Abstract
The concept of ‘identity’ often becomes convoluted within the tradition of bhakti (devotion of god). This article engages in a comparative study of two of Lord Krishna’s devotees, each from a different gender group, in order to determine if gender divisions remain constant or change with the emerging emotions of bhakti. The article claims that the works of the early bhakti poets evince several instances of queer identity that history and modern Indian homophobia seek to erase. To understand such complexities, the article uses the queer theory, whose main project is to explore the contested categorisation of gender and sexuality. According to the queer theory, identities are not fixed, categorised or labelled, but composed instead of a variety of constituents which often cannot be characterised systematically. The objective of the article is to reveal both Mirabai and Surdas as sexual subjects who are culturally dependent and historically specific.
Introduction
How can a relational system be reached through sexual practices? … To be ‘gay’, I think, is not to identify with the psychological traits and the visible marks of the homosexual, but to try to define and develop a way of life.
The concept of transgender, or ‘queerness’, has developed, at least in part, in opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality and reproduction. If one thinks about queerness as a consequence of strange temperaments, imaginative livelihood and unconventional practices, it is possible to detach ‘queerness’ from sexual identity and come closer to understanding Foucault’s comment in Friendship as a Way of Life (1981) that ‘homosexuality threatens people as a “way of life” rather than as a way of having sex’. His radical formulation concerns the ‘queer’ way of life which incorporates alternative forms of partnership, subcultural practices, transgender manifestations and other wilfully adopted eccentric modes of being.
The term ‘transgender’ rose in the 1990s and was applied to sociocultural and critical-intellectual formations with the aim of taking a polemical and politicised position. What began as a catchphrase in the early 1990s has now established itself as a term used by choice, in both popular parlance and a variety of professional discourses, for a wide range of phenomena that underscores the fact that ‘“gender” as it is lived, embodied, experienced, performed and encountered, is more complex and varied than can be accounted by the currently dominant binary sex/gender ideology of Eurocentric modernity’ (Stryker & Whittle, 2006, p. 3).
Today, transgender studies form an interdisciplinary field drawing upon several discourses—such as the social sciences, life sciences, psychology and the arts—and involve both material conditions as well as representational practices, often paying particularly close attention to the interface of the two. Such a framework—developed for analysing and interpreting gender, desire and identity—has affected a wide range of subject areas. Transgender phenomena have thus ‘become a topical focus in fields ranging from musicology to religious studies to digital media; a theme in visual, plastic and performative arts; and a matter of practical concern in such fields as family law’ (Stryker & Whittle, 2006, p. 3).
In its broadest conception, the field of transgender studies is concerned with anything that disrupts, denaturalises and rearticulates the individually experienced relationship between a gendered sense of self and social expectations arising from it, and the cultural network that works to sustain or thwart specific structures of that gendered personhood. The field of transgender studies is not only concerned with linkages and assumptions about sex and gender but also seeks to understand those who make those assumptions, forge those links, as well as those who are ready to break them. The field examines the ethical and moral grounding of people who experience and express their gender in fundamentally different ways. Ultimately, what is of real interest is the manner in which these transgender phenomena reveal sets of norms that are culturally produced and enforced and the operations of systems and institutions that simultaneously produce some and eliminate other viable forms of personhood.
The word ‘transgender’, probably coined in the 1980s, took on its current meaning in 1992 when it appeared in the title of a small but influential pamphlet by Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time has Come (1992). The first usage of the term is generally attributed to Virginia Prince, a Southern California advocate for freedom of gender expression. Prince used the term to refer to individuals like herself whose personal identities she considered to fall somewhere on the spectrum between ‘transvestite’ and ‘transsexual’ (Stryker & Whittle, 2006, p. 4). With Feinberg, the term ‘transgender’ began to be used as an adjective rather than a noun. Feinberg called for the participation of all individuals who were marginalised or oppressed due to their difference from social expectations of gendered roles. He inspired them to group together to fight for social, political and economic justice. Transgender, in this sense, was a ‘“pangender” umbrella term for an imagined community encompassing transsexuals, drag queens, butches, hermaphrodites, cross-dressers, masculine women, effeminate men, sissies, tomboys, and anybody else willing to be interpolated by the term, who felt compelled to answer the call to mobilization’ (Stryker & Whittle, 2006, p. 4).
Hinduism is one of the most ancient and diverse of the world’s religions. The extensive and complex character of the religion and its strange and numerous gods and goddesses confuse and startle most Westerners. Sanskrit scholar Robert Goldman writes of ‘transsexualism’: ‘Few cultures have accorded this phenomenon so prominent a place in the realms of mythology and religion as that of traditional India’ (1993, p. 376). The Hindu universe is highly accustomed to the flexibility of divine beings and other creatures who often change their appearance. Sex and gender are often unimportant matters for such beings. In the human world too, sex and gender are considered subordinate to a higher transcendental reality as they are not aspects of the true self. Seen in this manner, neither of the two is supposed to prevent one from seeking and eventually finding release from the cycle of birth and rebirth that confines us to a world of illusion. In fact, sex and gender boundaries can be transcended or crossed in order to seek a divine reality, not only thereby proving dedication to a deity but also drawing attention to the arbitrary and fluid nature of gender (Bolich, 2008). The Hindu ‘henotheistic model’, as defined by G. G. Bolich, permits the worship of several divine figures with ambiguous gender forms like Brahman, who is beyond sex and gender; gender androgynous Agni; gender altering Mahadeva; and finally, Vishnu as Mohini. Several others are hermaphrodites, such as Ardhanari, Ardhanarisvara and Ayyapan. The united form of Shiva and his consort Parvati, popularly known as Ardhanarisvara, depicts the male on one side of the body and the female on the other. Two prominent male gods, Shiva and Vishnu, also exist together in the form of Harihara. Viewed in this manner, gender appears to be a fluid rather than a static or fixed category, reflecting diverse manifestations of a single underlying unity.
