• Bhakti Tradition: Overview

 Devotion to a personal god.

 Popular in medieval India.
 Emphasis on personal connection with the divine, rather than ritualistic practices.
• Political Significance
 Social Equality:
o Bhakti movement challenged the caste system.
o Saints like Kabir, Mira Bai, and Ravidas preached equality, irrespective of caste,
gender, or religion.
o Reduced social stratification, contributing to ideas of social justice in politics.
Mass Appeal:
oUnified diverse groups, spreading across regional, linguistic, and cultural
boundaries.
oIncreased political engagement from marginalized sections of society.
Rejection of Orthodox Practices:
oQuestioned Brahmanical dominance and rituals.
oShifted focus to internal spirituality, appealing to people oppressed by traditional structures.
oFostered ideas of individual freedom and dissent, essential to political change.
•Role in Anti-Colonial Movements
Inspiration for Political Movements:
oLeaders like Mahatma Gandhi drew from Bhakti ideals of non-violence, humility, and social reform.
oBhakti’s emphasis on self-discipline and morality informed the political ethics of freedom movements.
Unity and Nationalism:
oBhakti poetry and songs served as tools for mobilization, fostering unity in the struggle for independence.
oThe idea of devotion to the nation paralleled devotion to God.
•Impact on Modern Indian Political Thought
Inclusive Politics:
oBhakti tradition’s ideas of equality and inclusivity influenced post-independence political policies.
oSocial reform movements advocating for the rights of Dalits and marginalized communities drew from Bhakti’s
egalitarian principles.
Secularism:
oBhakti tradition’s focus on universal love transcending religious boundaries contributed to secular political
ideologies in modern India.
MIRABAI
THE EQUALITY OF WOMEN, C.1557
HOW DO I PLACE MIRABAI ?

• Across north India, the brief season of spring weather erupts with the
festival of Holi- a no holds barred celebration on the streets.
• Water sprays everywhere, children throw colored powder at each other.
Soggy T-shirts and Kurtas abound.
• Its also a holiday moment that some girls experience as an equalizing
moment- a rare chance to play freely with boys
• Other girls are quite suspicious of the festival as the festival is also a
cover for misbehavior. The point is that Holi is charged with gender
politics.
HOLI IN POPULAR CULTURE

• In many communities, the soundtrack to experience Holi is Rang Barse

as performed by the Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan in the
1980’s.
• The lines of this famous song are suggestive as are many Bollywood
lyrics.
• They tell of a beautiful woman, damp and color stained from playing
Holi and besotted with a man who is not her husband.
• Men are deceived in love- this is a familiar theme in Bollywood music.
• But this song is different. It is based on the life of a woman who is 500
years old.
YOU’RE KIDDING.

• No I am not. Rang Barse is based on the life on Mirabai, a mystical poet

of spiritual love and longing.
• Mirabai lived in the 16th century and is today one of India’s most
revered saints.
• Mirabai was born Mira, into an elite and conservative Rajput caste. The
‘bai’ in her name is a term of respect and comes later.
• She flouted social conventions and when her family tried to suppress
her religious singing, she left her home and wandered in the road,
mixing with people of all types.
WHAT DID MIRABAI BECOME WHEN SHE LEFT
HOME ?
• She became a heroine of the bhakti tradition (which counts Basava and
Kabir). The bhakti tradition encourages devotion to one’s personal God
without intermediaries, priests, rituals and temples.
• In bhakti all you need is a simple offering of love- a flower- a fruit or a
song.
• In her lifetime, Mira composed a hundred songs called bhajans which
were passed down through the oral tradition as with Khusrau and Kabir.

• Mira’s work became legendary as her reputation grew.

WENDY DONIGER, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

There are few important women in early Indian

religious history. Women originally were not allowed
to learn Sanskrit and were not supposed to speak
Sanskrit. They’re quoted a lot in religious texts
written but men but a real woman’s voice is difficult
to find. Mirabai’s voice is the first loud and clear
woman’s voice.
AFTER MIRABAI

• Few women after Mirabai have engaged the Indian popular imagination
like Mirabai.
• Even Mahatma Gandhi was a fan. Her songs filled with a rare joy.
• Gandhi said that: ‘Mira sang because she could not help singing, Her
songs were straight from the heart’.
• Gandhi celebrated his final birthday in October 1947 by listening to one
of Mirabai’s songs sung to him by the South Indian Carnatic singer, MS
Subbulakshmi.
SUBBULAKSHMI AND MIRABAI

• Subbulakshmi helped spread Mirabai’s fame through a remarkable

screen performance in Meera directed by an American, Ellis Dungan.
• At the November 1947 premiere of the Hindi version of the film, Nehru
himself was in the audience.
• Dungan said of Subbulakshmi, ‘she became Mira herself’.
• Subbulakshmi’s mesmeric incarnation of the medieval princess set off
a revival of the cult of Mira in the newly independent nation.
 How will the night pass?
How long have I been
MIRABAI standing
Gazing down the road?
The pain of absence
keeps me
awake
night and day
WHO IS MIRA YEARNING FOR ?

