MEERABAI – A STUDY IN CONTEXT OF LITERATURE AND NATURE

Senior faculty, English Department, Bhupal Nobles Post-Graduate Girls’ College, Udaipur

[email protected]

Abstract

This paper opens immense scope to analyze Meerabai’s poetic power and divinity
in context of literature and nature, because her poetics present a magnitude of
human struggle within the social environment, which in itself represents a part of
nature. As a woman poetess she was the first to reflect upon the humanity,
nature and God in creative unity and as a poetess of divinity she was the first to
locate diversity and disharmony between the men and the nature. She felt pity
for the human laws, customs, traditions and the humans’ violation of the nature’s
law that sings music of sublimity, nobility and joyousness. The study engenders
the intellectual simulation, dialogue and significance not only in context of gender
and voice, but it also throws an alternative perspective to rethink and reinvent
Indian History in context of environment, ecological balance and cosmic harmony.

Meerabai in Indian History and Indian Poetics

The poetry of Meerabai manifests an absolute sense of aesthetic beauty and

expresses a sense of quest. She does not possess the multitude of human efforts
like Kabir, consciousness of mind and soul like Tulsi and inward knowledge and
vision like Surdas, yet Meerbai in her poetic songs alike her contemporary poets
poignantly determines the basic perception and knowledge of the humanity and
professes the value-oriented essential characteristics of the Veda. Therefore her
songs even in the contemporary times of changes in political situation of the
country as well as in the social conditions have the poetic truth and poetic taste.
It is true that her poetic truth and beauty lies in her vision of humanity and nature
in day to day life, it is neither the future world, nor it is beyond the range of sight.
However in her songs she never related to any of the contemporary social taboos,
fragmented nobility, destroyed values and declining tradition, although she
herself had been the sufferer of these oppressive factors of the worldly life. She
never protested against these miseries of being dispossessed and deprived, rather
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she attained strength from her adverse circumstances through her cultivated
brilliance. She in her own way represented the least privileged group of women.
It is apt to quote:

“To look at a much later period, the tradition of ‘medieval mystical poets’, well
established by the fifteenth century, included exponents who were influenced
both by the egalitarianism of the Hindu Bhakti movement and by that of the
Muslim Sufis, and their far-reaching rejection of social barriers brings out sharply
the reach of arguments across the divisions of caste and class. Many of these
poets came from economically and socially humble backgrounds, and their
questioning of social divisions as well as of the barriers of disparate religions
reflected a profound attempt to deny the relevance of these artificial restrictions
and the issues of contemporary equality that characterize so much of
contemporary society”(Amartaya Sen, 11).

The poetess and perceiver of sentiments

In context of literary poetics and perceiver of nature, the study of Meerabai’s

poetic writings depicts her as the perceiver of sentiments. Her poetic songs reveal
her penance, her lassitude and sorrow which she felt owing to the separation on
the death of her mother in her childhood, then the death of her patrons her
husband prince Bhojraj, her father-in-law Rana Sangram Singhji, the king of
Mewar in the the 15th -16th century and finally her being a quester whose inner –
self had always longed the reunion with God, the only savior in her despair, the
only loving icon in her loneliness. She derived from her penanced life tranquility,
gracefulness, purity, happiness and freedom from passions. Her strength, poise,
tolerance and her focus churned the ills of world and she visualized God’s fantasy
in this way :
Thane kai kai kehe samjau mahara vahala Girdhari

Purab janamki priti mahari ab nahi jatt niwari

Sundar badan jovatt sajani priti bhayi chhe bhari

Mahare ghare padharo Girdhar mangal gavey nari

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Moti chowk purau vahala tan man tto par vari

Maharo sagpan tto syu sawariya jag syu nahi vichari

Meera kahe gopin ko vahalo ham syu bhayo brahamchari

Charan sharan hey dasi thari palak na kijay nayari (Saubhagya, 116).

Initially this togetherness of Meerawith her Lord Krishna was primarily a fancy for
the unimaginable Supreme Spirit and she delved the God’s presence in her
feelings and in her expression with aesthetic imagination and poetic creativity
that has the sense of perception but no knowledge and insight. Later this same
search of love for God Krishna became spiritual and psychical to praise Supreme
Divinity without whose omnipresence and graciousness even Meera’s essence
could not find solace and her ship of earthly life could not be sailed across the
ocean, she wished God to be her partner in this difficult journey.

She sings a hymn on the request of saints that showed her purity, deep love and
her determined devotion to God in this way:
Ab tto Hari naam lou lagi

Sab jag ko yeh makhan choranaam dharyo bayragi.

Kitt chhodi veh Mohan Murli kitt chhodi veh gopi

Mudr mudraiyi dori kati bandhi mathe Mohan topi.

Matt jasomatti makhan bandhe jake panv

Shayamkishor bhaye nav gaura chaitnaya jako nav.

