Explain the social context of the emergence of women Bhakta

in Medieval India.
The Bhakti Movement was the most powerful characteristics of
the medieval age in India. The movement saw the rise of many
Hindu devotional cults which were heterodox and reflection of
inner social structure. This period witness the emergence of
women saint in Indian society emerging from the atmosphere of
discrimination and suppression. Their life reflects the break
away from the traditionally roles assigned to them. Women saint
consciously or unconsciously made a departure from the norms
of social behavior and broke the limitations imposed by their
patriarchal family and society. Their emergence was a social
revolt. There are two diverse perspective reflected by them:
reinforcing the traditional patriarchal role model by women
saints like Bahina Bai who was conformist. The rejection of
traditional saints like Lalla, Mira, Akka Mahadevi indicates a
shift from the orthodoxy of Shankaracharya and the dominance
of Brahmans to popular devotional movements. Women saint
whether they are conformed or rebelled and marginalized
Shudra saint could hope to create a space for themselves like the
Bhakti Movement, Virasaivism or Kashmiri movement.
Bhakti makes a language of aspiration and desire through a
notion communication with a compassionate god, which
embedded within an experimental base, particularly sorts of
hierarchy, patriarchal and feudal relations. Bhakti set out to
escape, ignore or challenge certain social, religious and

patriarchal institutions, its moral legitimacy is partially obtained

from a transformation of some of these perceptions into an
internal ethic.
The women saints in the existing medieval social milieu in the
patriarchal society were considered low, secondly role assigned
to them became progressively assigned in medieval India. The
repeated Turkish invasion in the 11th century and the
establishment of Sultanate in the North and the Muslim kingdom
in south led to further deterioration in the status of women. The
Turkish invasion like other invasion led to the orthodox society
imposing restriction with the fear of invade trade attach on
women was a constant threat to orthodox Hindu society. Any
relationship between Hindu women and outsider could result the
mixture of caste and varansankar and breakdown of social order.
The other aspects of patriarchal society was the birth of daughter
being unwelcomed then, the child marriages and parda, the
practice of female infanticide, polygamy, chastity, sati and the
plight of widow.
The male saint of medieval India emphasizes womens chastity
motherhood and negative male perspective of womens beauty
and sexuality. According to them both women and gold are the
cause of mens ruin. The spiritual path helped women to break
out all the stereotypes. As a saint she made the unacceptable,
acceptable. She broke out of the chain of tradition orthodoxy
which sought to control the sexuality and decided to seek god

whether as a naked saint: Lalla, Akka Mahadevi or as a skeleton

being like Karaikkal Ammaiyar.
Vijay Ramaswamy has analyzed the social background of the
women saints from the Northern Deccan and the Southern
Deccan. He points out 75 women listed by her, 45% belong to
the priestly classes, thus constituting social group including
Shudras and untouchable 41%. This was closely followed by
just 10% and the merchant class comprising 4% were peripheral
group in the emergence of women saint. While the Brahmans
had some access to the education both sacred and secular.
Awareness of the Shudra women arose from the fact that
economically they were equal to the men.
An analysis of north India saints indicated that since quite few
of them came from priestly class, they too had access to spiritual
and religious knowledge. Even though these women were
excluded from the Guru kul system, their family background
enabled them to gain spiritual knowledge. On other hand the
lower caste women saint excluded from spiritual knowledge
could and did had access to knowledge which was based on folk
tradition. Their language was not Sanskrit but local language.
This made possible womens tremendous contribution to
vernacular literature: Lalla to Kashmiri, Mira to Hindi and Akka
Mahadevi to Kannad literature.
The women saint can be categorized on the basis of their choice
of spiritual path and their particular interaction with the society.
There are rebellious like Mira and Akka Mahadevi; chased

housewives like Allambada and Nagalochana and Bahini. In

between these two, there are those women saint who give up
their home and life only when driven to it or when they were left
with no other options. These women were; Kalyakkar,
Roopbhavani and Akka Mahadevi.
The idea of renunciation was often a reaction to marital discord
combined with unnatural relation. Lalla and Mira were more
reluctant wives. Lalla , Mira and Roopbhavani walked out from
their homes, they were victim of domestic violence. The
unnatural husband wife relationship occurred with Karaikkal
Ammaiyar. These women saints did not have convention of
marriage, family and no duty to fulfill. Besides them, third
category of women saints includes those who never went
through worldly marriages, Andal, Mukta Bai, Janabai. It did not
matter whether they were married or not they looked god as
their husband.
Mira looked upon Krishna as her husband. She takes to the road
as a jogin or religious mendicant. Mirabais mendicancy breaks
the mandatory seclusion of the upper caste Rajput widow, but
she does not challenged all other accepted components of
widows life like, piety, asceticism, austerity, celibacy. She sings
and dances, loves Krishna like gopi, visits Vrindavan. Mira is
seen as a historical figure and woman who resisted the power of
princely feudal patriarchy, the social codes of family pride,
honour, decorum, and became critic of certain forms of social
operation. She sang Girdhar Gopal is my husband. It was not a

