Devotional Paths to the Divine

This is Chapter 6 of Our Pasts – II. Chapters 2–5 (gess102–gess105) traced kingdoms, the Sultanate, the Mughals and changing societies; this chapter follows religious ideas and devotion over the same thousand years. It covers: the idea of a Supreme God and early bhakti; the Nayanars and Alvars of the Tamil region; the philosophers Shankara and Ramanuja; Basavanna’s Virashaivism; the saint-poets of Maharashtra; the Nathpanthis, Siddhas and Yogis; Islam and Sufism; the new saints of north India; and close looks at Kabir and Baba Guru Nanak. It has fifteen pages of reading, so ten concept sections, following the book’s own headings. Every tradition is described in its own terms, and where scholars read it differently, their views are set side by side with names attached — this page does not rank faiths or take sides. The next chapter, gess107, follows regional languages, literature, music, dance and painting — where many of these saints’ songs live on.

• Links in this book: gess102 (the Cholas and Pandyas whose temples housed bhakti shrines); gess103 (the Delhi Sultanate, when Sufi centres spread — NCERT’s ‘Chapter 3’); gess104 (Jahangir and Guru Arjan; Akbar’s age of Mirabai, Tulsidas and Surdas); gess105 (jatis and caste — the social order these saints questioned); gess107 (regional cultures, languages and arts); gess108 (the Sikhs in the eighteenth century).
• Deeper pages: lehs202 (Class 12: Bhakti–Sufi Traditions — hagiographies, the Chishtis, Kabir, Guru Nanak and Mirabai in depth); iest203 (Class 9 new syllabus: bhakti and Sufi traditions within 1000–1700 CE); lehs104 (early Puranic Hinduism, avatars and temples); kefa107 (Chola bronzes, including saint images like Fig. 2); kefa108 (Indo-Islamic buildings, including dargahs). This page links them and does not re-teach them.
• UPSC: a staple of Prelims ‘Art and Culture’ — saints and their regions, texts, philosophies, Sufi orders and Sikh history (1979–2022 in our bank). Mains GS1 has asked about Sufis and mystic saints (2014), Chaitanya (2018) and bhakti literature (2021); GS4 asked about Guru Nanak’s teachings (2023).

• Idea of a Supreme God: rebirth and birth-based inequality widely accepted; some turned to the Buddha or Jainas, others to a Supreme God reached by bhakti (the Bhagavad Gita); Shiva, Vishnu, Durga; local gods merged through the Puranas; grace regardless of caste.
• Tamil bhakti (7th–9th c.): Nayanars (Shiva, 63; Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar, Manikkavasagar; Tevaram, Tiruvacakam) and Alvars (Vishnu, 12; Periyalvar, Andal, Tondaradippodi, Nammalvar; Divya Prabandham); Chola and Pandya temples (10th–12th c.); hagiographies.
• Philosophy: Shankara (Kerala, 8th c.) — Advaita, formless Brahman, maya, knowledge; Ramanuja (Tamil Nadu, 11th c.) — Vishishtadvaita, devotion to Vishnu, influenced by the Alvars. Basavanna, Allama Prabhu, Akkamahadevi — Virashaivism, Karnataka, mid-12th c.
• Maharashtra (13th–17th c.): Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath, Tukaram, Sakhubai, Chokhamela’s family; Vitthala of Pandharpur, Varkari; abhangs; householders. Narsi Mehta (Gujarat). Nathpanthis, Siddhas, Yogis: renunciation, yoga, a formless reality.
• Sufis: Muslim mystics; zikr, sama, raqs, pir, silsila, tariqa; Ghazzali, Rumi, Sadi; Rishi order of Kashmir (Nund Rishi); Chishti: Muinuddin (Ajmer), Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, Baba Farid, Nizamuddin Auliya, Gisudaraz (Gulbarga); khanqah, dargah.
• North India: Kabir (julaha, Benares; sakhis, pads; formless God) and Baba Guru Nanak (1469–1539; Kartarpur, langar, dharmsal; nam, dan, isnan) vs Tulsidas (Rama, Awadhi), Surdas (Krishna); Shankaradeva (Assam, namghar), Chaitanyadeva, Mirabai; Gurmukhi; 1604, 1606, 1699, 1706.

