ordered shop owners and tenants residing around the dilapidated structure to vacate the premises.
- Jyotirao ‘Jyotiba’ Govindrao Phule was a prominent social reformer and thinker of the nineteenth century India.
- He is believed to be the first Hindu to start an orphanage for the unfortunate children.
- In 1873, Jyotiba Phule formed the Satya Shodhak Samaj (Society of Seekers of Truth).
- He undertook a systematic deconstruction of existing beliefs and history, only to reconstruct an equality promoting version.
