Concept of Bhakti
For those grown up in India, it appears, at least on the face of it, that the word bhakti needs no elaboration. The word is familiar to most of us and is a salient part of our lives. In our everyday conversations, we often talk about not just bhakti (as a noun) towards the gods, but also of matru bhakti, pitru-bhakti or of guru-bhakti. In music, we are told that Thyagaraja was revered as a Rama Bhakta and are often asked to infuse bhakti-bhava into our singing. We speak of authors, poets, singers and legendary, puranic characters as being immersed in their bhakti for their Ishta devata, of Kabir following nirguna bhakti as opposed to saguna bhakti and of the nine forms of bhakti recognized within the bhakti tradition. The idea of bhakti also informs Indian arts in general – temples, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dance, yoga and other performative forms.
We are also taught of a ‘bhakti movement,’ that took place during the turn of the millennium, where poets-saints through the bhakti-marga or ‘the path of devotion’, attained ‘moksha’ or some form of liberation. Bhakti marga or bhakti yoga (bhakti as an adjective) is also often referred to as an alternative to (but not as oppositional to) jnana marga and karma marga. In short, the term bhakti appears to be a significant part of our everyday vocabulary and emotion.
The term is used to denote an attitude of reverence towards an object (bhakti towards x), or is used as an adjective to qualify a particular path towards the realization of a specific kind of knowing, as in the case of bhakti marga. It is sometimes used to refer to an attitude to be cultivated and sometimes to refer to both the means and the end of human action.
Loss of the Concept
In more recent times, bhakti has also been used to refer to objects of attachment other than the gods or gurus. For instance, we often talk about someone being a desh bhakt or a Modi Bhakt. However, in much of the current-day usage of the concept, there is a striking difference. The term has suffered a negative evaluation in modern times. If in pre-modern times or in certain traditional circles even today, bhakti is associated with devotion, commitment, attachment or ‘liking,’ and the bhakta is someone to be revered, this positive evaluation has faded into the background.
Given the association of bhakti with the unquestioning, complete self-surrender to the object of adoration, whether that object is one’s god, one’s parent, or one’s guru or any other figure, today it has come to refer to an irrational and often a feudal, subservient attitude. One only has to think of all the derogatory references we have to the ‘Modi Bhakts’. Applied pejoratively, the term here implies that the ‘followers’ have given up their capacity to think independently and are blindly supportive of whatever their leader does. The word has come to signal some form of deficiency in thinking.
Hence, we are often reminded of Ambedkar, who in his last speech to the Constituent Assembly of India, warned: “Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.” The implication is that the attitude insulates the receiver of bhakti from any form of criticism endowing the person with excessive, unrestrained power and on the other hand, makes the citizens of a nation incapable of thinking on their own.
Thus, Bhakti, as seen by traditionalists, has positive associations but in the eyes of the moderns is largely a negative attitude. Many would see such an attitude or the practices it references as part of superstition or irrational, unscientific, unthinking behaviour. This change in evaluation is enough to tell us that despite being part of our everyday vocabulary, the nature of our life-with-the-concept has undergone a sea- change. Even though we use the word, we no longer have access to all its dimensions.
When we probe into bhakti and the cluster of concepts surrounding it within the Indian tradition, it is evident that there is some form of loss of concept involved. While bhakti is often talked about as one of the easiest paths to attain moksha, several questions arise. What does it mean to say Bhakti marga is a religious or a ‘spiritual’ path of ‘devotion’ that leads to Moksha? What indeed does religious or spiritual mean here and what is kind of freedom are we talking about? And why is bhakti contrasted with jnana marga and karma marga? If bhakti is often talked as a means to a certain kind of knowledge, what is the nature of this knowledge? What kind of knowledge or pedagogic concept is it? These questions require more probing into the concept of bhakti.
***
Nicely written Shashi.