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Women bhaktas during the Bhakti Movement

Women bhaktas during the bhakti movement

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History of India IV

Women Bhaktas- Rebels or Conformists

Kaustubh Bhatnagar

BA HONS. HISTORY 2ND YEAR 1916238

The Bhakti Movement

Bhakti, which emerged in early medieval south India and later spread throughout the country as a concept means devotion and surrender. It took form of a movement stressing on devotee’s submission to God and a personal relationship between them. However, bhakti was never a single movement. Many popular socio-religious movements arose in North India, East India and Maharashtra in the Sultanate period, which also had features of South Indian bhakti. These separate movements had their separate regional identities based on socio-historical and cultural contexts. The reason why these movements became extremely popular was their inclusive nature, which provided many lower castes and women spiritual path that otherwise would have been denied to them by orthodox Brahmanical religion.

In her paper, The Bhakti Movement and the Status of Women in the 14th and 15th Century, Rekha Pande describes how “The 14th and 15th century witnessed significant socio-economic changes giving rise to a new social group which could not fit in the traditional hierarchy. The newly emerging social groups in an attempt to redefine their position and status within the given traditional hierarchy spearheaded a social movement articulating their demands for restructuring the existing order.”

The Bhakti Movement, which started out as a movement full of religious ideas and structures, in some time, developed into “an instrument of protest or dissent against brahmana orthodoxy, existing social norms, and inequalities”, as is stated by Historian R in her essay From Devotion and Dissent to Dominance.

In other words, it would be safe to assume that the reason due to which this movement grew and was so wide spread was largely due to its inclusive nature.

The Bhakti Movement in Medieval India witnessed all types of leaders and saints. They all hailed from different and diverse background. There were all types of leaders, Anti-Caste leaders, Shudra Saints and even Women Saints.

Prof. Vijaya Ramaswamy writes, “Spirituality provided Indian women with that freedom which orthodox Hindu society denied to them. The morphology of feminine spirituality in India lies in the long record of male oppression and sexual exploitation which characterised the condition of women in traditional India. Indian society being essentially patriarchal, the position of women was considered markedly inferior. The role assigned to women in traditional Indian society consisted of these two extremes - the sacrificing mother, chaste wife, or obedient daughter or, alternately, the prostitute. Thus traditional society seemed to provide no scope for either the independence or the self-expression of women”. She contemplates this further by adding that, “lack of education and economic dependence on males of their family were the two chief factors behind the social

Rebels —Conformists? Women Saints in Medieval South India; Vijaya Ramaswamy

From Devotion and Dissent to Dominance; R

In the words of Eleanor Zelliot, the American writer, Bhakti movement was “the phenomenon of a set of religious ideas and structures first seen in the South in the 7th century and slowly sweeping up to the North by the 15th century.”

Women Bhaktas were generally not as popular or as revered to as their general male bhaktas counterparts, nor did a lot of them gain a lot of spiritual recognition whilst they were alive. But exceptions were always there. It would indeed be correct to say that there were both types of Women Bhaktas, those who were revered and respected by the people around them like Mahadevi Akka who was greatly revered by her followers and peers and similarly Meera bai, who gained fame for her spiritual greatness. But apart from a certain few, they were usually forsaken by the society and were termed as ‘Mad’ or ‘Shameless’

Certainly though, there were a few prominent Women bhaktas, some of them are:-

Meera bai: The Wandering Diwani

Tradition has it that as a young girl Mira pestered her mother to tell her who was her bridegroom when she saw a marriage procession. To avoid her persistent questioning Mira’s mother pointed at a statue of Krishna and told her this was her bridegroom. When she grew up she was married into the royal family of Sisodia Rajputs of Mewar. Mira even refused to consummate her marriage regarding herself already wedded to Krishna. This was an open defiance and her in-laws could not tolerate this.

There were various attempts at her life and finally she left the palace and started staying independently in a temple in the palace compound, but here too she did not find solace because of the disapproved of her Bhakti. She then started wandering around in the company of other saints and visited many temples and places associated with Krishna.

