Bhakti & Sufi Movements

Long before Kabir sang in Banaras or Mirabai danced in Mewar, a quiet revolution had already begun in the Tamil country. Between roughly the sixth and ninth centuries CE, wandering poet-saints walked from temple to temple singing in Tamil, not Sanskrit, and told ordinary people that God does not ask for your caste, your Sanskrit or your expensive sacrifice. He asks for bhakti, loving devotion. This is where the Bhakti movement starts, in South India, and everything that happens later in the north grows from this seed.

Bhakti means personal, loving devotion to one chosen God. Two broad streams run through the whole movement. Saguna bhakti worships God with form and attributes (Rama, Krishna, Shiva, Vishnu). Nirguna bhakti worships a formless God beyond attributes (Kabir, Nanak). Remember: Saguna = with form, Nirguna = without form.

The south produced two great groups of saints. The Alvars ("those immersed in God") were devotees of Vishnu; the Nayanars ("leaders") were devotees of Shiva. Both groups came from every social background, including weavers, potters, farmers and even people classed as low castes, and both included women. They opposed the rival religions of Buddhism and Jainism, which were then strong in the Tamil country, and they won over kings such as the Pallavas and Pandyas, who then built great temples. That is why the Bhakti movement and the temple-building age of the Pallavas, Cholas and Pandyas go hand in hand.

After the poet-saints came the acharyas, the philosophers who gave Bhakti a solid base of thought. Each one explained the relation between the soul (jiva) and the Supreme (Brahman) differently, and each name of doctrine is a favourite exam item. Shankara taught that they are one (Advaita). Ramanuja said the soul is a part of God yet distinct (Vishishtadvaita, qualified non-dualism). Madhva insisted that they are eternally separate (Dvaita).

In Karnataka a different current rose in the twelfth century. Basavanna (Basaveshwara), minister at the court of the Kalachuri king Bijjala at Kalyana, founded the Lingayat (Virashaiva) movement. Followers wear a small linga on the body, worship only Shiva, reject caste and the authority of the Brahmin priest, oppose child marriage, and bury their dead instead of cremating them. Their sayings, the Vachanas, are in simple Kannada, and the debating hall where they met was called the Anubhava Mantapa. The burial custom is the exam favourite, because it shows Lingayats building an alternative religious framework that rejects the Dharmashastra rites.

By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the north of India had lived under the Delhi Sultanate for generations. Hindus and Muslims shared bazaars and villages, and ordinary craftsmen, such as weavers, barbers and cobblers, were tired of priests and maulvis who told them that the road to God ran through expensive ritual and birth-based rank. Into this world stepped a group of saints who spoke in the language of the street and said: God is one, formless and within you. This is the Nirguna stream of the north, and its first great voice was Ramananda.

Ramananda (14th-15th century) was born at Prayag and taught at Banaras. He belonged to the lineage of Ramanuja but broke an old rule by teaching in the vernacular Hindi and by accepting disciples of every caste. He worshipped Rama and started the Ramanandi sect. His disciples came from the working classes and include Kabir (weaver), Ravidas (cobbler), Sena (barber), Dhanna (Jat farmer) and Pipa (a Rajput chief). The Bhakti saint of the north is therefore best remembered as a bridge: south Indian devotion carried into the Hindi-speaking heartland.

Kabir (15th century; traditionally c. 1440-1518) was brought up in a family of Muslim weavers in Banaras and became a disciple of Ramananda. He was the sharpest voice of Nirguna bhakti. He attacked idol worship, caste, pilgrimages, fasting, the rosary and empty ritual in both Hinduism and Islam, and asked a famous question in the form of a couplet: if God lives only in the temple or the mosque, who then lives everywhere else? His God, whom he called Ram, Rahim, Hari or Allah by turns, is one, without form, and found by the guru's guidance and inner devotion, not by rites. His verses are short rhymed couplets called dohas / sakhis in a plain mixed dialect called Sadhukkadi (also called Khichdi bhasha).

