Devotion

🎯 How This Word Works in UPSC Writing

Bhakti, the intense personal attachment of a devotee to a chosen deity, and the organising idea of a movement that reshaped Indian religious life. The division that structures every answer on the subject is between saguna bhakti, directed to a deity with form and attributes, as with the devotees of Rama and Krishna, and nirguna bhakti, directed to a formless absolute, as in Kabir and Nanak, since the second rejects image worship and is generally the more radical socially. Two further features carry weight. Bhakti was expressed in the vernacular rather than Sanskrit, which put religious expression within reach of those excluded from scriptural learning and incidentally shaped the development of the modern Indian languages. And its emphasis on devotion over ritual and birth allowed participation by women and by those of low caste, so its saints include Mirabai, Andal, Ravidas and Namdev, which is why the movement is discussed as social history and not only as religion.