Satyashodhak Samaj
It espoused a mission of education and increased social rights and political access for underprivileged groups, focused especially on women, peasants, and Dalits, in Maharashtra.
The Samaj insisted that, in order to reclaim their social standing, low caste groups should oppose priests as middleman between men and god in religious rituals and ceremonies.
The organization attracted individuals of all castes, religions, and professions, including Brahmins, Muslims, lawyers, merchants, peasants, land-owners, agricultural laborers, Rajputs, untouchables, and government officials.
[1] Phule thought that the Samaj could uplift disadvantaged communities through collective action and organized movement, and the first step to doing so was educating low caste individuals about the misdeeds of the Brahmans.
[1] In addition, the Samaj emphasized the special importance of English education because it played a vital role in building occupational skills and served as the basis for the intellectual emancipation of disadvantaged groups.
In fact, when Phule was criticized by Brahmans about his unwillingness to fight for national liberation, he responded that Shudras should expand their scope of freedom by directing their complaints to a benevolent, if misguided, British government.
[4] The Samaj's critiques of Brahmanical tradition in Maharashtra formed the basis for a peasant-based mass movement against the shetji-bhatji class of intelligentsia and the moneylender-landlord.
They began with an invocation to Ganpati, a traditional brahman deity, but *added* an explanation that the actual meaning of the word came from gan (people) and pati (leader).
[3] Poor, low caste peasants had accepted a social ideology which argued that their status was not legitimized in any religious texts and gave them the right to revolt against their brahman landlords in order to achieve a better lifestyle.
These peasant revolts in Maharashtra showed that the Satyashodhak Samaj's ideology was salient to common people and capable of stimulating group action.
[4] To critics like Chiplunkar, the Samaj’s attempts to gain social and political rights for Shudras and women by lobbying the colonial government were seen as begging India’s oppressors to help them reject Hindu tradition.
The upper-caste leaders of Maharashtra disliked the Samaj’s friendly relations with Christian missionaries and its appeals to the British Raj and so treated the organization with scorn.
In response to his argument that brahmans were Aryan invaders who established and enforced a religion and social system to benefit them and keep them in power, they argued that Phule did not have the authority to rewrite history.
The non-Brahman movement owed a great deal to the Satyashodhak doctrines of universal rights and equality and the Samaj's arguments against brahman domination of social, religious, and political life.
