Balbhadra Das vs. Bhagwadacharya in the early 20^th century

Studying the religious life in Ayodhya in the late 20^th century, Van der Veer notes:

“Some Brahmin jatis (caste groups) drastically sever all relations with a caste-fellow who decides to become a Ramanandi sadhu… There is evidence of large Ramanandi castes in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Saurashtra that were formed by Ramanandi sadhus who returned to the stage of householders but were rejected by the castes to which they belonged.”[75]

Ramanandis rationalized their negligence with respect to Varnashrama by referring to Vaishnavas as the ‘fifth’ Varna, poignantly evoking the memories of the connotation of this category – ‘Pancham‘ (fifth) Varna. The term was used in the classical literature of the ‘Dhrmashastras’ as a referent of those ‘outside the fold’ of the social order; in practice it meant the lowest of the low. Ramanandis elevated the term in their usage, at the same time underlining their indifference to the hierarchy of ascribed purity and pollution of social groups. The ‘authentic’ Shri Vaishnavas – or Ramanujis – on the other hand, felt distinctly uncomfortable with their association with Ramanandis, as sealed at the Galta conference. After all, as van der Veer says, they were and “are a Vishnuite community, dominated by Brahmans. The priests in the temple cult as well their religious preceptors are Brahmans who resemble strongly the socially strict caste of Smarta Brahmans in south India.”[76] Post Galta, they had to bear the burden of the deviant Ramanandis, and evolved their strategy to deal with it. They maintained a distance not only from the Ramanandis, but also from Ramanand himself. He was supposed to have been denied commensality with fellow Shri Vaishnavas after his return from the north, due to his indifference towards the caste rules. Thus the “sin,” according to the Ramanujis, was not confined to his followers but belonged to the leader as well. Like father like son: Ramanand himself was a wayward disciple, not well versed in the intricacies of the Vedanta, ignorant of the ‘lofty’ life style and Varnashrama discipline expected of a ‘true’ Shri Vaishnava – and so are his spiritual offspring. Naturally enough, the Ramanuji guru-paramparas make no mention of Ramanand. The Ramanujis were ‘forced’ to bear the burden of association with wayward Ramanandis, but they could at least obliterate Ramanand himself from their cultural memory. This erasure of Ramanand from the Ramanuji tradition was to prove a powerful tool in the hands of radical Ramanandis and an equally painful obstacle for the traditionalists. Balbhadra Das tries to explain it at the outset of his work:

Kureshacharya was a disciple of Ramanujaji so was his son Govindacharya. The father was instructed by Shri Ramanuja to propagate devotion to Rama, while the son continued to preach the Narayana Bhakti. Hence, the tradition of the Ramanandis started from Kureshji and that of ‘Aacharis’ (Ramanujis) from Govindachryaji. That is why none of the eight seats of the ‘Aacharis’ mention Kureshji in their Paramparas. That is how these two branches grew up after Shri Ramanujacharya.[77]

Such genealogical ‘explanations’ notwithstanding, in everyday life the Ramanujis continued to treat Ramanandis with contempt, as a burden on their ‘pure’ legacy. The attempts to ‘imagine’ Ramanand as an Acharya in his own right and to place him in the 13^th century – as reflected in the texts composed in 1880 and 1903, which we have discussed – must be seen in the light of this contempt and resistance. The authors of these texts were not yet insistent on severing the connection with the Ramanujis and Ramanuja altogether, as we have seen, but the undercurrent of discontent surfaced as an open confrontation in Ayodhya in the second decade of the twentieth century. Balbhadra Das tried to understand the reasons:

Why such a hue and cry [to disown the Ramanuji lineage]? There seem to be several reasons. To begin with, there are some differences in the ways and practices of the contemporary ‘Aachari’ Ramanuji Vaishnavas and our Sampraday. Secondly, many of these ‘Aacharis’ deliberately insult us Ramanandis, they insist on giving the Narayana Mantra to all the Vaishnavas and treat contemptuously those without Narayana Mantra. Moreover we [that is, Ramanandis] give more attention to devotion than to scholarly pursuits, and hence they started hating us.[78]