metaphysical relationship but the physical surrender of ones

body and soul to ones divine husband. It is the religious belief
which empowered Mira, both her sense of selfhood and her
violation of man-made customs emerge from her conviction of
her subjection to god and her dedication to a higher cause. She
can only claim moral power in the name of god. Her bhakti is at
once a principle of consonance and of discord.
Before the Lingayat movement declared Andal declared the
lord ling became bridegroom and I became bride. The devotees
are my parent, hence Chandmalik Aryum is my husband of this
world. Andal describes her marriage with lord Sri Rangnath
(Vishnu) in a series of dreams in her work.
The concept of the Bride of the Lord for the devotee male or
female is subordinate surrendering to the loyal bride, superior
lord. It thus almost appears paradoxical that these women saints
who seem to reject the patriarchal structure at the worldly level
continues operate within the framework of patriarchy at the
spiritual level. At no stage does a feminine symbol become the
object of worship.
The Warkari movement of Maharashtra marks a mainstream
departure from Bhagwata movement in the gender context. Thus
the notion of the Bride of the Lord is conspicuous by its
absence within the Warkari movement. The notion of the bhakta
as the slave which characterized devotion in to feudal or the
quasi feudal structure in north and south India, never struck root
in western India written in Warkari panth.

Another striking feature of spiritualism among the women was

their total transcendence asserts feminines beauty and modesty.
The entire cult of the demons is to be viewed as the anti thesis of
feminism. Some of the women saint discarded their clothes and
luxurious life style. Akka Mahadevi went naked with her body.
The Kashmiri saint Lalla also discarded his clothes and danced
naked in public. This reflected the women saint in flagrant
desire of women sexuality and their refusal to conform to sexual
confrontation. Mira flouted social concentration in her own
manner. In spite being Rajput queen who should be in strict
purdah. Miras dancing in public shows the extent of her desire.
It is the third dimension to the breaking of social norms comes
from the life of Kanoranma, a 17 th century saint from Kerala. In
a striking instance of breaking of ritual taboos, she reacted at the
shocked reaction by saying that the right to salvation was more
important the ritual taboos. These women saints also left their
home to mingle with male saints and scholars. Mira sang in
keeping company with saints, I have lost the respect to society.
The lives of these women saints showed that the males,
including their husband with exception of guru played a
negative role in their life. The composition of the women saints
undoubtedly depicts the mood of freedom from material things
and the achievements of spiritual bases, but they also potraited
the alienation process from society and personal loneness. This
alienation of women saint was a dual alienation. First, because
they were accounts of positive cults of the world and second,

there was the social alienation resulting from being non

conforming women. Mira described herself as a fish out of
water. A Chakrawaha bird deprived from the sight of the
beloved, lonely and lost souls. Some of the women saint used
usual powerful and mystic imagery in their composition.
The emergence of life and creative work of these women saint
had a significant impact on the contemporary society. The
representation of social protest in the lives and work of women
saints was much more subtle and less conscious except in the
case of some saints like Roopbhavani from Kashmir who
functioned more like social reformer. By and large the
composition of women saint represented the internal search of
God in the myths. Their comments on the social situation were
therefore mostly indirect. The portrait of the highly restrictive
life of Rajput women gathered from Miras composition was
more due to her autobiography, than to her observation on the
contemporary society which was almost will. Rejection of caste
is one of highlights of these women saints. Although Bahina Bai
seemed so confining and talked about duty fulfillment in her
verses, despite being a Brahmin she accepted low caste Tukaram
as her guru.
Some of the south Indian women saints showed concrete
examples of the rejection of existing social structure and
behavioral mode. The most punched commentary on the caste
system came from Auvaiyar, when she said there was no caste
but the one who helps poor in distress, the other who did not

help and were low caste. She was more than any other women
saints who made effective comments on social norms. She
condemned begging and prostitution as shameful and
degrading..
The women were visible and vocal within the Warkari
movement and yet the sacred places they occupied was
conceded by men and not carved out by women. Thus
Kharadhar had inspired Mahadaisa, Janabai was inspired by
Namdeva and Bahina Bai by Tukaram and Veena Bai took
inspiration from Ramdas.
It is doubtful with some exceptions like Mira and Lalla in north
and in south India Andal and Auvaiyar had a major impact while
they lived. During their life, most of time Lalla and Mira were
regarded mad and shameless, thus medieval society prevented
these women from being taken seriously by the upper caste,
their audience impact was from low caste women and their
wives. The lower caste played a vital role as audience as well as
dominant social group constituting women saints in south India.
This striking role reveals where the last become the first is
one of the most radical features of the Virasaivism. In her
vachana Lingamma, a low caste-women, most probably an
untouchable, says:
Among the lower caste I was born
Among the highest did I grow
And held the feet of real Sharanas;

And holding them I saw

Guru Linga and Jangama
Above all, the Bhakti Movement started the trend of elaborate
rituals in worship places. Devotional hymns in temples, Qawalli
in mosques, Gurbani in gurudwaras, etc. all came from the
Bhakti Movement. It gave India a rich collection of literature
based on devotion, spirituality and faith. But the most striking
feature of the Bhakti Movement was that it could be accessed by
anyone, since all it needed was to remember god with full
devotion and love.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Class notes
2. Mirabai and the Spiritual Economy of Bhakti- by
Kumkum Sangari
3. Walking Naked: Women, Society, Spirituality in South
India by Vijaya Ramaswamy

Submitted by: Ayushi Sharma- 13/2242