Guru Nanak (1469-1539) was born at Talwandi (now Nankana Sahib, in Pakistan's Punjab) into a Khatri family; his father was Mehta Kalu. He worked for some years at Sultanpur Lodhi as the keeper of stores for Daulat Khan Lodi. There, on the river Bein, he had the experience that began his mission, and his first words are remembered as "There is no Hindu, there is no Mussalman." He then went on long journeys called Udasis, accompanied by the Muslim minstrel Mardana (rabab) and Bala, and in about 1522 he settled at Kartarpur on the Ravi, where he farmed, ran a community kitchen and died in 1539. He named Guru Angad as his successor.

Guru Nanak's teaching rests on Ik Onkar (God is One) and three practical duties: Naam japna (remember God's name), Kirat karni (earn by honest work) and Vand chhakna (share with others). The langar (free community kitchen) and sangat-pangat (sitting together and eating together without caste) put equality into daily life. He rejected idol worship, caste, the veil and ritual, and stressed the guru and divine grace.

If the Nirguna saints asked people to look inward for a formless God, the Saguna saints said: God is so loving that he takes a form, and you can love him as a child loves a mother, a friend loves a friend, or a bride loves her beloved. Two forms captured the imagination of the whole north: Rama, the ideal king, and Krishna, the divine child and lover. Around them grew two streams of devotion and, with them, some of the greatest poetry in Hindi.

Tulsidas (traditionally 1532-1623) was a devotee of Rama who lived much of his life in Banaras. His masterpiece, the Ramcharitmanas, retells the Ramayana in Awadhi, the language of the people, and made the story of Rama a household tale across north India; the custom of Ramlila grew popular partly because of it. His other works include Vinaya Patrika (a petition to Rama), Kavitavali, Dohavali and Gitavali. He was a contemporary of Akbar.

Vallabhacharya (1479-1531) taught Shuddhadvaita (pure non-dualism) and founded the Pushti Marga, the path of grace, built on the Bhagavata Purana. In this path God is won by his grace, not by effort, and Krishna is worshipped as the child Shrinathji at Nathdwara in Rajasthan. His son Vitthalnath organised eight Braj poets into the Ashtachhap, the "Eight Seals", of whom Surdas is the greatest. Surdas (16th century), traditionally blind, was Vallabhacharya's disciple; his Sur Sagar in Braj Bhasha sings of baby Krishna's mischief and the pain of Radha and the gopis in separation.

Mirabai (c. 16th century) was a Rajput princess of Merta, married into the royal house of Mewar (to the son of Rana Sanga). From childhood she saw Krishna (Giridhar Gopal) as her husband, and she defied the court, caste and the rules for a royal widow by singing and dancing in public among saints. Her songs, the padas / bhajans, in Rajasthani-Braj, are among the most loved in India. Tradition links her to Ravidas as her guru; she spent her last years at Vrindavan and Dwarka.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1534), born as Vishwambhar Mishra (Nimai) at Navadvipa (Nabadwip) in Bengal, took sannyasa at the age of about 24 and spent his last years at Puri. He taught that God, Radha-Krishna, is reached by loving devotion expressed through kirtan / sankirtan (congregational chanting of the divine name), and he welcomed people of every caste and faith. His movement is Gaudiya Vaishnavism; his followers at Vrindavan (the six Goswamis, including Rupa and Sanatana) built its philosophy, Achintya Bheda-Abheda. His own composition is the Shikshashtakam, and the best-known biography is the Chaitanya Charitamrita by Krishnadas Kaviraj.

While the north was singing in Braj and Awadhi, the western Deccan was building its own great bhakti tradition, and it did so in Marathi. The centre was Pandharpur on the Bhima river, the shrine of Vitthal (Vithoba), a form of Krishna-Vishnu. The devotees who walk to Pandharpur every year in the wari (pilgrimage) are called the Varkaris, and the saints of this tradition came from every caste: a tailor, a gardener, a potter, an outcaste Mahar, a woman servant. That is the heart of the Maharashtra Dharma: Vitthal belongs to everyone.