According to some Indian historians, the history of literature, religion and sexual practices of pre-modern Indian civilisation contains several instances of transgendering and multiple sexualities without the mark of either constant anxiety or exaggerated celebration imposed upon them. In the historical period that saw the rise of the Bhakti movement in India, Indian society, along with its literary and cultural sphere, entered a new phase of growth and evolution. The Bhakti movement was a pervasive cultural movement, which spread across various forms of cultural expression, including religion, philosophy, language, art and literature. In fact, it was a pan-Indian uprising headed by certain social groups with the aim of redefining their position and status within the established social order. The primary medium through which this was attempted was bhakti (devotion to God). The proponents of the movement were not from the elite class but from the subaltern classes, engaged in very humble occupations: Raidas was a cobbler; Kabir was a low-caste weaver; Nanak was a small time trader; Namdev was a tailor; and Tukaram was a low-caste trader (Pande, 1998). Despite their humble backgrounds, these saints—who sought to alter the sphere of social relations—conceived something never thought of before. For the first time, this group of men broke through the strong conservative walls of ritual to reach up to God through their pure emotions and sentiments. In other words, they taught people to love God rather than worship God.
Although there are several examples in existing literature that dwell on the philosophical aspect of the direct relationship between devotee and deity, not much research has been done on the erotic aspect that often qualifies yet complicates such a relationship. This is exactly where this article contributes to the existing literature—it probes how a devotee, or bhakta, is culturally created as a gendered subject. By doing this, the article not only highlights several undiscussed rather hidden aspects of homoeroticism that have existed for a long time within the domain of religion in India but also upholds the stereotypical qualities of femininity that have infiltrated that domain to indirectly determine the social role of women.
No account of the Bhakti movement would be complete without describing the two great Hindu poet saints: Mirabai and Surdas. This article engages in a comparative study of these two devotees of Lord Krishna, belonging to two different gender groups, to discover if the gender divisions remain constant or change with the emerging emotions of bhakti. The article claims that the works of the early bhakti poets contain much evidence of queer identity that history and modern Indian homophobia seek to erase. During the medieval period, the Bhakti movement, similar to the Sufi movement in the Perso-Arabic tradition, gained momentum in India. This movement reframed the perception of God and divinity. The gods were no longer just worshipped as superior beings but were rather seen as friends, lovers, a spouse or even as children. This opened up fluid intimacies—and a fluidity of the gendered structure— between the deity and the devotee.
The Bhakti movement opened new possibilities of reframing and discarding orthodox notions of sexual rigidity. By making the deity a lover, new forms of intimacy were discovered beyond the confines of marriage and family. This, in several ways, legitimised same-sex love and desire under the guise of devotion and godly love. Thus, poets like Surdas could sing the praises of a male love who was a divine being, while female poets like Mirabai could evade the strictures of marriage and family imposed on women by society. However, by incorporating God into the family, the devotee was often in conflict with the traditional reproductive family, as in the case of Mirabai (Dasgupta, 2011, p. 654).
As part of the movement, a number of women bhaktas emerged into the public domain, expressing themselves for the first time through the medium of religious poetry. These women were to adopt very radical social postures in their personal lives, opposing the institutions of marriage and family. They abandoned and renounced age-old notions of respectability and feminine behaviour, either by wearing ghungroos (A musical anklet) and dancing with sadhus as Mira did, or by discarding clothes like Akka Mahadevi. In fact, many of them renounced the security of their families to move about such as mendicants and wanderers to realise their creativity and lead a life according to their will. Such radicalism in women was; however, marginalised, and what is remembered of them today is their religious poetry. The discourse of the Bhakti movement was articulated primarily by men who scarcely attempted to address the question of subordination of women in society and family. In fact, in bhakti poetry, one clearly sees not only a definite restatement and reiteration of the prevalent patriarchal attitudes highlighting the sub-ordination of women but also a further denigration of the woman figure by various poet saints. The general trend was to emphasise the commitment of women to family no matter what problems they faced. In addition to this, women were regarded as obstacles to salvation. To Kabir, a woman was worse than hell, her destiny being to destroy men and remain alone. Tulsidas categorised women with drums, imbeciles and animals, fit only to be beaten. For Surdas, a woman was like a poisonous snake from whose clutches a man could not hope to escape (Pande, 1998, p. 16). In fact, the perils that woman poses for man were listed way back in the Vedic period by the saint Manu in his thesis Manusmriti (Laws of Manu).
Male mystic poets such as Surdas, on the other hand, envisioned themselves as ‘brides of God’. An intense emotional relationship developed between God and the devotee who desired union with Him. Vanita and Kidwai note that ‘in this type of a Vaishnava tradition all male devotees tend to identify with the female who desires union with the male deity’ (2000, p. 65). This voice and the feminisation of devotion assist in the personalisation of worship and enable transcendence for the devotee, cutting across and going beyond the concept of gender. For instance, Surdas writes: ‘These eyes thirst for a vision of Hari/Wanting to see the lotus-eyed one/Grieving for him day and night’ (Dasgupta, 2011, p. 655). If these lines are taken out of the context of bhakti, they could easily be read as a poem written to a male lover, who appears to be distant and unavailable.
The poets of the Bhakti movement were guided mainly by the concept of mysticism. In order to achieve union with God or the transcendental power, bhakti poets took recourse to typically two paths of mysticism. The first path was characterised by an intense love for God that excluded love for all other worldly creatures, thereby expediting one’s achievement of the transcendental eternality; that is, letting the self-die to be able to live with God. The other path’s main aim was to explore the true love for God within oneself and achieve the ultimate goal of attaining spiritual union with the transcendental self through the path of passionate devotion. Thus, while approaching the moment of transcendental union through either of the two mystical paths, the individual was in direct communication with the spiritual world (Kumar & Sharma, 2012). This union of the enlightened soul with the Supreme Being was usually expressed through metaphors of passionate and intoxicating human love. Within the domain of this religious movement, a personal relationship between the human and the deity replaced religious practices mediated by priests, who were always paid for directly intervening with God on the behalf of others.
In the bhakti cult, the transcendental self was usually personified in the human form of a particular deity—Krishna for Surdas and Mirabai, for example, and Ram for Tulsidas. So the notion of the transcendental self is not monolithic because of the subtle multi-sectarian nuances that the ritualistic practices within Hinduism represent. The path to be followed by the individual/devotee (in this case the das or dasi, or servant) is however specified in the multifaceted diversity of the Bhakti movement and has been described as daasatvaras (aesthetics of servitude). However, the relationship of the devotee to God is considered essentially feminine in nature.
