Building up Meanings and Excelling the Art of Interpretation: A Medieval Poetess between the “Élite” and the “Deep People”

Abstract

The article takes a clue from the concept of “deep India” proposed by S. A. Arutyunov and tests it on the material of medieval religious poetry in Marathi in praise of the god Vitthal/Vithoba, and the practice of collective vari (pilgrimage) to his temple in Pandharpur. Towards the end of the 19th century, high caste social and religious reformers and nationalist historians took to treat these factors as the basis for evolution of the Marathi ethnicity, identity and ethos. The poets behind this poetry ranging from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries were eventually valorized as the national treasure, elevated to the rank of sainthood (sants) and made use of as tools of nationalist, political and social indoctrination at various stages during the preand postcolonial periods, especially during the decade of the struggle for a monolingual state of Maharashtra in 1950s. Through the “positive discrimination” strategy under implementation in India since the 1990s and the promotion of the feminist agenda, the role of low-caste hymn writers has significantly popped up, among whom the maidservant Janabai has emerged as an undisputed leader. Not a single piece of reliable information about her is available, which proved to be an ideal starting point for the formation of multi-vector narratives around her figure through the course of the last century and a half. The narrative created by the educated élite - abhijan, that had been dominant throughout the last century is gradually coming into conflict with an alternative discourse by the so called bahujan, those whom the elite tried to marginalize.