Before large kingdoms emerged, different groups worshipped their own gods and goddesses. As the growth of towns, trade and empires brought people together, new ideas spread. Two became widely accepted: that all living things pass through countless cycles of birth and rebirth, performing good and bad deeds; and that human beings are not equal even at birth — many learned texts held that social privilege came from birth in a ‘noble’ family or a ‘high’ caste. Many people were uneasy with these ideas. Some turned to the teachings of the Buddha or the Jainas, by which one could overcome social differences and break the cycle of rebirth through personal effort. Others were drawn to the idea of a Supreme God who could deliver humans from this bondage if approached with devotion (bhakti) — an idea found in the Bhagavad Gita, which grew popular in the early centuries of the Common Era. Shiva, Vishnu and Durga came to be worshipped as supreme deities through elaborate rituals; at the same time gods and goddesses worshipped in different areas came to be identified with Shiva, Vishnu or Durga. Local myths and legends became part of the Puranic stories, and Puranic methods of worship entered local cults. Eventually the Puranas laid down that devotees could receive God’s grace regardless of caste. The idea of bhakti became so popular that even Buddhists and Jainas adopted these beliefs.

The seventh to ninth centuries saw new religious movements led by the Nayanars (saints devoted to Shiva) and the Alvars (saints devoted to Vishnu). They came from all castes, including those considered ‘untouchable’ such as the Pulaiyar and the Panars. They were sharply critical of the Buddhists and Jainas and preached ardent love of Shiva or Vishnu as the path to salvation. They drew on the ideals of love and heroism in Sangam literature — the earliest Tamil literature, composed in the early centuries CE — and blended them with bhakti. They went from place to place composing poems in praise of the deities enshrined in the villages they visited, and set them to music. There were 63 Nayanars — potters, ‘untouchable’ workers, peasants, hunters, soldiers, Brahmanas and chiefs — best known among them Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar and Manikkavasagar; their songs are compiled in the Tevaram and the Tiruvacakam. There were 12 Alvars, of equally varied backgrounds — best known Periyalvar, his daughter Andal, Tondaradippodi Alvar and Nammalvar; their songs are compiled in the Divya Prabandham. Between the tenth and twelfth centuries the Chola and Pandya kings built elaborate temples around many shrines the saint-poets had visited, strengthening the link between bhakti and temple worship. In this period the poems were compiled and hagiographies — religious biographies — of the Alvars and Nayanars were written; historians use these texts today to write the history of the bhakti tradition.

Shankara, one of India’s most influential philosophers, was born in Kerala in the eighth century. He advocated Advaita — the oneness of the individual soul and the Supreme God, which is the Ultimate Reality. He taught that Brahman, the only Ultimate Reality, is formless and without attributes; he considered the world around us an illusion, or maya; and he preached renunciation and the path of knowledge to understand Brahman’s true nature and attain salvation. Ramanuja, born in Tamil Nadu in the eleventh century, was deeply influenced by the Alvars. For him the best means of salvation was intense devotion to Vishnu, who in His grace helps the devotee attain the bliss of union with Him. He propounded Vishishtadvaita, or qualified oneness: the soul, even when united with the Supreme God, remains distinct. Ramanuja’s doctrine greatly inspired the new strand of bhakti that later developed in north India.

The link between Tamil bhakti and temple worship led to a reaction, best represented by the Virashaiva movement begun by Basavanna and his companions Allama Prabhu and Akkamahadevi, in Karnataka in the mid-twelfth century. The Virashaivas argued strongly for the equality of all human beings and against Brahmanical ideas about caste and the treatment of women. They were also against all forms of ritual and idol worship.

From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, Maharashtra saw many saint-poets whose songs in simple Marathi still inspire people. The most important were Dnyaneshwar (Gyaneshwar), Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram, as well as women like Sakhubai and the family of Chokhamela, who belonged to the ‘untouchable’ Mahar caste. This regional tradition focused on the Vitthala (a form of Vishnu) temple at Pandharpur, and on the idea of a personal god residing in the hearts of all people. These saint-poets rejected all ritualism, outward display of piety, and social differences based on birth. They even rejected renunciation, preferring to live with their families and earn a living like anyone else while humbly serving fellow humans in need. A new humanist idea emerged: bhakti lay in sharing others’ pain. The famous Gujarati saint Narsi Mehta said that true Vaishnavas are those who understand the pain of others.