The female devotional voice and the ‘feminine’ nature of the devotee’s relationship to God have a remarkable history, which spreads across monistic and dualistic, saguna (with attributes) and nirguna (without attributes), advaita (non-dualism) and dvaita (dualism) theology as well as Shaivism and Vaishnavism, and seems to be as old as bhakti itself (Sangari, 1990, p. 1537). Notwithstanding its differential history, with the use of this voice, the abstract notions of femaleness and woman-hood gradually acquire meaning and are crystallised into metaphors which have both a direct and an inverse relation to the ‘subalternity’ of women. It is used by the 7th century Alvar saints; for example, by Gọda Andal in her intense madhuryabhakti (sweet-devotion) for Krishna, which mingles the erotic aspects of shringara (adornment) with spiritual desire. Among the Nayanmars, too, as in Sambandav from the 7th century, divine union is described in terms of conjugal love: the bhakta is a lovesick woman and God is the thief who steals her heart. The Vaishnavite Tamil saint Nammalvar (600‒800 century) saw himself as a woman. Akka Mahadevi (1100 century) betrothed herself to Shiva and sang, ‘I saw the haughty Master for whom men,/all men, are but women, wives’ (Ramanujan, 1973, p. 120; Sangari, 1990, p. 1537). However, this female voice was largely a construction. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble seeks to uncover the ways our gendered life is enclosed by certain habitual and forceful presumptions. Butler’s view of gender, being performative, aims to show that ‘what we take to be an internal essence of gender is manufactured through a sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylisation of the body’ (1990, p. 33). Further, Simone de Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex: ‘One is not born a woman but rather becomes one’ (1952, p. 1). Michel Foucault, who had inspired Butler, writes in History and Sexuality that ‘the deployment of sexuality … established the notion of sex’ (1973, p. 152).
The following sections of this article try to illustrate that the concept of ‘gender’ is largely a construction in which the formation of identity is completely dependent on a performative accomplishment of sexuality, with certain kinds of acts qualifying over others as foundational.
The ‘feminisation’ of worship was most popular in Vaishnava texts, a tendency later converted into regular practice by Bengal Vaishnavism (or Gaudiya Vaishnavism), which believed that ‘the essential nature of all men is that of a gopi’ (Sangari, 1990, p. 1537). Bengal Vaishnavism was a movement distinguished by its veneration of Krishna as an individual deity rather than as an avatar of Vishnu. In fact, Krishna’s relationship with his consort Radha was also highly celebrated. During the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the movement witnessed its most famous figure, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who is regarded as the incarnation of Krishna and Radha born into a single body, and thus inseparable.
Whereas in the Bhagavata Purana, the relationship that a devotee can have with Krishna is that of a lover—as the gopis do in Bhagavata Mahatmya, a eulogistic text of unknown authorship—bhakti itself is personified as a woman. Several scholars, including the Indian culture scholar Gerald Larson, refer to Krishna’s male devotees who seek femininity in pursuit of their union with the Lord. The Gujarati saint Narsi Mehta, born about 80 years before Mira, describes his experience in Dwarka: ‘I took the hand of that lover of the gopis in loving converse … I forgot all else. Even my manhood left me. I began to sing and dance as a woman. My body seemed to change and I became one of the gopis (female cowherds). I acted as a go-between like a woman, and began to lecture Radha for being too proud …. At such times I experienced moments of incomparable sweetness and joy. He who was sitting, singing with Radha was also at that very time seated in my own heart’ (in Sangari, 1990, p. 1538). In this description, we get a glimpse of what queer theorists would call a ‘gay sensibility’. As the Indian languages long lacked a term for the Western notion of homosexual identity, a large gender- and sexual-identity vocabulary gradually developed in order to describe such phenomena. Gender studies scholar Paola Bacchetta points out that contemporary Indian culture proposed a number of terms—such as bhagini (vaginal sister), chay number (number six), dost (male friend of a male), khush (gay or happy), jankha (effeminate gay men), samlingkami (desirous of the same sex), sakhi (woman friend of a woman) and zenana (effeminate gay men)—to apply to various transgender or homosexual identities (1999, p. 146).
Mirabai was a bhakti saint from Rajasthan in northern India, whose songs (pads) were composed in the Braj language. She practised bhakti (devotion or a fervent type of worship) evolved from the Vaishnava branch of Hinduism. She never wrote down her songs and poems; rather they exist in colloquial language transmitted from one generation to another in the religio-folk convention. This article attempts to understand the specific character of Mirabai’s bhakti as it has evolved within the overlapping yet contradictory configuration of patriarchal assumptions in a medieval Rajput state and prescriptive Brahminical texts. The female devotional voice of Mira as expressed through her songs is further compared to that of her contemporary male poet Surdas.
The life of Mirabai and her contributions, at least on the surface, give voice to the marginalised women who rebelled against the strong frame of the medieval patriarchal structure. Mira’s desire for renunciation itself symbolises a direct opposition to the patriarchal construction of religion. The Hindu Shastric/Puranic patriarchal injunctions define women as part of the illusory world, stating that they lack a soul and their mayavi (deceptive) nature is a hindrance to the achievement of renunciation by men. Therefore, all women are prohibited from the state of renunciation (Bhatnagar, Dube & Dube, 2004, p. 21). According to this tradition, the only way in which women can gain access to the state of transcendence is through husband worship and service (Manu, 1982). Mirabai expressed her dissent against this patriarchal envisioning of women’s spirituality:
Here, it is also important to understand the cultural significance of the term sakhi, or childhood ‘friend’, in medieval devotional poetry. It literally refers to a female friend, with sakha as the male equivalent. This intimate friend occupies the space of the unavailable lover; she is accessible, is intellectually on par with and shares the same interests as that of her friend. The sameness or similar experiences brings the two friends closer. Unlike Western narratives in which the friend’s role is mostly secondary or simply that of an onlooker, the sakhi in Indian narratives plays an important role in the emergence of the emotion of sakhibhava, which stands in for the ‘female to male attachment’. The predominant concept in sakhibhava is that Krishna pre-eminently embodies maleness and before him all other living beings are reduced to femaleness. Since Radha is his favourite consort, sakhibhava devotees venerate her and seek to be like her in all ways. The female companions, or sakhis, are privileged witnesses to the Krishna–Radha relationship. Male sakhibhava devotees, on the other hand, express their desire by imitating the sakhis. Like the gopis, they often dress femininely, mark menstrual periods and even occasionally adopt feminine mannerisms (see Bolich, 2008, p. 295).
