Divine Sounds from the Heart—Singing Unfettered in their Own Voices

Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a sea change in the way history is written and also in the way our conceptions of the past are being rewritten. In traditional historiography, women’s articulation is often marginalized and dominated by male voices. Through centuries of patriarchal control, women negotiated many layers and levels of existence working out different forms of resistance which have often gone unnoticed. Bhakti was one such medium. Religion provided the space in the medieval period and women saints embraced bhakti to define their own truths in voices that question society, family and relationships. For all these women bhaktas, the rejection of the male power that they were tied to in subordinate relationship became the terrain for struggle, self assertion and alternative seeking. Most of these women lived during the period from 12th to 17th Century. While the dominant mode of worship in bhakti was prostration to a deity like a feudal lord, the women bhaktas’ idea of God as a lover, a husband and a friend came as a breath of fresh air. The individual outpourings and the voices of these women, who had the courage to sing unfettered in their own voices, refused to melt in the din of the feudal scene which was largely patriarchal. This book will be useful to scholars interested in Feminist History, Comparative Religion and Asian Studies. The sensitive and rigorous research will be of great help to young scholars interested in embarking on a journey to discover religious history, especially with regards to women’s history in the South Asian context.