Pitambar ko bhav dikhave kati kopin kasey

Gaur Krishna ki dasi Meera rasna Krishna basey.

Ali mahane lage Vrandavan nikko

Ghar ghar Tulsi Thakur puja darsan Govindji ko.

Nirmal nir bahe jamna ko bhojan dudh dahi ko

Ratan Singhasan aap virajaya mugat dharyo Tusi ko.

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Kunjan kunjan phiru sawara sabad sunatt Murli ko

Meerare prabhu Girdhar Nagar bhajan bina nar fikko

(Saubhagya, 311).

Thus her both songs show her ‘Self’ being engaged in her duty to nature and in
harmony with God’s love. She had sought shelter in her Lord Krishna both in her
days of solitude and bliss. This was and till date relevantly denotes that Meera, in
place of feeling displaced and alienated because of going through social
separation, social disregard and social disaster, found her well-being and balanced
self-control in her spiritual upliftment which was beyond human understanding in
her contemporary and even in the present times of earthly life. Her human ‘Self’
immensely contributes an example how to remain harmonious with the
surroundings, social milieu and with the predicament that is illusory and full of
duality on this earth.

Her human self-liberation

Meerabai existed in the history of the pre-independent period of India and she
belonged to a village Merta in Jodhpur. She survived from the period 1498 to
1547. It was the period of political violence, natural violence in the history of
India. Even the state of Rajasthan faced the impact of political upheavals on
account of the wars and conquests inflicted by Moghuls. The ruling king of Mewar
Rana Sangram Singh is a historical evidence of the contemporary circumstances in
two ways. First it was he who fought the battle of Kanhva in 1527 against Babur,
the Moghul invader and secondly he proposed the marriage of his Princes Kumar
Bhojraj with Meera. This alliance between two Rajput kingdoms later proved to
be a political doom, because a little girl’s consent and choice was ignored for
selfish interest, although that little girl survived her name and identity with her
spiritual and ethical path. Meera who had suffered the cruelty due to patriarchal
and hierarchical arbitrariness neither hated nor showed any anger to her
household members, yet she gained strength and wisdom by remaining the
eternal consort of Lord Krishna (Khanna, 99).

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Another factor from the point of exploring Meerabai’s background is that she
since the tender age of 5 nurtured the idea that Shree Krishna was her husband.
When she got from a saint an icon of Krishna, her mother directed her that it was
a toy and it was to be respected as it was Lord Krishna’s Murti. Her mother also
communicated to her while a marriage procession passing by down their fort that
Meera too would get a bridegroom like that of Murti. This reveals the status of
girl in the society and mental set up that is framed around her. She took seriously
the toy as her companion, then as her prospective husband and started to regard
the idol of Lord Krishna as her only companion after the death of her mother.
Later on as she kept on growing and maturing not just as beloved of Lord Krishna
but as a mystical lover of ‘Girdhar Nagar’ while being in association of saints and
her undeterred love for God led her to attain love, power, truth and wisdom.

Aforementioned historical factors delineate social, cultural, political, psychological

and ecological perspectives when we study Meerabai’s life and her songs in view
of the literature and nature. It is apt to add here Meerabai’s life and her devoted
compositions seek ‘human-self liberation’ (Clark 102) in place of liberation. It
means her self-liberation was above all worldly temptations and necessities and
secondly her mythical self condemns the exploitative conquest of nature in the
name of alliances, progress, prejudices and injustices against the environment
and ecology. Her one of her padavali states social politics that symbolizes
ecological crisis i.e. “a systematic violation of basic rights whose long term effect
in weakening society can scarcely be underestimated” (Clark 87). She writes:

Mira danced with bells on her ankles.

People say Mira has gone mad.

The mother-in-law says
She devoted the family honour.
The king sent her a cup of poison
Mira drank it laughingly,

Offering body and soul at Hari’s feet.

Meera drinks the sweetness of his vision.

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Girdhar is Meera’s Lord.
She comes to take refuge in him (Nilsson, 49).

Ironically these verses sensitize and problematize the social ecology in

contemporary cultural times. According to a critic it illustrates ‘Human violence
against the natural world which is ultimately a product of oppressive structures of
hierarchy among human beings” (Garrad, in Ecocriticism, 2011). Secondly it also
explains Meerabai’s “universal consciousness as heightened consciousness of
beautiful objects” (Deshpande, 62).

