The Bhakti movement is much older than the Sufi movements. It philosophical concept had been fully enunciated in the Upanishads and subsequently, the Bhagavad Gita emphasized love and devotion as pathways to God.
In the sixth century A.D., the Shagavata Purana placed the concept of bhakti on a very high pedestal. During the post-Bhagavata phase passionate love and devotion to one personal God became a characteristic feature of the Indian religious thought.
But the concept of bhakti was placed on a firmer ground in South India, when Shankaracharya revived the philosophy of Advaita or Vedanta. After Shankara, twelve Tamil Vaishnava saints collectively known as Alvars made the concept of bhakti more popular.
The Alvars were followed by the Vaishnava acharyas who gave the Bhakti cult a metaphysical foundation. According to this school of thought the ‘Supreme Being’ is not ‘attributeless’ but saguna, possessing qualities of goodness and beauty to an infinite degree.
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The early leaders of the Bhakti movement were mostly from India – the earliest being Ramanuja whose disciple Ramananda carried the Bhakti movement to North India and is rightly regarded as a bridge between the Bhakti movement of South and North India.
Features of Bhakti movement
1. The concept of bhakti means single-minded devotion to one God. The object of the devotee’s adoration is to secure the grace of God for the sake of salvation.
2. The Bhakti cult discarded the rituals and sacrifices as modes of worship and instead emphasized the purity of heart and mind, humanism and devotion as the simple way to realization of God.
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3. The Bhakti movement was essentially monotheistic and the devotees worshipped one personal God, who could either have form (saguna) or be formless (nirguna).
The followers of the former, known as Vaishnavas, were futher subdivided into Krishnamargis and Ramamargis, who regarded Ram or Krishna – both incarnations of Vishnu – as their personal God, respectively. The followers of Nirguna Bhakti discarded idol worship. They said that, God is omnipresent and resides within the heart of man.
4. One of the philosophical sides, the Saguna and Nirguna both believed in the Upanishadic philosophy of advaita, with minor variations suggested by various Bhakti saints.
5. The Bhakti saints of North as well as South India regarded knowledge (jnana) as a constituent of Bhakti. Since, that knowledge could be gained through a teacher or guru, the Bhakti movement greatly emphasized securing true knowledge from a guru.
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6. The Bhakti movement was an egalitarian movement, which completely discarded the discriminations based on caste or creed.
The saints of the Bhakti movement were staunch supporters of social unity and purity of mind, character and soul. The doors of Bhakti were opened for the lowest classes and even untouchables. Many of the saints of the Bhakti movement were from the lower classes.
7. The Bhakti movement also discarded the priestly domination as well as rituals. According to the Bhakti saints, the individual couldrealise God through devotion and personal effort. Therefore, there was no place for sacrifices and daily rituals in the Bhakti movement.
8. The Bhakti saints preached in the simple language of the masses and, therefore, immensely contributed to the development of modern Indian languages, such as Hindi, Marathi, Bengali and Gujarati.
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It can thus be seen that the Bhakti cult was a widespread movement that embraced the whole of the subcontinent of India for several centuries. It was a movement of the people and aroused intense interest among them.
Perhaps after the decline of Buddhism there had never been a more widespread and popular movement in our country than the Bhakti movement. Although its basic principles of love and devotion to a personal God were purely Hindu and the principles of unity of Godhead on which its teaching rested were also mainly Hindu. The movement was profoundly influenced by Islamic belief and practices.
The Bhakti movement had two main objects in view. One was to reform the Hindu religion so as to enable it to withstand the onslaught of Islamic propaganda and proselytism. Its second object was to bring about a compromise between Hinduism and Islam and to foster friendly relations between Hindu and Muslim communities.
It succeeded in realizing, to a great extent, the first object of bringing about the simplification of worship and liberalizing the traditional caste rules. “The high and the low among the Hindu public forgot many of their prejudices and believed in the message of the reformers of the Bhakti cult, that all people were equal in the eyes of God and that birth was no bar to religious salvation”.