Bhakti Movement
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Promoting Harmony
Pranav Khullar, Bhakti Poets Like Kabir Promoted Harmony, June 28, 2018: The Times of India
The bhakti movement – that cut across all distinctions of high and low birth, the learned and the unlettered, men and women – opened the doors of spiritual realisation to one and all. It triggered a synthesis of cultures and set out a roadmap for unity in diversity. What started as devotional resurgence grew into an expressive cultural upsurge which brought together people of diverse faiths and vocations.
The word ‘bhakti’ means devotion. The concept is total surrender to God. It stands for non-possession. A devotee possesses nothing and nothing possesses him except the love for his Ishta Devta, whose vision is his personal quest for truth. There was a ferment in the minds of men and women, and out of that ferment, arose new types of reformers whose influence went far beyond the limits of particular sects that grew up during their lifetime or after them.
Ramananda Swami, who had settled down at Panch Ganga in Varanasi, was an unusual teacher. His disciples included untouchables, barbers, cobblers and a woman – something unheard of in those days. It was a new wave in which the life of devotion to God was not confined to a privileged few but to all, irrespective of caste, colour, creed or sex. One such disciple was Kabir. He was initiated when he prostrated himself before Ramananda when Swamiji was returning from bathing in the Ganga. The Swami inadvertently kicked Kabir whom he could not see in the darkness and said, “Ram, Ram” which Kabir took as his mantra for life. God for Kabir was now ‘Ram’ whom he regarded as a divine guru.
Kabir enthralled people and inspired them with his devotional poems and songs of love and humanism. He wrote in vernacular Hindi, which was a mixture of Bhojpuri, Awadhi and Braj. His idiom was simple and colloquial. He borrowed freely from Sanskrit and Persian vocabulary but his speech was direct and forthright. It came straight from the heart and appealed to everyone with its simple but insightful messages.
In the words of Rabindranath Tagore who has translated many of Kabir’s poems, “Kabir stood as one of the most appealing and inspiring symbols of India’s religious heritage.”
‘Mo ko kahan dhoondo re bande Mein to tere pas mein Na mein debal na mein masjid Na Kaabe na Kailash mein’
‘O servant of God, where dost thou seek me?
I am beside thee.
I am neither in temple nor in mosque Neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash’.
Kabir lived all his life among tanners, butchers, hewers of wood and drawers of water. Their lives often saddened him. In one of his popular couplets he says:
‘Kabir teri jhompri Gal katiyan ke pas Jo karan ge so bharan ge Tu kyon bhayo udas’
‘O Kabir, you live in the neighbourhood of butchers why worry about them?
They will reap as they shall sow’.
At the time of his death, both Hindus and Muslims claimed Kabir’s body. But when the shroud was lifted there was nothing except a spray of beautiful flowers. That was the creedless master whose songs are sung in millions of homes every day. In a larger historical framework, the Buddha and Kabir can be knit in a single thread, both of whom brought a new vision and promoted a casteless and classless society.
