Thread by @KhalidAAnsari4

Thread on #FatimaSheikh
I first read about Fatima Sheikh in a piece titled “Remembering Fatima Sheikh, the first Muslim teacher who laid the foundation of Dalit-Muslim unity,” authored by Siddhant Mohan and published in the TwoCircles.net, April 7, 2017. 1/n

The title caught my attention because intuitively, I felt that Fatima Sheikh might not be the first Muslim teacher in the subcontinent, and Savitri Mai was not, in any case, a Dalit. 2/n

More so, the Pasmanda Movement had long been critical of the uncomplicated use of the “Muslim” category since it was hegemonized by the Ashraf classes and invisibilized the caste inequalities within. 3/n

Instead of Dalit-Muslim or Muslim-Yadav unity, the movement advocated for the pan-religion solidarity of the subjugated castes.
At that point, I called the late Com. Vilas Sonawane, my window to the Marathi world, to better understand this. 4/n

Vilas Bhai told me that apart from the fact that Usman Sheikh gave his house to the Phule’s to run their school and that Fatima Sheikh was probably his sister and close to the Phule couple, nothing much is known about them. 5/n

I further asked him about the inclusion of Fatima’s profile in school Urdu textbooks of Bal Bharati Maharashtra State Bureau in 2014 and the neighborhood of Ganj Peth of Pune, where the school was established in 1848. 6/n

Vilas Bhai speculated that since Ganj Peth had a substantial Muslim lower caste population and “Sheikh” was often a surname used by the Pasmanda-Muslims in Maharashtra, Usman Sheikh/Fatima Sheikh could probably have been from either the Kunbi or Mali caste. 7/n

But since there was no documentation, and documentation is rare for subaltern communities, Fatima could have been anyone: a teacher, caretaker, a friend, and so on. 8/n

Vilas Bhai also felt that the relatively detailed reconstructions of Fatima’s profile were reasonably recent and attributed it to the “Muslim” scholars and activists and thought it was primarily a concoction for immediate political needs. 9/n

After 2017, several articles and reports on Fatima Sheikh started emerging, particularly around the 2019 Lok Sabha elections where Dalit-Muslim and OBC-Muslim alliances were being worked out. 10/n

I later contacted Kalim Ajeem, a young Marathi journalist vigorously working on vernacular histories. 11/n

Kalim informed me that apart from a stray reference to “Fatima” in one of Savitri Mai’s letters to Jotiba and a picture/sketch reproduced in the Collected Works of Savitribai Phule published by the Maharashtra government, there was absolutely nothing. 12/n

The point here is not to demand a positivist version of history. That is not how history works, as it is primarily reconstructed and summoned for contemporary needs. We are also aware that subaltern histories are not officially documented and rely on oral narratives. 13/n

The recent discussion on Fatima Sheikh is not about the facticity of her existence or her date of birth. On that count, all subaltern histories will probably fail. 14/n

The more significant issue is what is available as public memory, how it is articulated for current projects, and for which classes. 15/n

My conversations with interlocutors from Maharashtra suggest that before 2010 there was not much discussion on Usman/Fatima except for their warm relationship with the Phule couple. 16/n

Recent biographies and school textbooks are creative innovations by “Muslim” scholars that any archival evidence or oral tradition can scarcely support. 17/n

The framing of Fatima Sheikh as the “first Muslim female educator” and “feminist icon” is an exciting but probably unreliable characterization. 18/n

Anyone remotely connected with subaltern movements knows how difficult it is to legitimize and get public recognition for their icons, even for those whose lives and contributions have been painstakingly documented and retrieved from public memory by the community. 19/n

The journey of Fatima Sheikh from a relatively obscure figure to being a subject of Google Noodle in a matter of a few years is indeed remarkable. 20/n

I wish that journey could be replicated for other unnoticed Bahujan icons. I also wonder if the Bahujan activists can detect the play of hegemony here. 21/21