In the Krishna–Radha tradition, Radha laments her love for Krishna to her friends, and many of the songs are addressed to her sakhis instead of directly to her male lover. Vanita (2005, p. 92) notes that ‘in miniature paintings the heroine’s female friends are often eroticised. Sometimes they participate in the love play of the hero and heroine, but often they occupy a space of their own in the painting’. Therefore, if properly explored, one could discover in the emerging relationship between Radha and her sakhis, or even between Mira and her sakhis, the emergence of what one could call a ‘romantic friendship’. Thus, a strict focus on only the heterosexual relationship of Radha and Krishna or of Mira and Krishna erases an important dimension in the lives of these women friends, which can be well understood when viewed through the lesbian lens. In order to avoid this kind of erasure, and to promote solidarity among all women, some lesbian theorists like Adrienne Rich have suggested that lesbian identity is not restricted to the sexual domain, but consists of directing the bulk of one’s attention and emotional energy to other women, and having other women as one’s primary source of emotional sustenance and psychological support (Tyson, 2006).
Mirabai’s voice is thought to epitomise a versatile challenge to the multiple sources of hierarchical social domination. She is often represented as a woman who openly flouted the traditional roles laid out for women and asserted her female agency during a time when most women lacked the courage to do so. First, she participated in the subaltern revolution and challenged the stratified Hindu social order. Mira left the palace to worship and meet holy men in temples, and perhaps to mingle with low-caste people, offering them food and clothing. Mira also broke the social norms of purdah, a practice in which women of the royal household were expected to remain veiled, their movements outside the household restricted (Carr-Richardson, 2002). By refusing sexual relations with her husband, she deprived herself of the most honoured and lofty status in the Indian cultural milieu, that of the mother. In those days (and perhaps even today), probably the only powerful and decisionmaking position that a woman could hold was that of a mother. Mira’s action constituted the rejection of the primary-status roles cherished as the most appropriate for women, which are that of a devoted wife and a loving mother. She also discarded the symbols that signified marital status. In her poetry, there are repeated references to her aversion of symbols of suhaag (marital status), such as sindoor (vermillion), head ornaments, bangles and kajal (collyrium) (Jain & Sharma, 2002, pp. 4646–4647). These sentiments were expressed by Mira in the following poem. By declaring Krishna as her husband, Mira presented a staunch challenge to the stringent patriarchy of the Rajput order:
Mira refused the status of widow in the Sisodiya family when Bhoj Raj died in a battle in 1521. Her poem expressed her stance:
In fact, Mirabai’s poetry seems to represent her personality, defined by a curious mixture of a woman’s conservative and liberal aspects. On the one hand, she is a shocking aberrant who flouts the stringent behavioural code prescribed for royal women in a feudal society—rejecting her earthly marriage and claiming to be the wife of Krishna—while on the other, her poetry reiterates the patriarchal norms of the society she rejects with respect to the notions of purity, chastity and women’s subordinate status. When reading Mirabai’s poetry, it is necessary to note the ambiguity of the sacred and the erotic. A combination of eroticism and spirituality characterises her poetic narratives. Her metaphoric marriage with Krishna and her renunciation of her earthly marriage symbolise a unique confluence of eroticism and spirituality, and thereby of both the conservative and the liberal facets of women in general. Not only does Mira reject the patriarchal Rajput marriage system but also radically asserts her female sexuality. The religious signification of her marriage to Krishna is thus related to the release of women’s imagination, sexuality, creativity and working for the self.
At this point, one could also compare the roles played by the male agency and the female agency within the bhakti cult in relation to patriarchal norms. Since all human beings occupy a subaltern position in their relationship with God, the visible and experienced forms of subjection are often replete with symbolic value. Whereas male saints do not always reject the family, the female saint’s voice seems to gain prominence only when accompanied by an actual rejection of domesticity. The female voice as used by women, because of being grounded on a rejection of domesticity, usually holds the female subjectivity in poignant tension as it is simultaneously socially imposed and personally chosen (Sangari, 1990, p. 1539). Therefore, in spite of it being quite significant, such disruptions of practiced patriarchal norms by exceptional women like Mira are often required for the preservation of specific ideals.
The patriarchal norm which insists that the ideal position of a woman in a marital relationship is that of subordination is still perfectly maintained in Mira’s poetry—she again and again considers herself the slave and Krishna as her ultimate Master. She waits for him day and night, without food or rest, decorates herself or uses shringara only to be seen by him, and enjoys no festival or season without his presence. In other words, Mira seems to have no existence, desire or independence of her own outside this heterosexual relationship with Krishna. According to the queer theorists, heterosexuality is not a ‘natural’ sexual orientation for ‘normal’ women but a political institution that subordinates women to patriarchy, in that women’s subservience to men is built into hetero-sexual definitions of feminine sexuality. In other words, queer theorists believe that patriarchy and heterosexuality are inseparable (Tyson, 2006). Therefore, in order to resist the former, one has to reject the latter, and Mira rejects neither. The following poem expresses Mira’s total dependence on Krishna:
If looked at through the lens of queer criticism, although Mira’s renunciation of her earthly marriage could appear on the surface to be the action of a separatist, she is actually not one. Queer theorists such as Marilyn Frye believe that all forms of separation from males or male-dominated institutions can increase women’s power. Frye (1978, pp. 95–96) also states that ‘Access is one of the faces of Power … it is always the privilege of the Master to enter the slave’s hut. The slave who decides to exclude the master from her hut is declaring herself not a slave’. By keeping the doors of her heart always open and accessible for Krishna, Mira has therefore converted herself into his slave. Instead of being a separatist and rejecting the male-dominated society, she merely shifts from one patriarchal sphere to another. Here is another poem suggesting Mira’s total submission to the feet of Krishna, which, according to the patriarchal norm, is usually expected of a wife:
Mira’s poetry seems to have retained the patriarchal structure of society due to another crucial factor. Its female voice is probably an amalgamation of a variety of hidden voices. In fact, the corpus of Mira’s poetry, like that of the male saints, belongs to oral traditions which evolved over time, and the search for authenticity within such poetry only produces ambiguous results, as it has been written into by followers (who could be men or women). The contributions of these followers, who literally sign themselves into Mira’s tradition, are indicative of the magnitude of patriarchal assumptions that are usually made in the process of such evolutions (Sangari, 1990, p. 1540).