“They hate us” – even Balbhadra Das had to admit this much in 1928. No wonder most of the Ramanandis chose to side with the ‘radicals’ rather than with the traditionalists like Balbhadra Das. Ironically enough, it was the attempt to pay more ‘attention to scholarly pursuits’ that ignited the confrontation in Ayodhya. Balbhadra Das recounts painfully:

In order to take care of the missing ‘Sampradayik’ (sectarian) knowledge, the Mahant of Bara Sthan established the Vedanta Pathshala. A certain Mimansaka Vaishnava was called from the south to impart lessons in Vedanta. His arrival in Ayodhya proved inauspicious for both sects of the Vaishnavas – he sowed the seeds of separation… It is said that he used to insult the Ramanandi Vaishnavas quite often. The hearts of these people were naturally broken, and ground for separation was prepared.[79]

Balbhadra Das tries to adopt a conciliatory tone towards the Shri Vaishnavas, saving any attack for Bhagwadacharya, who was, he felt, exploiting the situation for his own ends:

It was possible for Ramanandis to continue to respect the earlier Acharyas and to compete with contemporary Aacharis just as siblings do. But unfortunately, there was a poisonous seed already in the field. It poisoned other saplings as well. Who was this seed of poison? None other than Shri Bhagwaddasji who had just migrated from the Arya Samaj to the community of Vaishnavas. He had become a disciple of the late Ramamanoharprasda of Bara Sthan. Sensing his opportunity, he injected the Arya Samaji poison into the life of Vaishnava community.”[80]

In his consternation, Balbhadra Das is quite aptly summing up the situation, even if unwittingly. At issue was not the behavior of this particular person alone, but the disdain suffered by the Ramanandis. According to Balbhadra Das, in contrast with this Mimansaka teacher, the Ramanuji Anantachari, the head of Totadri Math was very generous in his attitude towards Ramanandis, but Bhagwadacharya had something else to say regarding Anantachari’s visit to Ayodhya – this, of course, on the basis of what he ‘heard’ from others:

“His [Anantachari’s] behavior in Kanak Bhawan was not appropriate. He never prostrated before the deity. He used to sit on his silver seat even in front of the deity, never used to take the ‘Charnamrit’ (the water which is taken as ‘Prasad’ after washing the feet of deity). His conduct actually encouraged several Ramanandis to discard their Kanthis… The Vedanta teacher at the Vedanta Pathshala in any case refused to impart instruction to non-Brahman sadhus. All this erupted as a volcano in a couple of years.”[81]

Taken together, the above citations from these two combatants give a fair idea of the situation. While the traditionalist group wanted a ‘fraternal’ competition of scholarship and was willing to accept the protocols for purity set by the Ramanujis, the radical group was crystallizing the sentiments of the bulk of the Ramanandis who had had enough of insults and contempt both in symbolic ways and in regard to the practical everyday life of the community. In any case, the Ramanandis, given their social composition, were more likely to lean towards the ‘Arya Samaji poison’ injected by the radicals than towards the project of proving themselves more Brahmanical than the Ramanuji Brahmans. ‘Generous’ or otherwise, the Ramanujis certainly avoided general commensality with the Ramanandis, and the latter were getting angrier by the day.

Mahant Ramshobhadas of ‘Maniram ki Chhaoni’ (Maniram’s cantonment) was extremely upset with the arrogant and contemptuous behavior of this particular Shri Vaishnava teacher, but he needed some energetic and competent warriors to fight the battle of honor against the Ramanujis. He found such warriors in the duo of Bhagwaddas and Raghubardas, who belonged to the Bara Sthan. Both of them had the virtue of being brilliant scholars of Sanskrit, capable of composing theological texts as well as polemical material. This capacity was exploited to the hilt for the ‘cause’. Ramshobhadas passed away in 1957 and Bhagwadacharya, in his autobiography, fondly cites obituaries to him by the leading Mahants of Ayodhya. These obituaries quite clearly underline the crucial role he played in severing the Ramanuji connection:

