Context
Recently, President Ram Nath Kovind inaugurated the Sant Kabir Academy and Research Centre Swadesh Darshan Yojana and paid tribute to the Bhakti saint, Kabir at Maghar (Uttar Pradesh).
About Kabir and the Bhakti movement
- The Bhakti movement, which began in the 7th century in South India, had begun to spread across north India in the 14th and the 15th centuries.
- The movement was characterized by popular poet-saints who sang devotional songs to God in vernacular languages, with many preaching for the abolishing the Varna system and some kind of Hindu-Muslim unity.
- They emphasized an intense emotional attachment with God.
- One school within the Bhakti movement was the Nirguni tradition and Sant Kabir was a prominent member of it.
- In this tradition, God was understood to be a universal and formless being.
- Many of the saints of the Bhakti movement came from the ranks of the lower to middle artisanal classes.
- Kabir was a ‘low caste’ weaver (Julaha), Raidas was a leather worker and Dadu a cotton carder.
- Their radical dissent against orthodoxy and rejection of caste made these poet-saints extremely popular among the masses and their ideology of egalitarianism spread across India.
- Kabir’s compositions can be classified into three literary forms –
- Dohas (short two liners)
- Ramanas (rhymed 4 liners)
- Sung compositions of varying length, known as padas (verses)
- Sabdas (words)
About Sant Kabir Das
- Sant Kabir Das was born in the city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.
- Kabir was born in Varanasi and lived between the years 1398 and 1448, or till the year 1518 according to popular belief.
- He was a 15th century mystic poet, saint and social reformer and a proponent of the Bhakti Movement.
- Kabir's legacy is still going on through a sect known as Panth of Kabir, a religious community that considers him as the founder.
- His early life was in a Muslim family, but he was strongly influenced by his teacher, the Hindu bhakti leader Ramananda.
- Kabir Das' writings had a great influence on the Bhakti movement and includes titles likeKabir Granthawali, Anurag Sagar, Bijak, and Sakhi Granth.
- His verses are found in Sikhism's scripture Guru Granth Sahib.
- The major part of his work was collected by the fifth Sikh guru, Guru Arjan Dev.
- He was best known for his two-line couplets, known as 'Kabir Ke Dohe'.
- Kabir's works were written in the Hindi language which was easy to comprehend. He used to write in couplets to enlighten people.