Priyadas, Mirabai’s 18th-century biographer, tells a story in which Mira, in order to neutralise gender differences, turns the maleness of God and the femaleness of the devotee into a claim for the equality of the female with the male bhakta:
When Mirabai, the Rajput princess, who left everything for her love of Krishna, visited the renowned Rupa Goswami of Vrindavan, one of the chief bhaktas of Sree Gauranga (Chaitanya), Rupa, an ascetic of the highest order, refused to see her on the ground that he was precluded from seeing the face of a woman. As a fact, Mirabai was a beautiful young princess, and he had not much faith in her pretensions. Hearing the message of Rupa, Mirabai replied ‘Is he then a male? If so, he has no access to Vrindavan. Males cannot enter there, and if the goddess of Vrindavan comes to know of his presence, she will turn him out. For does not the great Goswami know that there is but one male in existence, namely, my beloved Knailal (Krishna), and all beside are females?’ Rupa then understands that Mira is a staunch devotee of Krishna and agrees to see her (Sangari, 1990, p. 1538).
Rupa Goswami embodies the visible contradiction between the ‘femaleness’ of the male bhakta and the misogynist, patriarchal assertion of male asceticism. Therefore, according to the prevalent patriarchal beliefs, the female voice, which is considered to be the essence of devotion, is a mere patra (vessel/medium) to be used in the path of bhakti because of its certain social attributes, which are neither neutral nor empty.
The female devotional voice is used and inflected differently by each bhakta, whether male or female. Several male bhaktas, predecessors or contemporaries of Mira, including Surdas, have used the voice of a woman, wife or bride, and figures of servitude, sensuous desire or yearning (Sangari, 1990, p. 1538). Such voices have certain universalising aspirations, but nevertheless indicate the patriarchal assumptions and practices of the society. Further, the ability to adopt the female voice and convert the emotion of love into worship also articulates the contradictory shaping of desire by patriarchal morality. The contradictions are mainly of three types. First, the use of the female voice by a male bhakta signifies his inward understanding of the socially vulnerable position of women, and his choice to use and represent this vulnerability in an inversely powerful manner to reach up to the figure of God. The weakness of women thus becomes the strength of these men. Second, an understanding of the sensuous inwardness of female vulnerability can be used for the relational construction of male sexuality. In other words, the male use of the female voice is marked by a distinct duality—while singing to God, the male bhakta is simultaneously singing about the possibilities of male sexuality and the ways in which he may wish to be desired. Finally, the male use of the female voice also makes a potential space for relationships of men outside the heterosexual norm. To some extent, the distinction between the male devotee and male God becomes flexible in the self-description, which is usually attempted in the signature line. For instance, to cite an example from Surdas’ poetry, if we take note of the last lines of the poem Birth and Childhood, ‘The Lord of Surdas: why has he left me now—/now that he’s claimed my heart?’, and in Murali, ‘For the nectar of the lips of the Lord of Surdas/has bred in them a deep unease’, the devotee and the God seem almost to be the same man (Bryant, 2007, p. 228, 234).
Such contradictory shaping of desire seen within the domain of bhakti creates scope for ‘queer’ criticism. Gay critics examine how gay sensibility affects literary expression and study the ways in which heterosexual texts often depict homoerotic dimensions—and there can be several as seen in the contradictory aspects of the female voice in the instances cited earlier—used to express desire for God. First, the use of a vulnerable and weak female voice for devotion highlights the sexual politics at work behind the veil of devotion, which reduces the status of the male bhakta to that of an actual woman who is equally waiting for God’s grace. For instance, this allows the male bhakta to develop a homosocial fellow-feeling with Radha or the gopis who, like him, are eagerly awaiting Krishna. Second, such use of the female voice makes the male bhakta very aware of a distinct duality working within himself. In his essay, Self as Other: The Politics of Identity in the Works of Edmund White, the queer theorist Nicholas F Radel writes about this condition, which in this case means that the male bhakta would ‘fail to achieve a coherent sense of self’ (1994, p. 175). In fact, Radel points out that under such conditions of duality, characters experience a distinct split within themselves into what they consider their ‘essential selves’ and ‘a homosexual self as Other that they themselves conceive as being separate’ (1994, p. 176). Finally, the macho male adopting the submissive, coy, flirtatious and soft voice of a female provides scope for imagining homoerotic relationships between the subject and the object of worship.
Implicit in the study of gender is the understanding that gender, being culturally constructed, is both a social function and a mode of expression. Male bhaktas may even wish to renounce masculinity altogether and act as women. The female voices then become a way not only of locating that which is powerless in men but also of achieving an immersion in the condition of powerlessness, in front of the mighty figure of God. Thus, the explicit adoption of the female role and voice inevitably reveals both to be cultural constructs and points out the limits of such constructions. Such revelations create a universal space over which a female and a male devotee have equal claim. According to Foucault (1977), the task of the genealogist is to examine such basic cultural constructions through which power structures and subjectivity are discursively constructed.
However, the female voice is used to address the deity for a specific reason. Many bhakti compositions either rework or shift the classical theory of karma by locating the source of human suffering in pride (ahamkar) and blindness rather than in past births. In this reinterpretation of karma, the power of the female voice, free from ahamkar, becomes at least equal to the power of willed poverty or asceticism. To speak in the female voice is therefore to have access to the mystery of human existence or to find a way of embodying the inexpressible relation between the bhakta and God (Sangari, 1990, p. 1538). An understanding of the place of women within a fixed social hierarchy not only makes one realise that the limits of the female condition can be extended to the entire human race but also teaches one to overcome these limits. This is only possible because the concept of femaleness is basically extrapolated from social relations.
By the medieval period, the female voice had been used by several women saints. This accounts for a shared representation of the female voice between men and women. However, such sharing did not materially shift patriarchal power relations nor did it question the social order from which definitions of sexuality both emerge and rest, but it reduced the segregation between the masculine and feminine, enabling a degree of speculation about such concrete compartmentalisation. The male bhakta appears to have a ‘freer’ choice—his willed servitude is a matter of choice, whereas the woman must sing always as a woman. Further, the woman saint, unlike her male counterpart, does not need a conversion, no matter how rebellious, or to take on a male persona. It is as if, being already female she is in the lowliest position and, such as the untouchables and low-caste saints, she has nothing to shed—not physical prowess, nor social power, nor punditry, nor even spiritual pride. Therefore, she is already where she needs to be, in order to reach up to the patriarchal God. Heidi Hartmann, a queer theorist, defining patriarchy as ‘relationship between men’ (Sedgwick, 1985, p. 3), says that in a male-dominated society, there is a special relationship between men based on male homosocial and homosexual bonding for the maintenance of a structure and the transmission of patriarchal power.