Several religious groups that emerged in this period criticised the ritual and other aspects of conventional religion and the social order, using simple, logical arguments. Among them were the Nathpanthis, Siddhacharas and Yogis. They advocated renunciation of the world. For them, the path to salvation lay in meditation on the formless Ultimate Reality and the realisation of oneness with it. To achieve this they advocated intense training of mind and body through yogasanas, breathing exercises and meditation. These groups became particularly popular among ‘low’ castes. Their criticism of conventional religion prepared the ground for devotional religion to become a popular force in northern India.

The sants had much in common with the Sufis — so much that it is believed they adopted many of each other’s ideas. Sufis were Muslim mystics. They rejected outward religiosity and emphasised love and devotion to God and compassion towards all fellow human beings. Islam propagated strict monotheism, or submission to one God. In the eighth and ninth centuries, religious scholars developed the Holy Law (Shariat) and the theology of Islam. As the religion became more complex, Sufis gave it an additional dimension favouring a more personal devotion to God; they often rejected the elaborate rituals and codes of behaviour demanded by Muslim religious scholars, and sought union with God much as a lover seeks the beloved, disregarding the world. Like the saint-poets, Sufis composed poems, and a rich prose literature of anecdotes and fables grew around them. Among the great Sufis of Central Asia NCERT names Ghazzali, Rumi and Sadi. Like the Nathpanthis, Siddhas and Yogis, the Sufis believed the heart can be trained to see the world differently. They developed methods of training using zikr (chanting a name or sacred formula), contemplation, sama (singing), raqs (dancing), discussion of parables, breath control and so on, under the guidance of a master or pir. So emerged the silsilas — spiritual genealogies of Sufi teachers, each following a slightly different method (tariqa) of instruction and ritual practice.

Many Sufis from Central Asia settled in Hindustan from the eleventh century; this grew with the Delhi Sultanate, when major Sufi centres developed across the subcontinent. The Chishti silsila was among the most influential, with a long line of teachers: Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki of Delhi, Baba Farid of Punjab, Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi and Bandanawaz Gisudaraz of Gulbarga. Sufi masters held assemblies in their khanqahs, or hospices. Devotees of all descriptions — royalty, nobility and ordinary people — came to discuss spiritual matters, seek the saints’ blessings for worldly problems, or attend the music and dance sessions. People often credited Sufi masters with miraculous powers to relieve illness and trouble. The tomb or dargah of a Sufi saint became a place of pilgrimage to which thousands of people of all faiths thronged.

After the thirteenth century a new wave of bhakti swept north India. It was an age when Islam, Brahmanical Hinduism, Sufism, various strands of bhakti and the Nathpanths, Siddhas and Yogis influenced one another. New kingdoms were emerging (gess102–gess104), and people were taking up new professions and roles. Such people — especially craftspersons, peasants, traders and labourers — thronged to hear these new saints and spread their ideas. Some, like Kabir and Baba Guru Nanak, rejected all orthodox religions. Others, like Tulsidas and Surdas, accepted existing beliefs and practices but wanted to make them accessible to all. Tulsidas conceived of God as Rama; his Ramcharitmanas, in Awadhi (a language of eastern Uttar Pradesh), is important both as devotion and as literature. Surdas was an ardent devotee of Krishna; his compositions are compiled in the Sursagara, Surasaravali and Sahitya Lahari. A contemporary was Shankaradeva of Assam (late fifteenth century), who emphasised devotion to Vishnu, composed poems and plays in Assamese, and began setting up namghars — houses of recitation and prayer, a practice that continues. The tradition also included Dadu Dayal, Ravidas and Mirabai. Mirabai, a Rajput princess married into the royal family of Mewar in the sixteenth century, became a disciple of Ravidas, a saint from a caste considered ‘untouchable’; devoted to Krishna, she composed countless bhajans that openly challenged the norms of the ‘upper’ castes and became popular in Rajasthan and Gujarat. Most of these saints composed in regional languages, in works that could be sung. The songs were handed down orally, usually by the poorest communities and women, who often added their own experiences — so the songs we have are as much the creation of generations of singers as of the saints, and are part of our living popular culture.

