Loving God the Mira Way

A Sadhana in Song and Story

Abstract

Much has been written about Mirabai, drawing upon stories of her life, both hagiographical and allegedly historical and on songs attributed to her. Neither, as it turns out, give us clear access to the actual events in the life of this sixteenth-century woman or to her individual words and thoughts. The traces of her life in traditional historical sources are few, with later “historical biographies” relying heavily on hagiographic texts and imbued with the values, assumptions, and agendas of their authors, her thoughts and interactions detailed in docudrama style. Claims made to have uncovered original manuscripts of her songs are equally suspect, and the song traditions we have in her name instead reflect the contributions of innumerable others across the centuries.

This essay seeks to build on a growing body of literature that explores this intersubjective larger corpus of song and story. Parita Mukta’s ground-breaking work on oral traditions performed among low-caste communities and the post-colonial feminist readings of Rashmi Bhatnagar, Renu Dube, and Reena Dube have contributed immensely to our understanding of bhajans in Mirabai’s voice as a mode of resistance, making audible the experiences, suffering, and insights of the oppressed and fostering solidarity. Yet neither addresses the ways in which this voice also challenges conceptions of bhakti itself. Here, too, we find resistance and solidarity articulated, a resistance to religious authorities and affirmation of a bhakti that is radically inclusive and directly accessible to all and a path charted for women, and men, who would choose to orient their lives primarily or exclusively toward devotion.