Perhaps the sharpest difference between Mira’s and the male bhakta’s use of the female devotional voice is in relation to patriarchal norms, values and ideologies. Whereas the female voice offers men the possibility of either renouncing or remaking some aspects of their maleness, it does not necessarily offer women the choice of escaping from their ‘femaleness’ or from their own bodies. For the male user the female voice can on occasion constitute a reversal of his own patriarchal power, whereas for the woman it can perform no such reversal unless accompanied by a striking departure from patriarchal power. Mira’s heightened awareness of flouted norms, rejected roles and the perception of her as mad or immoral, repeatedly asserted in her poems (log kahen) reveals her consciousness of public surveillance (Sangari 1990, p. 1540). There is also a striking difference between Mira’s mode of address, which is a compound of persecution, defiance and display, and that of male bhaktas such as Kabir and Surdas. Kabir usually addresses a community of bhaktas (sunobhaisadho) or a group of followers, and most of Surdas’s poems refer to the community using either ‘us’ or ‘our’. For instance, several poems of Surdas begin thus: ‘It’s a wondrous thing to live in Braj/O honeybee, where our Kanh’s in charge’; ‘If Hari dwells in each of us, within,/How can you make demands on our hearts?’; and ‘Having seen Hari’s face, our eyes are opened wide./Forgetting to blink, our pupils are naked’ (Hawley, 1984, pp. 104–105). The male bhaktas conducted both an active dialogue within their communities and a philosophical revolution against Brahmin-dominated orthodoxy based on the strength of such a following. On the other hand, Mira addresses Krishna, the Rana, her female friends (aali, sakhi, heli, baala, saheliya, heri), her mother (mai), and friend (bhai); there is no sense of community formed around her bhakti (Sangari, 1990, p. 1540). The sadhus are not people she can teach. Rather their company is a sanction, an alternative to the custody of the family. Even the similarities between the male and female use of the female voice are modulated according to patriarchal presumptions. Men are considered emotionally polygamous, and women emotionally monogamous. The consolidation and compression of emotional investment in a single object is thought to provide special strength to the female voice (Sangari, 1990, p. 1540).
The constant reiteration of patriarchal values within bhakti poetry has a contradictory relation to the deep assertion of the female devotional voice. In fact, the disjunction between perceiving women as essentially immoral and the representation of the female voice as a patra for devotion, and between the femaleness of the male bhakta and his affirmation of patriarchal typologies is evident in the compositions of many male bhaktas.
The most interesting case is that of Surdas (1478‒1584), who not only composed some of the most erotic songs about the love of Radha and Krishna but also represented Krishna as a passionate reciprocating god-lover. Radha and Krishna almost melt into each other in his poetry. Mutually skilful in making love, they put Kama to shame. In fact, in Sur Sagar, Surdas explores every stage and vicissitude of Radha’s emotions, from the time Krishna first chanced upon her as a young girl playing in her yard to the long-aching years when he left her behind to go off to the city of Mathura in order to defeat the wicked king Kansa. Surdas’s poems describing Radha’s emotions and viraha (longing for a separated lover) often have strong undertones of homoeroticism or same-sex desire. He seems to take on the role of Radha when he speaks in her voice to Krishna as in this particular poem:
In this poem Surdas’s consciousness is characterised by a duality. If, on the one hand, he identifies with Radha, then, on the other his physical description of Krishna, who has just arrived before Radha after a love-making encounter with one of the gopis, hints towards his own masculine desire of being loved in the same manner and, in fact, by more than one woman.
The disjunction between the femaleness of the voice used by the male bhakta and his affirmation of patriarchal typologies is clearly evident in many of Surdas’s poems. In the following poem, Sur imagines that Radha, who has just had a tryst with Krishna, encounters a friend. Although this friend, who is the female voice of the poem, is a sakhi, she describes Radha’s beauty through a typically patriarchal gaze. The sakhi emphasises the curvature of her eyebrow, her sidelong glances and the disorienting perfume she exudes. Finally, towards the end of the poem, the friend expresses how Radha’s love-making signs indicate that she has satisfied the heart of her lover:
At one level, Radha seems beautiful and glowing enough to put the moon into shame after being touched by Krishna; on another, the last two lines of the poem clearly express the male bhakta’s, or Surdas’s, hidden desire to be loved and be satisfied in a similar manner by a woman. Such poems of Surdas appear to be characterised by strong undertones of bisexuality. According to the queer theorist Jan Clausen, ‘bisexuality is not a sexual identity at all, but a sort of anti-identity, a refusal (not of course conscious) to be limited to one object of desire, one way of loving’ (in Sullivan, 2003, p. 39).
In a similar Surdas poem, which again has the female voice of a sakhi, Radha is requested, if not ordered, by her friend to fulfil the desire of Krishna, whose body is wasting away yearning for her love. The poem also hints at an indirect homosocial expression of a similar despair and longing in the male bhakta, here Sur, for his beloved. The last line of the poem, especially the command ‘Fulfil his desire’, has strong patriarchal undertones:
Though his gopis love Krishna with a pativratabhava (virtuosity) (that is, as they would their husbands), many of them are married women who have forsaken their husbands and homes for him. Ironically, in Sur’s poetry it is the fickle, playful Krishna himself who becomes the male voice and stridently preaches stridharma (woman’s duty). In one of Sur’s poems, when Radha tells him of her parents’ knowledge and disapproval of her love for Krishna, Krishna satisfies her with the answer that dharma consists of obedience to social custom (lokalaaj and kulmaryaada), and that she and he are two bodies but one being/soul (dwai-tan jiv-ek ham dou). In Sur’s poems, Krishna not only urges Brahmin wives to be pativratas (faithful wives) (prabhu kahyo pativrata karau sadaai, yumko yehi dharma sukh daai) but also informs the gopis that husbands or wives who leave each other are to be scorned; the husband’s dharma is to provide sustenance and protection, the wife’s dharma is to serve her husband even if he is a wrongdoer. Krishna preaches worship of the husband—regardless of whether he is foolish, diseased or a sinner—as the Vedic path to salvation, and describes the wife who leaves her husband as one who is no longer a kulin or aristocratic woman and is to be punished both here and hereafter (dhik so naari purush jo tyaagai) (Sangari, 1990, p. 1545).
