Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Foreword
- Preface
- Introduction: Locating Devotion in Dissent and Dissent in Devotion A Thematic Overview
- Introduction
- 1 Parsing of Devotion and Dissent
- 2 Dissent and Protest in Early Indian Buddhism with Special Reference to Devadatta
- 3 Devotion and Dissent in Hunter's Bhakti
- 4 Devotion and Dissent
- 5 Dissent Within
- 6 Women in Love
- 7 Dissenting Voices
- 8 Dissent in Kabir and the Kabir Panth
- 9 Devotion and Dissent of Punjabi Dalit Sant Poets
- 10 Protest and Counter-protest
- 11 Fakirs of Bengal
- 12 Music in Chishti Sufism
- 13 Dissenting the Dominant
- 14 Devotion and Dissent within the Catholic Church in Late Colonial Bengal
- 15 Narratives of Travel, Voices of Dissent and Attacks on the Colonial Church Fabric of the European Missionaries
- 16 Devotion and Dissent in Narayana Guru
- 17 Sree Narayana Guru's Idioms of the Spiritual and the Worldly
- Contributors
- Index
7 - Dissenting Voices
from Introduction: Locating Devotion in Dissent and Dissent in Devotion A Thematic Overview
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Foreword
- Preface
- Introduction: Locating Devotion in Dissent and Dissent in Devotion A Thematic Overview
- Introduction
- 1 Parsing of Devotion and Dissent
- 2 Dissent and Protest in Early Indian Buddhism with Special Reference to Devadatta
- 3 Devotion and Dissent in Hunter's Bhakti
- 4 Devotion and Dissent
- 5 Dissent Within
- 6 Women in Love
- 7 Dissenting Voices
- 8 Dissent in Kabir and the Kabir Panth
- 9 Devotion and Dissent of Punjabi Dalit Sant Poets
- 10 Protest and Counter-protest
- 11 Fakirs of Bengal
- 12 Music in Chishti Sufism
- 13 Dissenting the Dominant
- 14 Devotion and Dissent within the Catholic Church in Late Colonial Bengal
- 15 Narratives of Travel, Voices of Dissent and Attacks on the Colonial Church Fabric of the European Missionaries
- 16 Devotion and Dissent in Narayana Guru
- 17 Sree Narayana Guru's Idioms of the Spiritual and the Worldly
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
Varkari Tradition
A continuous religio-socio-literary phenomenon, such as the Varkari tradition, which can be traced back to the late thirteenth century at least, may be seen in categories that have been termed as ‘a history of cultural memory’ or ‘mnemohistory’. The public memory of traditional societies is constructed from a dynamic version of the past that cares not so much for historical accuracy or fact, as for the continuing significance that the past holds for the present. The relationship of the present to the past is dynamic and is constantly shaped by the interpretations of several texts and narratives, written and oral, which live on in a kind of a living debate, extending over centuries. Chronicles of pre-colonial Indian figures, especially those from the domains of religious and devotional sects, and the literary works attributed to them, are not recorded in ways that are amenable to biographical reconstruction, but live in the collective memory of communities. Sanctified and mythologized in hagiographies, these lives may be said to be socially constructed. The contours of the life of a proto-historical figure take shape from the values and norms that constitute that community. In a sense then, if one were to trace the lives of two poet saints from the Varkari sampradaya, separated from each other by a couple of centuries, yet connected in ways that this essay hopes to explore, the narrative would also be a reconstruction of the culture of the community that had kept the memories of these lives alive.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Devotion and Dissent in Indian History , pp. 145 - 168Publisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2014