Kabir, who probably lived in the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries, was one of the most influential saints. He was brought up in a family of Muslim julahas, or weavers, in or near Benares (Varanasi). We have little reliable information about his life; we know his ideas from a vast collection of verses called sakhis and pads, said to be his and sung by wandering bhajan singers. Some were later collected in the Guru Granth Sahib, Panch Vani and Bijak. His teachings rested on a complete — indeed vehement — rejection of the major religious traditions: he openly ridiculed all forms of external worship in both Brahmanical Hinduism and Islam, the pre-eminence of the priestly classes, and the caste system. His poetry was in a form of spoken Hindi widely understood by ordinary people; he sometimes used cryptic language that is hard to follow. Kabir believed in a formless Supreme God and preached that the only path to salvation was bhakti. He drew followers from among both Hindus and Muslims.

We know more about Baba Guru Nanak (1469–1539) than about Kabir. Born at Talwandi (Nankana Sahib, in Pakistan), he travelled widely before setting up a centre at Kartarpur (Dera Baba Nanak on the river Ravi). There a regular worship of singing his own hymns was established. Irrespective of former creed, caste or gender, his followers ate together in the common kitchen (langar). The sacred space he created was called dharmsal; it is now known as the gurdwara. Before his death in 1539 he appointed a follower, Lehna, as his successor; Lehna came to be known as Guru Angad, signifying that he was part of Baba Guru Nanak himself. Guru Angad compiled Baba Guru Nanak’s compositions and added his own in a new script, Gurmukhi. The three successors of Guru Angad also wrote under the name ‘Nanak’, and all their compositions were compiled by Guru Arjan in 1604. To this were added the writings of Shaikh Farid, Sant Kabir, Bhagat Namdev and Guru Tegh Bahadur; in 1706 the compilation was authenticated by Guru Tegh Bahadur’s son and successor, Guru Gobind Singh. It is now the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of the Sikhs.

Baba Guru Nanak’s followers grew through the sixteenth century under his successors. They came from many castes, but traders, agriculturists, artisans and craftsmen predominated — perhaps because he insisted that followers be householders in productive, useful occupations, and contribute to the general funds of the community. By the early seventeenth century the town of Ramdaspur (Amritsar) had grown around the central gurdwara, the Harmandar Sahib (Golden Temple). It was virtually self-governing, and modern historians call the early-seventeenth-century Sikh community ‘a state within the state’. The Mughal emperor Jahangir saw them as a potential threat and ordered the execution of Guru Arjan in 1606. The Sikh movement became politicised in the seventeenth century, culminating in the institution of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699; the community, the Khalsa Panth, became a political entity. NCERT stresses that the changing situation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shaped this, but that Baba Guru Nanak’s ideas mattered from the start. He emphasised the worship of one God; insisted that caste, creed or gender were irrelevant to liberation; and saw liberation not as inert bliss but as an active life with a strong sense of social commitment. He used the terms nam, dan and isnan — right worship, welfare of others and purity of conduct — now remembered as nam-japna, kirt-karna and vand-chhakna: right belief and worship, honest living, and helping others. His idea of equality thus had social and political implications, which may partly explain why his followers’ history differs from that of the followers of Kabir, Ravidas and Dadu, whose ideas were very similar.

The chapter’s question boxes, in page order, and ‘Imagine’.

‘Let’s recall’ (1–4), ‘Let’s understand’ (5–7), ‘Let’s discuss’ (8–9) and ‘Let’s do’ (10–12), pages 76–78.