Surdas projects woman and maya (world of illusion) as obstacles to devotion, and so they must be renounced (sukh deb kahiyo, suno ho raar, naari naagini ek svabhav). In his poems, women are often represented as impediments to male salvation—corporeally as incarnations of maya, and figuratively as personifications of maya. In one instance, Maya is a madam who lures him into an endless and ultimately empty series of cheap performances:
Another difference in male and female usage of the female voice emerges in relation to whether it is that of a parakiya or a swakiya (that is, illicit or licit). For Mira, there is no polarisation between the human and the divine; human love simply affirms and duplicates the divine. For her, the female voice is swakiya or wife, as she takes Krishna to be her ‘husband’. For Surdas, on the other hand, the female voice is largely parakiya, that of an unmarried woman or adulteress. However, illicit love is often held in higher esteem when compared to licit love. This is because of the belief that in illicit love devotion is freely given—it is a matter of pleasure, passion and longing rather than one of duty, procreation and possession, as in marriage. Whereas the wife’s devotion is a duty and viraha is ‘endured as a necessity, as a symptom of her oppression’, illicit love has no such bindings, and yet if the pain of separation is endured it is highly prized (Sangari, 1990, p. 1545).
Thus, although Surdas’s Radha and gopis will never be fickle like Krishna, their love for Krishna will always be considered as parakiya, and they will remain eternal virahinis (lovelorn maidens). And although Radha has a gandharvavivah (love marriage without societal consent) with Krishna in one of Sur’s poems, she is never given the status of a wife/queen as is Rukmini. Surdas’s poetry is a collection of instances of illicit love through the renunciation of lokalaaj by Radha and the gopis, but it contradictorily maintains the monogamous fidelity of the female voice.
Mira and Surdas dealt with the figure of Radha in strikingly different ways. In one of his Radha poems, using the voice of Krishna’s friend and minister Udho, Surdas’s description of Radha’s suffering and desolation is in the manner of a cynical male friend. Her longing is almost mocked at and there are no signs of sympathy for her state. There is also nothing godly or sacred about her and she is depicted merely as a common woman pining away for her lover. Surdas identifies himself first with Udho, whom Radha mistakes for her Krishna:
Alternatively, in Mira’s poems, Radha is represented with much more sympathy and sensitivity. Mira seems to identify with the figure of Radha and understands her pain, joy and shyness, as she herself experiences the same emotions in her state of love for Krishna. She also looks upon Radha not as an ordinary woman but, being Krishna’s beloved, as a figure almost as divine as him:
The bonding of Mira and Radha expressed in this poem may recall Adrienne Rich’s idea of a ‘lesbian continuum’ which ‘includes a range—through each women’s life and throughout history—of woman-identified experience, not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired sexual experience with another woman’ (1980, p. 239). If woman-identified experience can include emotional bonding through shared work or play, the giving and receiving of psychological support, and the shared experiences of joy in any form, then obviously Mira and Radha could be a part of this lesbian continuum. Thus, a woman can move in and out of such a community throughout her life or remain entirely within it. Such communities are nothing but bodies of power that have helped sustain the strength of women through the ages. British queer theorists such as Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield question the traditional constructions of sexuality and see non-heterosexual forms of sexuality as sites for the possible undermining of the hegemonic forces of normativity. In Sinfield’s words, all forms of subcultures, including sexual subcultures ‘may be power bases—points at which alternative or oppositional ideologies may achieve plausibility’ (1994, p. vii). Thus, sexual dissidence according to Dollimore (1991) is always, at least potentially, a political act. These theorists therefore apply the methods of cultural materialism to examine literary texts with the aim of exposing constructions that a culture imposes upon sexually ambivalent texts in order to repress ideologies (Bertens, 2001).
To reveal other instances of blurring gender divisions between male and female Bhakta poets, it is important to note that the sangam–viraha’s emotional duality is ideally felt and expressed in a poem towards a lover. In the bhakti cult, the highest form of worship is considered a mixture of the spiritual and the sensual, and the joy of ultimate union with the transcendental self is comparable to the ecstasy derived from sexual union. This act of union is known as sangam. Similarly, the pain of separation from the transcendental self is comparable with the sensual longing that emerges due to separation from a lover, known as viraha. Thus, the notions of sangam and viraha are the common denominator in both spiritual union and sexual intercourse (Kumar & Sharma, 2012, p. 30). The line between the joy of spiritual union and erotic ecstasy becomes faint, thereby complicating the relationship between God and devotee.
Further, to explore the overlapping boundaries of gender it is important to take note of the differences between the male and female representations of viraha. The figure of the virahini is central to the constitution of the female voice as an embodiment of exquisite suffering. Being one of the most prominent and passionate emotions of Mirabai, viraha draws upon popular traditions of love poetry. In secular tradition, the condition of viraha is suffered by the neglected but blameless woman who has been deserted by her absent or forgetful husband or lover. The figure of the virahini in a social sense is based on the woman’s inability or lack of agency to overcome or end her separation from the lover or husband. The ‘return’ of the (fickle) God, or Krishna, especially within polygamous structures, may be always beyond the control of the bhakta, whether male or female. Yet, since the pain of viraha enables the devotee’s total absorption in the remembrance of the loved one, bhakti redescribes it as the ‘saving grace which fixes the mind on god’ (Sangari, 1990, p. 1547). The viraha grants support to the female bhakta to resist maya or temptation in the absence of the male God. Further, since maya is the principle which separates the devotee from God, the whole of life and the human condition may be presented as a kind of craving. Thus, viraha spreads femaleness across the boundary of gender.