Endless draught of love for divinity and nature

Meerabai confronted during her age two forces brute force against soul force.
(Mahatma Gandhi in Hind Swaraj also mentioned these forces, written in 1909).
The soul force emancipated Meerabai and she fearlessly like a superhuman took
up the challenges, insults, harms, injuries and poison and she formulated
spiritually a new order of social realm which later on followed by many religious
reformers and nationalists to reawaken India from its slumber of fantasy and
ruins, slavery, corruption, exploitation and violation of dignity, identity and rights.
While on the other hand the brute force was opted by her mother-in-law or her
brother-in-law Rana Vikramaditya in order to subdue her miraculous charisma
among the masses of Chittor (Chopra, 19). They sent her the poisonous cup of
milk or garland with snake wrapped inside it. Chittor was the capital city of
Mewar State during Moghul emperor Akbar’s rule in India. For ages it had been
the city of fertility, victory and beauty but the political intricacies deteriorated its
ethnic and ethical claim of identity among Rajput princely states in the history of
medieval India. And it was only the struggle of the South Rajasthan great warrior
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Maharana Pratap (the ruler of Mewar in the 16th -17th century) against Akbar (the
third Moghul emperor of India) could bring back the lost glory to Mewar. Thirdly
the spiritual goals of Meerabai reflected in these verses convey that harmony,
mental strength, pure consciousness, peace, reunion of human self with eternity
can only be the ultimate realization in action and realization of beauty (Tagore,
Sadhana, 312).
‘The lyrics of Meerabai are the holy heritage for Indian Literature philosophy,
religion, culture and history’ (Kulshrestha, 22). In addition they have been
globally respected because of mystical presence of superconcious qualities of
divinity and moreover all symbols and signs of nature are the impressions of
God’s creations which human mind can only perceive alike Meerabai when one is
completely immersed in the sanctity of truth and pure-consciousness for
humanity and nature. Her lyrics in praise of God have aesthetically been a mode
of her consciousness for her Lord Krishna and they manifest her self-revelation as
regards creative unity that exists between her and Lord Krishna, between her and
other objects of nature. It suggests symbolically oneness in all images as the
nature itself is the manifestation of God’s creativity and creative unity when there
exist compassion and love for all. Thus nature personifies ecological balance and it
can only be realized if the human heart, mind and body alike Meera regards it to
be unbreakable.
In one of the translated version of her poems ‘Unbreakable’ she writes:
Unbreakable, O Lord,
Is the Love
That binds me to You:
Like a diamond,
It breaks the hammer that strikes it.

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My heart goes into You.
As the polish goes into the gold.
As the lotus lives in its water,
I live in You.
Like the bird
That gazes all night
As the passing moon
I have lost myself dwelling in You
O my Beloved-Return (Khanna, 137).

Meerabai in these verses is overwhelmingly arrested in the awe-inspiring majestic

charm and spell of light and love of Lord Krishna just like the lotus in water, bird in
the moonlit night and diamond as unbreakable rock.
These lines aesthetically drives human mind to the beauteous objects of nature
whose indispensable relationship creates harmony and well-being. She professes
her consciousness for cosmic harmony as well as for humanity that needs to be
associated not only with environment, ecology but also with self-liberation, self-
enlightenment and also with ethics of eco-justice. Her devotion to Lord Krishna is
not a mere projection of her emotional lyricism, it suggests that when the human
heart suffers in passion of mythical union with Infinite Supreme Creator of
Universe, then all objects of nature reflect sanctity of relationship with one
another, there seem to be ecological relationship in the mankind and nature.
Creative unity between human, nature and God’s laws
The human laws cannot be in conflict with God’s laws. Her poem ‘Drink the
Nectar’ relates to Meera’s illumined outlook to the worldly crisis in her times and
even at present times:
Drink the Nectar of the Divine Name,

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O human! Drink the nectar of the Divine Name!
Leave the bad company,
Always sit among righteous company.
Hearken to the mention of God (for your own sake)
Concupiscence, anger, pride, greed, attachment
Wash these out of your consciousness. Meera’s Lord is the Mountain – Holder,
The suave –Lover
Soak yourself in the dye of His colour ( Khanna, 140).

These lines metaphorically express a message to mankind to transform their

behavior, mindset, thought in order to achieve eternal bliss on earth and all
earthly illusions are mere trap to deviate mind and human body to attain pleasure
or to lead to misery. Thus self-liberation is impossible in the midst of illusory
liberation. The realization of eternal structure in humanity and nature can only be
achieved if one man’s action enables all men to live happily like Lord Krishna
protected the humble villagers from heavy rains; he lifted the mountain like an
umbrella to rescue the villagers from the wrath of God Indra who felt his ego hurt
when villagers prayed to Lord Krishna in place of him. Similarly all men’s action,
will and thought contribute in the construction of happier world, if they surrender
their fulfillment and enjoyment of action for the welfare all. Only then
catastrophe of nature can be salvaged. Therefore ‘Meera was not just yogi
searching the love of Lord Krishna; she was a messenger of God who spread
harmony in the society and tried to eliminate social ecological crisis both in
environment and in human nature’ (Prabhat, 299).

Bibliography

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