Numbers

One-liners

• The idea of bhakti is present in the Bhagavad Gita.
• The Puranas said devotees could receive God’s grace regardless of caste.
• Nayanars were devoted to Shiva, Alvars to Vishnu.
• Nayanar songs: Tevaram and Tiruvacakam; Alvar songs: Divya Prabandham.
• Andal was the daughter of Periyalvar.
• Shankara advocated Advaita; Ramanuja, influenced by the Alvars, Vishishtadvaita.
• Basavanna, Allama Prabhu and Akkamahadevi led the Virashaiva movement.
• Pandharpur’s Vitthala temple was the centre of Maharashtra’s bhakti.
• The saint-poets of Maharashtra rejected renunciation and lived as householders.
• Nathpanthis, Siddhas and Yogis advocated renunciation and yoga.
• Sufis trained under a pir; a silsila is a genealogy of Sufi teachers.
• Nund Rishi founded the Rishi order of Kashmir.
• Tulsidas wrote the Ramcharitmanas in Awadhi.
• Shankaradeva began the namghars of Assam.
• Kabir was brought up among Muslim julahas (weavers) near Benares.
• Guru Angad wrote in the new Gurmukhi script.
• Guru Gobind Singh instituted the Khalsa in 1699.

Traps to avoid

• Nayanars = Shiva (63); Alvars = Vishnu (12) — do not swap.
• Advaita = Shankara; Vishishtadvaita = Ramanuja; Dvaita = Madhva (Beyond NCERT).
• Maharashtra saints were householders; Nathpanthis advocated renunciation.
• Narsi Mehta was Gujarati, not Marathi.
• Map 1 puts Tukaram in the 16th century — he lived in the 17th (Jahangir’s contemporary).
• Map 1 puts Ramananda in the 16th century — most references say 14th–15th.
• Gurmukhi: Guru Angad (NCERT), not Guru Arjan (UPSC 2004 key).
• Guru Tegh Bahadur (born 1621) could not be in the 1604 compilation; his hymns were added later.
• The Bijak is Kabir’s, not Dadu Dayal’s (UPSC 2014).
• The Chishti order is named after Chisht (Afghanistan), not a place in Ajmer (UPSC 1997).
• Rumi: ‘Central Asia’ (p. 68) or ‘Iran’ (p. 70) in NCERT — born at Balkh, lived at Konya.
• Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda is in Sanskrit; ‘of Bengal’ is disputed (Odisha also claims him).

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Saints and regions: UPSC 1979 (Chaitanya, Bengal), 1987 (Namdev–Maharashtra, Chaitanya–Bengal, Surdas–UP, Nanak–Punjab), 1990 (Vaishnava saints and regions) — learn the Map 1 table.
• Philosophers and founders: Ramanuja (1984, 2022: ‘the best means of salvation was devotion’), Sankara–Advaita and Basava–Vira Saivism (1990), the Lingayats and Basava (1988).
• Sufis: Sufism within Islam (1979), the urs at Ajmer for Muinuddin Chishti (1992), Sufi practices (2012). Kirtan: Chaitanya (1988).
• Sikh history and saints in time: ‘God is one’ (1982), Sikh places (1992), Sikh Gurus and Gurmukhi (2004, flawed), Tukaram and Jahangir (2006), Nanak and the fall of the Lodis (2013), the Bijak (2014). Watch NCERT’s own slips: Tukaram’s and Ramananda’s centuries on Map 1.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 2014 (‘Sufis and medieval mystic saints failed to modify … religious ideas and practices or the outward structure of Hindu/Muslim societies’): use this chapter for what they challenged — caste, ritual, priestly authority — and the attributed readings (Nizami, Digby, Rizvi, Eaton; Vaudeville, Lorenzen) for both sides; lehs202 for depth. GS1 2021 (bhakti literature and its contribution): regional languages, songs carried by the poor and women, music (bhajan, kirtan, abhang, Gita Govinda). GS1 2018 (Chaitanya’s re-orientation of bhakti): ecstatic kirtan, Krishna-Radha devotion — iest203 and lehs202 add more.
• GS4 2023 (‘major teachings of Guru Nanak … relevance in the contemporary world’): nam, dan, isnan / nam-japna, kirt-karna, vand-chhakna; equality of caste, creed and gender; langar; active, socially committed life — then apply to ethics (honest work, sharing, dignity of labour) without commentary on present-day politics.

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

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