• The one that Mira is yearning for here in all her bhajans is her god,
Krishna.
• And when her songs were performed in some rural villages, Mira
becomes the symbol of simple religious devotion.
• But Mira has been perceived in many ways after her death. Some see
her as an agitator against caste hierarchy. Other see her as a rebellious
feminist icon.
• In a sense these interpretations are all true. Because the central
challenge of her own life was about overcoming rigid social
expectations in order to pursue one’s own. It is a struggle that all
women are engaged in today.
 Some praise me, some
blame
me. I go the other way.
MIRABAI
On the narrow path I
found
God’s people.
For what should I turn
back ?
WHO WAS SHE IN INDIA HISTORY ?

• There is a dense narrative of legend around Mirabai’s life. But the one thing that is
clear, is her royal Rajput ancestry.
• She grew up in the warring Rajputana dry lands amongst warring clans.
• Her grandfather founded a little kingdom, and she was the only child of her father.
• Mira’s religious devotion surfaced early. Initially her family was amused. When she
was four or five a wandering ascetic came to her family, and she got from him a
small idol of Krishna.
• She grew so attached to the idol that her mother teased her, saying that Krishna
would be her bridegroom.
AND THEN TRAGEDY STRUCK

• Soon after her mother made that prophecy, she died.

• The girl’s religious worship grew even more intense and even
excessive.
• She broke the strict rules of purdah imposed on all Rajput women.
• Her spiritual energy could not be controlled and rumors spread that she
was unstable.
• Mira was then married off to a rana, a Rajput prince. Unfortunately he
died, and soon afterwards Mirabai’s own father died as well. Her in-laws
now became the most important presence in her life.
MIRA’S IN LAWS

• Mira’s in-laws tried to restrict her singing. She

had insulted them by not committing Sati.
• In fact her in-laws tried to kill her with a
venomous snake. Mira pacified the snake and
wore it as a necklace.
How can anyone touch me?
I will not descend
From the back of an elephant
To ride upon an ass
SOCIAL SCIENTIST, PARITA MUKTA

“I think the very fact that Mira survived says so much

about her. The workings of Rajput society are based
around vair and hatred where women are exchanged as
part of a process of subjugating lesser chiefs or lesser
Rajput lords. And Mira stood up against it. She absolutely
did not want to participate in the politics of hatred, the
politics of revenge or the politics of subjugation.”
MIRA’S DEFIANCE

• Mira spoke out against her aggressors. ‘Your slanders are sweet to me’
she declared when her community attacked her.
• She broke the privileges of her birthright and mixed with very different
kinds of people- with thinkers, with people from lower castes, leather
workers and weavers.
• Singing her poems of devotion, Mira wandered through north India, her
hair unbraided, her eyes unrimmed with kohl.
• She moved from village to village and her following grew. Soon she was
leading a popular push against social boundaries.
MIRA’S TIME

• During Mira’s time, the Bhakti movement had spread, initially from the
South- then to the North and had finally reached Rajasthan.
• Mira argued that personal devotion to God is stronger when people sing
collectively.
• Collective singing, according to Parita Mukta, is a regenerative power, a
power which nourishes the spirit and nourishes one’s own being and
which nourishes a community to search for a better alternative.
• Lets look at an example
 On your lips there is a
flute
And a garland of jasmine
MIRABAI Adorns your chest
Mirabai says, the Lord is
a giver
Of joy to the pious
And the protector of the
poor
MIRABAI TODAY

• In Independent India, protecting the poor and the backward castes is a

constitutional concern.
• Mirabai’s songs have been kept alive in villages and city slums, where
contemporary performances of her songs are tuneful protests against
the privileges of the elite.
• The humiliation of being at the lower end of the social order is also
brought out in these performances and the religious devotion rings out
too.
• But Mirabai’s rejection of traditional family life and curbs on women
gets elided even today.
WOMEN TODAY, AND MIRABAI

• Even today, the need for girls and young women to subjugate their
personal hopes and desires to the aspirations of their families is seen
as essential to Indian social cohesion.
• Mira is sometimes hailed as an example of a person who broke gender
conventions, an example that is valid even today.
• Still, it would be a mistake to construe Mirabai and Bhakti as an
example of modern notions of equality.
• Gender, caste and class do not always comfortably align to modern
sensibilities. Lives get sifted and reassembled across historical time.
WHICH MIRABAI TO CHOOSE ?

• We can return to where we began, with Holi.

• How you experience Holi depends on who you are or maybe on how much power
you have.
• Is Mira a passionate religious inspiration ?
• She Mira an emblem of caste blindness and inter-caste friendship ?
• Is she a potent symbol of self transformation and a one woman protest
movement ?
• History cannot decide, but Mira quite fittingly tells us that the choice of who she
wants to be is hers- not ours.
 Approve of me or
disapprove of
me:
MIRABAI
I take the path that
human
beings have taken for

centuries