Bhakti Poetry in Medieval India

This text is an attempt to reconstruct the Bhakti movement from the 8 century Tamilnadu to the 16 century Punjab, in its totality, as a connected organic phenomenon, and as perhaps the earliest Indian voice of deconstructive modern thought. Besides surveying the tradition of Bhakti poetry writing, the author studies in some detail, the text and context of the Nirguna poetry of Sant Kabir and Guru Nanak. She examines both Kabir and Nanak as radical mystic poets who carried further the evolving concept of worship and divinity, and wrote a poetic dipped in the reformist zeal and rigorous questioning of established norms. The last section of the book shifts from the singing bhaktas of medieval India to the colonial mindset of the English-spouting Indian Babu poets. In keeping with its ‘Indian English’ concerns, the book scans the fractured face of 20 century Indian poetry (written in English), for signs of continuing folk and mystic traditions… lost and culturally erased, they reappear with a new strength in the verse of Aurobindo and Tagore. But beyond that, where in Indian English poetry does one find that heat of fire-breathing reality, or that coolness of a lotus like sky where the winds gather to fan the approaching night?