Concluding Questions

The story of Ramanand needs to be probed further. The idea of two Ramanands is clearly untenable. Similarly there is no ground whatsoever to doubt his fifteenth century floruit and push him back to the fourteenth century of the Common Era. Is it true, as Richard Burghart says, that Ramanand was dwarfed by his disciples in “Priya Dass’ commentary on Nabha Ji’s Sri Bhakta Mala,” [92] or could it be that Ramanand did not care to establish a Panth or create a cult around him? In that case, would what Burghart reads as ‘dwarfing’ turn out to be a genuine tribute to Ramanand’s personality and temperament?

The story of Ramanand deserves to be probed further because it, like many others, helps us see the Indian tradition as something vibrant, not as frozen in time. It also points out some of the processes underlying the emergence and spread of the Bhakti sensibility in pre-modern India. This story bears witness to the dynamics that made it possible for some individuals and groups to go beyond the social identities that had been assigned them at birth and seek to construct a parallel, moral universe in their imagination – a benchmark in the process of critiquing the existing social order. This story needs to be probed further because Ramanand may have been the most important source of inspiration for the spread of ‘non-caste Hinduism’ in the whole sweep of Indian – certainly north Indian – religious history.