Chhaoni is actually the source from which the ‘Ramanandiness’ sprang. It was the late Mahantji who in his 51 years long term made Pandit Bhagwadacharya the leader of the Sampraday… the present image of Ramanandji is actually Mahantji’s creation… He was the sole boatman of the movement [for independence from the Ramanujis], and was the guiding force behind the leaders like Raghuvaracharya [a.k.a. Raghubardas] and Bhagwadacharya.[82]

These two ‘leaders’ started off as comrades in arms and great friends, but in course of time the relations soured and they ended up accusing each other of various acts of indiscretion, including the forgery of the manuscripts. Fascinating as it is, this story of friends turned foes is clearly outside the scope of this essay. Raghuvaracharya passed away in 1951, while Bhagwadacharya was blessed with a very long life, hence had more time to influence the turn of events. He was actually called ‘the second Ramanand’ by a grateful Sampraday and is still revered by Ramanandis today. Raghuvaracharya also remains a respected figure for today’s Ramanandis, but the position of Bhagwadacharya is unparalleled. These two started off as leaders in the ‘war of independence’ from the Ramanujis but gradually moved in opposite directions. While Bhagwadacharya was known, praised or condemned for being an opponent of the Varna order, an Arya Samajist and a ‘congressman’ (a member of the Indian National Congress), Raghuvaracharya was more at ease with the conservative elements of the society. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Varna order and was in favor of retaining it within the Sampraday. Naturally, he was able to get lots of donations from Rajas and landlords.

As for Bhagwadacharya’s association with the Congress Party, it is interesting to note that he decided to reproduce the facsimile of a post-card written by Gandhiji to him at the very beginning of his autobiography. The card, dated 24^th September, 1934 and written in Gujarati, was in response to Bhagwadacharya’s query as to ‘whether being a sadhu he should continue to work against untouchability or not.’ Gandhiji characteristically leaves the decision to Bhagwadacharya’s own conscience. As we know, Bhagwadacharya’s conscience was indeed decisive and his active involvement in the temple entry movement invited the wrath of Balbhadra Das and others like him. The most famous conservative Sanyasi, Swami Karpatri, actually called him a ‘Nastika’ – one who has no respect for the Vedas. He got involved with Congress activities quite early and continued to maintain the links till his last. He was a leading light of the Bharat Sadhu Samaj, an umbrella organization of sadhus of diverse persuasions that is known to be very close to the Congress Party even today. Bhagwadacharya’s life and activities deserve fuller treatment, but here we have to confine ourselves to his role in the creation of Sanskrit Ramanand.

In his autobiography, Bhagwadacharya informs us that he was born in 1880 CE in Punjab into a family of Brahman immigrants from Uttar Pradesh. He also gives hints of his opponents’ maligning him as ‘some low caste person from Bihar’, as he was forced to spend his childhood in Bihar and to hide his Brahman identity. His opponents, of course, constantly taunted him for his ‘obscure and uncertain’ origins. But nowadays, nobody in the Sampraday doubts his reconstruction of his early life. He reached Ayodhya in 1918 and was almost immediately ‘spotted’ by those Ramanandis who wanted to take on the haughty Ramanujis, but Bhagwadacharya was a ‘novice’ of the Bara Sthan, whose Mahant clearly sided with the traditionalists. Hence Bhagwaddas had to keep away from the ‘controversies’ out of respect for the ‘command’ of his Guru. He sought an outlet in nationalist politics, as he thought the sectarian feud was not going to help anyone:

Vaishnavas (Ramanandis) wanted me to join their ranks in this feud with the Ramanujis. But I avoided all this: for one, my Gurudeva did not want me to join them; secondly, I always considered the national service more important. This sectarian feud was not going to serve the nation in any way. I left for Prayaga in order to avoid all this.[83]

In Prayaga (Allahabad), he participated in congress activities and took the lifelong Khadi vow, but could not keep away from the sectarian feud for long. He came back to Ayodhya and soon found himself in the leadership role of the radical Ramanandis. According to his recollection in the autobiography, he along with Balalkram Vinayak decided to ‘first of all, form an organization’:

The organization was formed immediately and named ‘Shri Ramanandiya Shri Vaishnava Mahamandala’. The times were terrible. We had to change the guru-parampara. The difficulty of such a task among the sadhus is beyond imagination for outsiders… We also needed a committee to do research into the Paramparas and find from them that there was no connection between Ramanuja and Ramanand. We formed such a committee as well. It was named Puratatwanusandhayini Samiti (the archeological research committee). I was the general secretary of both.[84]

The times were indeed troubled. There was a spate of pamphlets and notices from both the sides and, all of a sudden, the research committee indeed ‘found’ a document detailing the requisite parampara. In a debate at the famous Hanuman Garhi temple (in 1920 CE) the radical group presented this parampara as the ‘main’ evidence of ‘no-connection’. The resulting chasm between Bhagwaddas and his guru led to Bhagwaddas being forced to leave Bara Sthan ‘voluntarily’. He was immediately welcomed at Maniram ki Chhaoni.

The main evidence in this debate, the parampara just mentioned, was said to have been composed by Agradas of the third generation of Ramanand’s disciples. Raghubardas had found it ‘by chance’; it was being used as wrapping paper. This was only the first in a whole series of research miracles performed by the radical Ramanandis. The parampara was composed by Agradas in the form of a dialogue in which his guru Krishandasa requests his guru Anantanada, who was one of the twelve immediate disciples of Ramanand, to identify the lineage through which the initiatory Rama mantra had passed. The parampara consists of twenty-two slokas and contradicts all traditional paramparas on the question of Ramanand’s belonging to the spiritual lineage of Ramanuja. Bhagwadacharya (though he was called only Bhagwaddas at this point in his career) wrote an introduction to this parampara and dismissed all the other paramparas with an argument that, strictly speaking has no academic merit whatsoever but was bound to appeal to his target audience of Ramanandis:

None of the current Paramparas is composed by any of our own Acharyas. We are duty bound to honor a Parampara composed by someone of our own fold. Our committee has found a Parampara that is absolutely different from all others. It is worthy of our special attention and respect as it is composed by Agradasji, who was third in the lineage from Ramanandji himself. We, the Ramanandis, must ponder it. After all, who amongst us dare say that Agradasji was writing any falsehood… This Parampara clearly tells us that Ramanandji did not belong to lineage of Ramanujaji. This statement is bound to cause a lot of disturbance but is still worthy of very serious attention.[85]

The radical strategy and aim both become clear here. Anybody doubting the authenticity of this parampara would be guilty of sacrilege against Agradas himself. And if this sacrilege is to be avoided than Ramanand had nothing to do with Ramanuja. It is important to note here that, unlike the academic reasoning to which we have become accustomed, Bhagwaddas’s discourse and that of his adversaries did not at all distinguish between historical, legendary and mythological personae. Rama himself gave the mantra to Sita, according to this parampara, and it passed down to Raghvananda in the twenty-first generation; he then gave it to Ramanand. As we know, only ‘three or five’ of these generations can be located in history proper. That is equally true of other paramparas as well. The point is, however, that for participants in this ‘sectarian feud’ all generations – twenty-one or thirty-two, as the case may be – were equally ‘historical’. Playing upon this shared term of debate, Bhagwaddas could easily mix up legend, mythology and history and raise the objection – ‘how come more than twenty generations passed in just three hundred years between Ramanuja and Ramanand?’ Countering this in the same terms of debate, Balbhadra Das took pains to prove once again that Ramanand was active in the 15^th century CE. Hence so many generations are quite possible. As already indicated, the year 1356 of Vikrama Samvat was useful for Bhagwaddas only so far as it helped him to question the appearance of Varvara Muni before Ramanand in the traditional Paramparas. The deliberate confusion between the Agastya Samhita proper and its putative chapters composed by Ramanarayandas also came in handy for Bhagwaddas, as he could put the lineage of the Rama Mantra, as given in the eighth chapter of Agastya Samhita proper, into the mouth of Agradas in this parampara which Raghubardas had found ‘by chance’. Similarly Bhagwadacharya could also refer to 1356 VS, as given in the “same Samhita,” elsewhere in his writings, with the caveat we have heard, namely, that ‘the floruit of Ramanand might need to be pushed back by another hundred years.’

The other important aspect of this parampara was its complete erasure of any Acharya of southern origin. This was required to completely cut off from the Ramanuji connection and it also implicitly dismissed the popular belief that Ramanand brought Bhakti from south, a sentiment articulated in another well-known Hindi verse – ‘Bhakti dravid upji, laye Ramanand‘ (bhakti originated in the south and was brought (to north) by Ramanand). Here again the Ramanand Janmotsva Katha‘s idea of Ramanand hailing from Prayaga was helpful to the cause of radical Ramanandis and they upheld it quite vigorously.

The problem, however, was the guru-parampara as given in the Ramarchan Paddhati attributed to Ramanand. Here Bhagwaddas was faced with his own logic of sacrilege: how dare one doubt the parampara given by Ramanand himself? At first the radical group tried to face the awkward situation by out rightly rejecting the Paddhati as ‘fake’ (1923) but, later, they took a more moderate position, expressing doubts about the ‘authenticity’ of the text doing the rounds in the name of Paddhati (1936) in response to Balbhadra Das’s (1928) claim that his edition was based upon a manuscript of the seventeenth century and a litho copy of 1880 CE. It was only in 1958 that Bhagwaddas finally came to an unambiguous declaration on this matter. He said, “It is beyond doubt that the Ramarchanpaddhati and the present Ananda Bhashya were never composed by Ramanand.” [86]

The radical faction succeeded, on the occasion of the Ujjain Kumbh in 1921, in bringing the bulk of Ramanandis and many leading Mahants to their side. Bhagwadacharya was to call May 11, 1921, ‘the day of deliverance for the sampraday’. It was on this day, he said, that the Ramanujis failed to respond to the charge that their sectarian texts ‘contained insults’ to Rama and other Ramawat deities. Whether Ramanuji texts contained such insults is not sure, but their actual behavior in relation to Ramanandis was certainly colored by disdain. Van der Veer, for example, recounts the experience of a Brahman Ramanandi who joined a Ramanuji teacher in order to learn Sanskrit: “The guru knew that he (the disciple) was of high caste birth, but since he was a Ramanandi, he thought him so low that he did not give him the brass water pot normally used for guests.”[87] Obviously the Ramanuji teacher in question was sure that due to his regular contact with the Shudras, his Brahman disciple has lost his purity.

The ‘deliverance’ earned at the Kumbh in 1921 had immediate fallout, as if the Ramanandis were only waiting for this ‘intellectual’ victory to be translated into some symbolic act. Bhagwadacharya notes with understandable sense of achievement:

The final ritual bath was just a few days away. Up to that point the Ramanujis led the procession, with a prominent Ramanuji entering in a palanquin carried by the Ramanandis… After the victory things changed dramatically. The Ramanujis were excluded from the procession that forms for the final bath. Now they cannot join the Ramanandis in any Kumbh.[88]

Even after this ‘deliverance,’ however, sharp debates and polemics persisted, as is made clear by the dates mentioned above in the context of the controversy over the Paddhati. The radical faction was faced with the task of not only ‘changing the parampara’ but also that of producing a Bhashya by Ramanand, as without a Bhashya nobody can be considered an Acharya in his own right. Aware of this need, the radical faction was on the job, even before the ‘deliverance’. As we have seen earlier in this essay, already in 1920 Bhagwadacharya was referring to the ‘Ananda Bhashya of ‘Swami Ramanandji’ as in the process of being published. The Bhashya ultimately appeared in full in 1932 and Bhagwadacharya, along with others of the radical faction, continued to swear by its authenticity in the face of onslaughts on the part of opponents like Balbhadra Das, who pointed out as many as fourteen inaccuracies of grammar and doctrine. The opponents categorically accused Raghubardas, the then friend of Bhagwadacharya, of forging it with the sole intent of severing the connection with Ramanujis. Bhagwadacharya rejected all such charges with vehemence at this point in time but, once he fell out with Raghubardas, he started condemning this Bhashya as ‘nothing but a forgery perpetuated by Raghubardas.’ In his autobiography, he gives the fascinating details of intrigues that went into ‘transforming the Janaki Bhashya of Ram Prasad into the Ananda Bhashya and attributing it to Ramanand’. He admits quite candidly, ‘being a new and fresh recruit to the cause, I inspired this act of injustice and fraud.’[89]

This confession came in 1958. He also confessed to having ‘changed the very body of the Vaishnavamatabjabhaskar.‘ But, just as in case of the early or late floruit of Ramanand, the authenticity of the Bhashya, Paddhati, or Bhaskar hardly mattered now. Bhagwadacharya and his group had successfully metamorphosed ‘the wayward disciple of Ramanuji tradition’ into the ‘founder of an independent tradition, into an Acharya in his own right, an author of Sanskrit works.’ This metamorphosis, as was intended, took place in the imagination of the Ramanandis, and we now know the dynamics of this metamorphosis. As we have seen, however, the transformation took place not only in the Ramanandi imagination but also in the imagination of academic scholars.

The metamorphosis had far-reaching consequences, some of which I have tried to analyze in this essay. Having achieved their ‘deliverance’, Ramanandis now take the authenticity of all the Sanskrit works attributed to Ramanand for granted, and in the same measure insist on his early floruit. The strategy of Sanskrtising Ramanand in order to subvert the Brahmanical hegemony of the Ramanujis has worked well so far as the Ramanandis are concerned, or at least they think so. They have not completely disowned the Hindi Ramanand, but have definitely subordinated him to the Sanskrit one. They also continue to revere his ‘low caste disciples’ even if in tune with the Galta decisions such disciples are not to be considered the authentic transmitters of the Ramanand’s doctrine. Obviously, then, the Ramanandi reformists have succeeded; the strategy has worked well, so far as the Ramanandi sect is concerned. But what about Ramanand himself? What this strategy has done to him?

To put it briefly and mildly, it has denied Ramanand his roots and has helped undermine the significance of his attempt at transcending the social identity he was assigned at birth. It has weakened the courage of his convictions. Ramanand emerges as an independent thinker both in his Hindi compositions and in whatever little we have in other references made to him in the medieval period. In spite of being born a Brahmin, he was no Brahmin supremacist; in fact, he was quite critical of ritualism and gave the fullest space to the individual choice of his disciples. The modern Ramanandis constructed an orthodox, albeit liberal, Acharya to replace the historical Ramanand and in so doing reduced the historical facts and evidence to mere instruments at the service of their present project.

This utter instrumentalisation of facts and method – this complete subordination of the past to the present, this total denial of the autonomy of the past, this erasure of its pastness is bound to lead to problems of a very serious kind, as we in India have been witnessing in so many contexts. If it is widely accepted that the politics of identity override honest efforts to know the past, both justice and truth stand on perilously weak footing.

The politics of identity has made the idea of ‘representation’ extremely popular in the academic circles these days. How could a Brahman persist in challenging the idea and practice of caste? Ergo, Ramanand born a Brahman could not but be an orthodox and orthoprax Acharya! The ‘assumptions’ are sufficient in themselves, why bother about proof?

Carlo Ginzburg describes the current academic fashion and its moral implications quite cogently. Let me quote him in some length:

For many historians the notion of proof is out of fashion: like that of truth to which it is bound by a very solid historical (and therefore unnecessary) link. There are many reasons for this devaluation, and not all of them are intellectual in nature. One reason certainly has to do with the overblown importance acquired – on both sides of the Atlantic, in France and in the United States – by the term ‘representation’. Because of the various uses to which it has been put, the term winds up creating an insurmountable wall around the historian. Historical sources tend to be examined exclusively as sources of themselves (of the way in which they were constructed), not as the sources of the things they discus. In other words, there is an analysis of the sources (written, visual and so on) as evidence of social ‘representations’: at the same time, there is a general rejection of the possibility of analyzing the relationship between these representations and the reality they depict or represent; this is dismissed as an unforgivable instance of naïve positivism. Now those relationships are never straightforward – to think that they are simple mirrorings of reality would indeed be naïve. We know perfectly well that every representation is constructed in accordance with a predetermined code – to gain direct access to historical reality (or to reality itself for that matter) is impossible by definition. To infer from this fact, however, that reality is unknowable is to fall into a lazily radical form of skepticism, at once unsustainable in existential terms and inconsistent in logical terms-as we know full well, the fundamental decision of the skeptic is not subjected to the methodological doubt he claims to profess.[90]

The ‘general rejection of the possibility of analyzing the relationships between representations and reality’ has led to the fixation of ascribed identity with the supposedly ‘authentic’ representation that precludes the possibility of moral choice on the part of the individuals who, by definition, happen to carry multiple identities. In the area of Bhakti studies, this fixation results in systematic denial of the very core of Bhakti sensibility. This sensibility is seen as an exclusionist representation on the part of various social identities instead of what it really is: a dialogue between various moral actors. The exclusionist method, quite aware of its essential poverty of proof, insists on creating an insurmountable wall around historians, using the construction material of the overblown notions of representation and authenticity.

The story of Ramanand deserves to be probed further as it, like many others, helps us to see the Indian tradition as something vibrant and not as ‘frozen in time’. It also points out the processes underlying the emergence and spread of the Bhakti sensibility in pre-modern India. This story bears witness to the dynamics in which some individuals and groups go beyond the ascriptive social identities and seek to construct a parallel, moral universe in their imagination as a benchmark of critiquing the existing social life.

One final matter deserves mention: Ramanand’s own silence about his guru and the lineage in which he stood. What are we to make of that? Ramanand’s silence in this regard is hardly unique. We also meet it with Kabir, for example, who also does not mention the name of his Guru explicitly – but then who does? As David Lorenzen reminds us, “Since most of the other early Sant poets rarely refer to their human gurus by name, this objection does not seem to be a particularly important one.”[91]

The medieval consensus is important. If all this was a matter of Hinduising Kabir, the medieval consensus could have insisted on his not ‘being a Muslim by birth’ – as was actually done later, in the nineteenth century. The implications of the virtual elimination of the guru’s human presence, the obliteration of difference between guru and God are exciting, but will have to wait for another occasion. Suffice it to say at the moment that those wishing to dismiss the entire range of medieval informants insisting on Ramanand being the Guru of Kabir and others as either victims or perpetrators of the ‘Brahmanical conspiracy’ must present more credible arguments than the chronological and temperamental difficulties that have been proposed. I hope I have demonstrated that these difficulties are actually nothing more than baseless assumptions.

[76] Ibid.,p.97.

[77] Balbhadra Das, op.cit.preface.p.5.

[78] Ibid.p.7.

[79] Ibid.p.250-51.

[80] Ibid.p.251-52.

[81] Bhagwadacharya, ‘Swami Bhagwadacharya’ (Vol.I), Ahemadabad, 1958,p.65-66.

[82] Ibid. P.568-569.

[83] Ibid.P.79.

[84] Ibid.p.86.

[85] ‘Swami Bhagwadacharya’ (Vol.III), p.31-32.

[86] ‘Swami Bhagwadacharya’ (Vol.I), p.596.

[87] Van der veer, op. cit.p.105.

[88] ‘Swami Bhagwadacharya’ (Vol.I), p.118.

[89] Ibid.P.486-489 and p.574-575.

[90] Carlo Ginzburg, ‘The Judge and the Historian: marginal notes on a late- twentieth-century miscarriage of justice’ (Translated by Anthony Shuggar), London, p.16-17.

[91] Lorenzen, op.cit.p.12.