In viraha, ‘sadness’ is represented almost as an integral part of female sensuality. Mira rejects the role of both the good wife and the immolated widow. Her own personal deity/husband is alive, immortal. If she can give up shringara for Krishna, she can also don shringara for Krishna. Mira’s songs are suffused with a sensuous yearning for rapture. It is not merely Krishna’s physical distance from Mira but also his fickleness and closeness to other women that aggravate her viraha. He is a selfish, hard-hearted, indifferent lover, who punishes her by frolicking with other women of Mathura. The following poem of Mira expresses this sentiment:
Mira’s love, as we have seen, may often be wifely but is not exactly emblematic of Hindu wifeliness. Her viraha, too, hovers between the licit and the illicit. In Mira’s poetry, Viraha is represented through the renunciatory symbols of both widowhood and sanyaas—shaving of the head, removing of jewellery, giving up of shringara or signs of marriage, donning of ochre robes or ashes and deerskin, and fasting (Sangari, 1990, p. 1548). However, indulging in the emotion of viraha, under the condition of widowhood, is itself illicit for a woman. The description of viraha as a form of ascetic widowhood is not uncommon in bhakti compositions and is frequently found in Mira’s poems:
The patriarchal restrictions of society lurk behind Mira’s decision to adopt the dress code of ascetic widowhood. The Manusmriti sternly instructs a wife whose husband is travelling to live like a widow in his absence and give up most of her shringara (Manu, 1982, p. 240). In Mira’s compositions, these symbols can signify a variety of things: her actual widowhood, her rejection of earthly suhaag, her repudiation of the norms of her own class, her desire to renounce maya, as well as the pain of her separation from Krishna. The emotion of viraha in the case of Mira also signifies a kind of ‘dedication’ based on the notion of women being seductive in their chastity. For Mira, the state of viraha extends even after death to the next birth. In the state of viraha, Mira repeatedly asserts her belief in rebirth. Mira desires freedom from rebirth, but more intensely, seeks union with Krishna:
In Surdas’s poems, the emotion of viraha, as it is expressed, again contains some undertones of homoeroticism when he takes up the voices of Radha and the gopis to express their longing and suffering due to Krishna’s departure from Braj:
Homoerotic elements are also expressed in another poem by Surdas, using the voice of the gopis:
The gopis are jealous of the murli (flute), which is nearer to Krishna’s lips compared to them. The murli is personified as a woman. The gopis initially berate her as a licentious upstart, an immoral casteless reed; she is the saut or favoured ‘other’ wife of Krishna who, having brought him under her sway, controls him and intoxicates him with pleasure. The murli answers that she has undergone severe austerities (tap) and viraha in order to obtain this proximity with Krishna. The jealousy of the gopis ceases and turns into a chastened admiration: they recognise her as the symbol of suffering, self-sacrifice and devotion, and also understand that the murli is only a patra, a vessel. It is after all the sound of the murli that beckons the gopis from their homes. The murli is the dasi or intermediary between Krishna and Radha, and by implication between them and Krishna. The murli is not possessive about Krishna; she sees herself as one of his many beloveds. In this poem, too, as in most of Surdas’s poems, there is a confluence of different kinds of sexuality. As a male, Surdas’s adoption of the female voice of the gopis, who are jealous of the murli, a female, being close to Krishna, has a strong homoerotic undercurrent. Further, at another level, the sympathy and understanding that the gopis develop for the murli upon hearing the account of her great austerities signify the development of a lesbian continuum. Therefore, within the body of a single poem there are numerous possibilities for the expression of gender and thereby sexuality.
In Hinduism, the ultimate religious destination to be reached by an individual is the unity named Brahman. This destination comprises of both impersonal (nirguna) and personal (saguna) aspects. The experience of this ultimate unity largely depends on one’s fundamental sense of self, which is also called the atman (soul). The atman, which always seeks union with the Brahman, is often seriously impeded by sex and gender in its journey towards freedom from the world of illusion (maya) and the cycle of birth–death–rebirth (samsara). The egoistic self, dominated by maya, bears the outward identity markers of body, individuality, race, social status and so forth. In fact, gender hierarchy is motivated by such illusory demarcations. Gender crossing and transgender flexibility, on the other hand, assist one in breaking free of such sex and gender limitations, in order to reach God and realise the true self. Most bhakti saints, especially Mira and Surdas, were able to achieve this ultimate destination by transcending and flouting their respective gendered expectations of society. Identities, complex to begin with, thus become more complicated within the tradition of bhakti. Within the realm of bhakti poetry, gender is stretched beyond the social and biological into the metaphysical realm. The main project of the queer theory is to explore how such an extension of gender and sexuality takes place and to contest its categorisation. The exploration of bhakti poetry helps us realise that establishing a stable identity was a huge problem even back in those days, as it is today. This is mainly because identities are not fixed—they cannot be categorised and labelled as they have several and varied components and to categorise by one characteristic is to miss another. Both Mira and Surdas were figures much ahead of their time. Probably neither of the two was consciously aware of the transgender traits they constantly depicted in their lives and in their creations. In this manner, they are perfect examples of the transgender or transsexual figure referred to by Sandy Stone in Posttranssexual Manifesto (1991). In her opinion, transsexuals are the visible symptoms of a disturbed gender system. Stone implores transsexuals to critically reconstitute their livelihood by discarding the practice of trying to pose or pass as non-transsexual, and thereby emerge from their self-protective and suffocating closets to reveal their true selves. Both Mira and Surdas seem to have unknowingly achieved that goal much before it was suggested by Stone. Stone’s fight was against the anti-transsexual and anti-transgender moralism embedded in certain structures of society, for which she projected an alternative body of intellectual and creative work capable of aptly communicating to others the functioning of the ‘changing sex’ (Stryker & Whittle, 2006, p. 4). One must bear in mind that under queer theory, it is difficult to define categories of sexuality in terms of simple dualistic oppositions, such as homosexual/heterosexual. Influenced by the deconstructive insight into human subjectivity (selfhood), which is then conceived as a fluid, fragmented, dynamic collection of possible ‘selves’, queer theory defines individual sexuality as a fluid, fragmented, dynamic collection of possible sexualities (Tyson, 2006). Our sexuality may vary or change over the course of our lives, or even over the course of a week, because, as inferred from the discussion so far, sexuality is comprised of a dynamic range of desire. Gay sexuality, lesbian sexuality, bisexuality and heterosexuality are merely different kinds of sexual possibilities. Often these categories are further subjected to racial and class identities. Thus, sexuality is completely controlled neither by our biological sex nor by the way in which our culture translates biological sex into gender roles. Sexuality exceeds these definitions and has a will, a creativity and an expression of its own.