Abhang is the devotional verse form of Marathi saints (the word means "unbroken"). Ovi is the verse form of the Dnyaneshwari. When a question says Marathi saint plus abhang, think Tukaram; Marathi plus Gita commentary, think Dnyaneshwar.

In the far north-east, in Assam, Srimanta Sankardev (traditionally 1449-1568) led a very similar movement. He preached Ekasarana Dharma ("the religion of taking refuge in one"): total devotion to Krishna alone, with no idol-worship rituals, no animal sacrifice and no caste barrier. He founded Namghars (community prayer halls) and Satras (monasteries), composed Borgeets (devotional songs), wrote the Kirtan Ghosha, and created Ankiya Nat (one-act plays staged as Bhaona), which gave rise to the Sattriya dance, now one of India's classical dances. His chief disciple was Madhavdev. Sankardev's work gave Assam a common literary and cultural identity.

Sufism is the mystical side of Islam. Early Sufis in Arabia and Persia, such as Rabia of Basra and Mansur al-Hallaj, said that the soul can come close to God through love, poverty and surrender, not only through law and ritual. In India the first great Sufi teacher was Al-Hujwiri (Data Ganj Bakhsh) of Lahore in the 11th century, who wrote Kashf-ul-Mahjub. But Sufism became a mass movement only after the Delhi Sultanate was founded, when saints settled in the towns and villages and opened their doors to anyone who came hungry for food or for peace.

Abul Fazl lists fourteen silsilahs in the Ain-i-Akbari, but four matter most for exams: Chishti, Suhrawardi, Qadiri and Naqshbandi. The difference between them is mainly about their attitude to the state: the Chishtis kept away from rulers and lived in poverty; the Suhrawardis accepted royal gifts and posts; the Qadiris and Naqshbandis came later, and the Naqshbandis were the most strict about Shari'a.

Moinuddin Chishti (traditionally 1141-1236), who came from Sistan (Iran) and settled at Ajmer, founded the Chishti order in India. His successor in Delhi was Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki; then Baba Farid (Fariduddin Ganj-i-Shakar) of Ajodhan (Pakpattan), Punjab, whose verses were included in the Guru Granth Sahib; then Nizamuddin Auliya (1238-1325) of Delhi, called Mehboob-e-Ilahi (beloved of God), who lived through seven Sultans of Delhi without going to any court. His disciples were the poet Amir Khusro and Nasiruddin Mahmud "Chiragh-i-Dehli" (the Lamp of Delhi), who died in 1356. In the Deccan the Chishti saint Gesu Daraz (Bandanawaz) settled at Gulbarga. At Fatehpur Sikri, Shaikh Salim Chishti's blessings are said to have brought the prince later called Jahangir (Salim) to Akbar.

The Qadiri order, named after Abdul Qadir Gilani of Baghdad, spread in India from the 15th century (Uch in Sindh-Punjab); Mian Mir of Lahore was its famous saint and the spiritual guide of Dara Shikoh. The Naqshbandi order, from Khwaja Bahauddin Naqshband of Bukhara, was brought to India by Khwaja Baqi Billah around the late 16th century; his disciple Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi fought what he saw as Akbar's un-Islamic ideas and pushed for strict Shari'a, and the order later influenced Aurangzeb's age and Shah Waliullah in the 18th century. In Kashmir, the local Rishi order of Nund Rishi (Sheikh Nuruddin) blended Sufi and Hindu ideas, and the Kubrawi order came with Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani.

Why was Sufism so popular? Because it said what the poor and the outcaste needed to hear: God is close, love is greater than rank, and the saint's kitchen (langar) feeds everyone. Sufi saints wrote in Hindavi (an early form of Hindi-Urdu); Amir Khusro (1253-1325), called Tuti-e-Hind (parrot of India), mixed Persian with local words and is credited with developing qawwali; Malik Muhammad Jayasi wrote Padmavat (1540) in Awadhi. This shared culture is the early root of what we call the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb.