Book Reviews

Abstract

It synthesizes three scholarly reviews of recent works that critically reexamine the Bhakti tradition in Indian religious history. Patton Burchett’s A Genealogy of Devotion highlights Bhakti’s entanglements with Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in early modern North India, situating it within the socio-political dynamics of the Sultanate and Mughal periods. The Power of Bhakti, edited by Hawley, Novetzke, and Sharma, explores Bhakti’s diverse expressions through social, performative, and communal lenses, while also probing its historiographical and gendered dimensions. John Stratton Hawley’s A Storm of Songs challenges the coherence of the “Bhakti movement,” framing it as a retrospective intellectual construction shaped by political motives. Together, these reviews underscore a shift in Bhakti studies toward more critical, contextualized, and pluralistic understandings of devotion in South Asia.