Agradās and Rām Rasik Bhakti Community: The Politics of Remembrance and the Authority of the Hindu Saint

Kabir and Pedagogy: Teaching the Politics of Religion through the Hagiography of an Indian Saint

“…In this sense, a saint is a collective memory, and thus is continuously constructed and reconstructed through time in a social process, a process that is always political and in the service of the historically contingent interests of particular groups. In another context, I have argued that the figure of the saint often has a "totemic" function in a religious community, with the saint's remembered life and deeds embodying and giving tangible expression to the intangible values and sentiments that bond and mobilize that particular community (Burchett 2018). 2 As the pioneering work of Maurice Halbwachs (1877Halbwachs ( -1945 has shown, collective memory works and functions as a living past that constructs and legitimizes the social identity of those who share the memory (Halbwachs 1992).…”

Bhakti versus rīti? The Sants’ perspective

“…It is important to note that bhakti themes are not absent from the world of rīti poetry and it is rightly said that the developments in Vaishnava aesthetics – prominently by the disciples of Caitanya Mahāprabhū (1486–1533) – in the sixteenth century contributed to the emergence of the courtly rītigranth genre (Busch 2011: 33) – a genre that describes “methods” of poetry. Describing the Kṛṣṇa-gopīs rās-līlā (love plays of Kṛṣṇa and the cowherd ladies) based on the models of nāyikā bheda was not only prevalent in the literature of Kṛṣṇa-worshipping communities but also attracted poets who were devoted to Rāma in the early modern period (Burchett 2018). However, in their engagement with the long-established kāvya traditions, the sant s liked nāyikā bheda, nakh-śikh and elaborate depictions of śriṅgār far less 13 .…”