Mahadevi Akka & Lal Ded

Akkamahadevi, of the Virasaivite tradition, was a contemporary of Basaveshwara and was initiated into the sect by him. Her poetry was often much more explicitly sexual, for the spiritual union was described in terms of a sexual union. She is said to have rejected marriage with a prince to devote herself to worship. In other ways, too, she was a rebel—notably, she was the subject of a major discussion in the Anubhava Mantapa because she went about naked. She argued, in her defence, that truth itself was bare and needed no adornment, and was upheld by Basaveshwara. Akkamahadevi’s poetry emphasises the complementarity of Siva and Shakti. When the two are seen as parts of a whole, then their independent identification becomes meaningless. Siva is moksha, nirvana, to be achieved through the exercise of Shakti, which causes both bondage and liberation. In societal terms, this can be seen as a negation of gender—that is, the gender of the Bhakta is unimportant, for it is transcended in the process of worship. Akkamahadevi expresses this idea when she says, in one of her poems, ‘all the world is a wife’.

Rebels —Conformists? Women Saints in Medieval South India; Vijaya Ramaswamy

From Devotion and Dissent to Dominance; R

I have Maya for mother in law the world for father in law three brothers in law, like tigers. And the husband’s thoughts are full of laughing women. No God this man.

-Akka Mahadevi

Lal ded lived during the 14th century in Kashmir. She was married at the age of twelve into another Brahmin family surnamed Nica Bhatt at Pimpore. We have a number of legends which talk about the cruelty meted out to Lal Ded. She endured this torture for twelve years and finally left home. Padmavati is supposed to have danced naked singing in frenzy. She now came to be known as Lal Ded, Lal in Kashmiri referring to the lower part of her belly, which increased in size and hung loose over her pubic region.

Karaikkal Ammaiyar: The Demoness

Historian Vijaya Ramaswamy writes, “Another striking feature of spiritualism among women is their total transcendence over what is normally regarded as feminine virtues such as beauty, modesty, and gentleness. It is in this light that one should look at the form of Kali or Durga who approximates to the deity Korravai among the Sangam Tamils.”

The entire cult of the worship of peymagalir or demonesses is to be viewed as the antithesis of the feminine image. It has been argued that the origin of the custom lay in agriculture, in plucking the heads of corn and offering a sacrifice before consuming them. Therefore a close relationship exists between the mother goddess or fertility goddess and the strange manifestation of the peymagalir. The emergence of the mother goddess must itself have been because the woman was the primary force behind the earliest agricultural practices.

Jana Bai

Jana Bai was a maid servant. Her period is mostly believed to be around 1298 to 1350 AD. She also had a difficult life as many of her abhangs talk about the daily grind of life and her work which includes cooking, washing and cleaning.

As she does not get any time for herself, In her daily grind of life, it is her God Vithoba, who becomes her constant helpmate who is there to help her carry and heath the bathwater, sweep the leaves from the courtyard, to scour the vessels till the gleam, to scratch her scalp when the lice irritate her.

Conclusion

What all we read about the women bhaktas and their work, we can finally arrive at a conclusion, as to whether to refer to these women as either Rebels or Conformists.

From what we have known so far, these woman bhaktas were oppressed in their own homes. These women had to face the highly suffocating patriarchal society where the image or stature of a woman was only as a child bearer, or a submissive subordinate figure in the house. These women had to go against the usual norms of the society and had to leave their own homes to follow Bhakti.

They all had a difficult life after their marriage where they had to face oppressive in-laws. They are often troubled by their in-laws and other family members because a daughter-in-law was seen as bringing shame to them.

The common parallel which we can draw in the context of all of these women is that right after marriage, they had their freedom taken away from them. They are restricted in their opinions and

Rebels —Conformists? Women Saints in Medieval South India; Vijaya Ramaswamy

From Devotion and Dissent to Dominance; R

Majority of the bhakti saints were very critical of all institutions and revolted against idolatry,

Tyranny of the castes’ and creeds along with temples and rituals, but in the change which they sought, women were not included. They were protesting vocally against the prevalent injustice in the society but conventionally left the women, relegating her to the background. She had no place in the change that was being sought. It was a change that was being defined by male parameters. At this time many women saints were leading a, non-traditional, non-conformist life and talking of individual freedom. Their divine outpourings are from the heart, sung unfettered and within a domain that they carved out for themselves. Their divine outpourings did not go unheard and is attested by the fact that they were deified and worshipped in life and immediately after death. One aspect that is under emphasised is the vast majority of silent supporters who advocated the acts of these women. This shows that in addition to having an audience that was regular, the women bhaktas also had a captive audience who must have provided emotional and mental support. Given the benefits of the hindsight and the vast array of historical sources backed by the methods, it is imperative to rehabilitate the unfettered voices of the women bhaktas into mainstream historiography, by integrating these voices we will be taking a small step towards setting the historical records right.

Rebels —Conformists? Women Saints in Medieval South India; Vijaya Ramaswamy

From Devotion and Dissent to Dominance; R

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