In 1848, in Pune, Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule opened one of India's first schools for girls, at a time when educating girls, particularly girls from lower-caste communities, was fiercely opposed by much of upper-caste society, to the point that the Phules were eventually forced out of their family home for continuing the work.
Fatima Sheikh, alongside her brother Usman Sheikh, gave the Phules shelter and support when their own family turned against them, and worked directly alongside Savitribai Phule as a fellow teacher in the school, helping run classes for girls who had no other access to formal education at the time.
Historical records of Fatima Sheikh's own life are limited compared to the more widely documented accounts of the Phules, a gap that reflects how thinly some contributors to major social reforms were recorded at all, particularly women from minority communities working alongside more prominent reformers.
In recent decades, growing research and public interest has worked to recover and highlight her role more fully, recognizing her as one of India's pioneering woman educators and one of the first Muslim women in the country to teach in a formal school setting, at real personal risk during a period of intense social backlash against girls' education.