Jyotirao Phule's book of 1873 on the dismal conditions of 'lower' castes was…

Concept

Jyotirao Phule (1827-1890) was a pioneering anti-caste social reformer from Maharashtra. A book's dedication signals whose struggle the author identifies his own cause with — so the dedication reveals the moral movement Phule saw as a parallel to the fight against caste oppression in India.

Application

Phule's 1873 work was Gulamgiri (meaning "Slavery"), which described the wretched condition of the so-called 'lower' castes. He dedicated it to the people of the United States who had fought to end Negro slavery in the American Civil War, presenting their struggle against slavery as a model for India's fight against caste-based servitude. He drew an explicit analogy: just as Black Americans were freed from slavery, the oppressed castes of India should be freed from the bondage of caste.

Cross-check / Contrast

• The American anti-slavery (abolitionist) movement directly matches the dedication recorded in the book and in NCERT's account of Gulamgiri.

• Bhakti singers belonged to a much earlier devotional tradition and were not the dedicatees of an 1873 printed book.

• Indian anti-colonial nationalists organised mainly from the late 19th-early 20th century; the dedication was to a foreign anti-slavery cause, not to them.

• The Brahmo Samaj was a Bengal reform body; Phule's dedication named the American emancipation struggle, not that society.

Hence the book was dedicated to the anti-slavery activists associated with the American Civil War.