Divine Sounds from the Heart - Singing Unfettered in Their Own Voices: The Bhakti Movement and Its Women Saints (12th to 17th Century)

Through the centuries of patriarchal control women have negotiated many layers and levels of existence working out various forms of resistance through various mediums which have often gone unnoticed. Bhakti was one such medium which was open to women. Since religious space was the only space available to women in medieval times many women embraced bhakti and it provided them the space to define their own truths in voices that revision society, polity, relationships and religions. Women's articulation here is often at odds with the dominant male voice which is the only voice that is heard in traditional historiography. Gender becomes a useful category of analysis for elucidating the many ways in which relations of power are constructed and represented in society. Using a number of hagiographic accounts, inscriptions and primary sources, the author reconstructs the bhakti movement when newly emerging social groups, attempted to redefine their position and status within the given traditional hierarchy and spearheaded a movement articulating their demands for restructuring the existing order. If we are to search for the historical figures of the women bhaktas we will hit a wall. There is very little information on them in the conventional sense yet there are many unconventional sources which have largely remained unilluminated till today. Yet many of these women bhaktas go much beyond the shadowy realms of the past and are very much alive today in popular culture and the day to day life. We have to therefore turn to the collective memories and remembrance which are based on their bhajans and poems. It is from these that we can get few glimpses of the lives of these women in medieval times. Most of these women lived during the period from 12th century to 17th centuries. A glance at the writings of these women Bhaktas show that they were spurned by patriarchy and thus Bhakti becomes an outlet for them. Most of these women were encultured into a certain culture which was mostly a closed culture, but through this movement a certain space was created for their freedom and mobility. This gave courage to the women to outpour divine melodies from the heart articulating their concerns and singing unfettered in their own voices. Though many of the women saints in medieval India had emerged from an atmosphere of discrimination and oppression where patriarchal values still were held in high regards, many of them charted their own course and in the end emerged as individuals with a mind of their own and all this was possible due to the space provided by bhakti. For all these women bhaktas the rejection of the power of the male figure that they were tied to in subordinate relationship became the terrain for struggle, self assertion and alternative seeking. They defy patriarchal norms of marriage and walk out (except in the case of Bahina bai) and live life in their own terms. This book will be very useful to scholars interested in Feminist History. Scholars of religion and Asian Studies will also find this book a useful source of information. The sensitive and rigorous research will be of great help to young scholars interested in embarking on a journey to discover the religious history especially with regards to women history in the South Asian context.