New Devotional Paths — Dialogue and Dissent in Northern India

The three figures examined here — Kabir, Baba Guru Nanak, and Mirabai — each responded to the social and religious conditions of their time in distinct ways. Their ideas did not emerge in isolation; they were shaped through dialogue and dissent with existing traditions, institutions, and social hierarchies.

Weaving a Divine Fabric: Kabir (c. fourteenth–fifteenth centuries)

Kabir is one of the most outstanding examples of a poet-saint who emerged from this context. Reconstructing his life and times has been challenging for historians because the evidence is indirect. They rely on two kinds of sources: compositions attributed to him, and later hagiographies (biographies of saints). Both present difficulties.

The problem of the sources

Verses ascribed to Kabir survive in three distinct but overlapping manuscript traditions:

• The Kabir Bijak, preserved by the Kabirpanth (the sect of Kabir) in Varanasi and elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh.
• The Kabir Granthavali, associated with the Dadupanth in Rajasthan.
• Many of his compositions are also found in the Adi Granth Sahib (the Sikh scripture).

All these manuscript compilations were made long after Kabir's death. By the nineteenth century, printed anthologies of verses attributed to him circulated in regions as far apart as Bengal, Gujarat, and Maharashtra.

Language and style

Kabir's poems survive in several languages and dialects. Some are composed in sant bhasha, the special language of nirguna poets. Others, known as ulatbansi (upside-down sayings), invert everyday meanings. These hint at the difficulty of capturing the nature of the Ultimate Reality in words. Expressions such as "the lotus which blooms without flower" or "the fire raging in the ocean" convey a sense of Kabir's mystical experiences.

Range of traditions drawn upon

Kabir drew on a remarkable range of traditions to describe the Ultimate Reality:

• From Islam: he used terms like Allah, Khuda, Hazrat, and Pir.
• From Vedantic traditions: alakh (the unseen), nirakar (formless), Brahman, Atman.
• From yogic traditions: shabda (sound) or shunya (emptiness).

The core argument: one Lord, many names

A composition attributed to Kabir makes his central point clear. God is called by many names — Allah, Ram, Karim, Keshav, Hari, Hazrat — but just as gold remains gold whether shaped into rings or bangles, the Divine is one. Distinctions are only words we invent. Kabir says that those who argue over which name is correct — one killing a goat, another killing cows — waste their lives in disputation. Neither can find the only Ram.

Diverse and conflicting ideas

The poems attributed to Kabir express diverse and sometimes conflicting ideas. Some draw on Islamic ideas, using monotheism and iconoclasm to attack Hindu polytheism and idol worship. Others use the Sufi concept of zikr and ishq (love) to express the Hindu practice of nam-simaran (remembrance of God's name). Scholars have tried to analyse language, style, and content to determine which verses could genuinely be Kabir's, but we may never know for certain.

Legacy and later debates

What this rich corpus signifies is that Kabir was — and remains — a source of inspiration for those who questioned entrenched religious and social institutions, ideas, and practices in their search for the Divine. His ideas probably crystallised through dialogue and debate (explicit or implicit) with the traditions of Sufis and yogis in the region of Awadh (part of present-day Uttar Pradesh).

After his death, several groups claimed his legacy. This is most evident in later debates about whether he was a Hindu or a Muslim by birth — debates reflected in hagiographies composed from the seventeenth century onwards, about two hundred years after his lifetime.

• Hagiographies within the Vaishnava tradition attempted to suggest that he was born a Hindu (Kabirdas — though "Kabir" itself is an Arabic word meaning "great"), but was raised by a poor Muslim family belonging to the community of weavers (julahas), who were relatively recent converts to Islam. They also suggested that he was initiated into bhakti by a guru, perhaps Ramananda.
• However, the verses attributed to Kabir use the words guru and satguru, but do not mention the name of any specific preceptor.
• Historians point out that it is very difficult to establish that Ramananda and Kabir were contemporaries without assigning improbably long lives to either or both. So while traditions linking the two cannot be accepted at face value, they show how important Kabir's legacy was for later generations.

Baba Guru Nanak and the Sacred Word (1469–1539)

Baba Guru Nanak was born in a Hindu merchant family in a village called Nankana Sahib near the river Ravi in the predominantly Muslim Punjab. He trained to be an accountant and studied Persian. He was married at a young age but spent most of his time among Sufis and bhaktas. He also travelled widely.

His message

The message of Baba Guru Nanak is spelt out in his hymns and teachings. He advocated a form of nirguna bhakti. He firmly repudiated the external practices of the religions he saw around him:

• He rejected sacrifices, ritual baths, image worship, austerities, and the scriptures of both Hindus and Muslims.
• For him, the Absolute or "rab" had no gender or form.
• He proposed a simple way to connect to the Divine: by remembering and repeating the Divine Name.

The hymns and the community

He expressed his ideas through hymns called "shabad" in Punjabi, the language of the region. He would sing these compositions in various ragas while his attendant Mardana played the rabab.

Baba Guru Nanak organised his followers into a community. He set up rules for congregational worship (sangat) involving collective recitation. He appointed one of his disciples, Angad, to succeed him as the preceptor (guru), and this practice was followed for nearly two hundred years.

After his death: the formation of a distinct community

It appears that Baba Guru Nanak did not wish to establish a new religion. But after his death, his followers consolidated their own practices and distinguished themselves from both Hindus and Muslims.

• The fifth preceptor, Guru Arjan, compiled Baba Guru Nanak's hymns along with those of his four successors and other religious poets like Baba Farid, Ravidas (also known as Raidas), and Kabir in the Adi Granth Sahib. These hymns, called "gurbani", are composed in various languages.
• In the late seventeenth century, the tenth preceptor, Guru Gobind Singh, included the compositions of the ninth guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, and this scripture was called the Guru Granth Sahib.
• Guru Gobind Singh also laid the foundation of the Khalsa Panth (army of the pure) and defined its five symbols: uncut hair, a dagger, a pair of shorts, a comb, and a steel bangle. Under him, the community got consolidated as a socio-religious and military force.

Mirabai, the Devotee Princess (c. fifteenth–sixteenth centuries)

Mirabai is perhaps the best-known woman poet within the bhakti tradition. Biographies have been reconstructed primarily from the bhajans attributed to her, which were transmitted orally for centuries.

Her story …