Q.(a) Describe the contribution of Kabir to the Bhakti Movement and his impact on religious and social harmony.

Kabir, who lived in the fifteenth century and is traditionally associated with Varanasi and the weaver community, was one of the most powerful voices of the Bhakti Movement, and his contribution had both a religious and a social dimension.

At the heart of his teaching was nirguna bhakti, devotion to a God without form or attributes. Unlike the saguna saints who worshipped a personal deity such as Rama or Krishna with images and temples, Kabir insisted that the divine had no shape, name or dwelling place. To make this point he used a striking range of names for God Ram, Rahim, Allah, Hari, Khuda drawn from both Hindu and Islamic vocabularies, precisely to show that these were different words for the same single reality.

From this flowed his sharp criticism of external religion. He attacked idol worship, elaborate ritual, pilgrimage, fasting and the authority of Brahmins and mullahs alike. He mocked the sacred thread and mechanical prayer when they were unaccompanied by sincere love of God, arguing that ritual without devotion was worthless and that priests wrongly set themselves up as intermediaries.

The medium of his message was as important as its content. Kabir composed in a simple, earthy vernacular, in short forms such as dohas (couplets), sakhis and ramainis, that ordinary, often illiterate, people could remember and sing. His verses circulated orally and were later gathered in collections such as the Kabir Bijak and the Panch Vani, and a number of them were included in the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, showing how far his influence reached.

The social impact of all this was considerable. By teaching that devotion, not birth or religious label, was what brought one close to God, Kabir undermined the caste hierarchy and gave dignity to the low-born a weaver could be a spiritual teacher. And by treating Hindu and Muslim as worshippers of one God under different names, he created a shared devotional space that reduced communal division and promoted harmony. His followers, the Kabir Panth, continue this tradition of equality.

Guru Nanak Dev ji (1469-1539), the first Sikh Guru, developed a body of teaching whose central idea was oneness the oneness of God and the oneness of all human beings.

His conception of God is captured in the phrase Ik Onkar, "there is one God". He described this God as formless (nirankar), without birth or incarnation, the sole Creator and sustainer of the universe, and accessible to everyone regardless of religion, caste or gender. Worship of this one God, he held, needed no images, temples or intermediaries.

From this monotheism came his rejection of the divisions and rituals that separated people. He denied the value of the caste system, of idol worship, of ritual sacrifice and pilgrimage, and of the outward forms of both Hindu and Muslim religion when they lacked inner sincerity. He taught firmly that no person is high or low by birth and that all stand equal before the one God. …