Buddhism in India

The Bhakti Movements 207

There is some evidence to back up Salunkhe’s assertions. In regard

to the guru issue, for instance, the ‘Babaji’ poem seems strikingly out

of place. Salunkhe’s opponents in this debate (including More, and

even Chitre, who has hardly deigned to notice him) have never dealt

with the question of interpolation and the quality of the source mate-

rial that they base their arguments on. In fact, Tukaram’s abhangs

rarely refer to Dnyaneshwar, the Brahman forerunner of the

Maharashtra bhakti movement; it is rather Namdev, the low-caste

tailor, who is said to have come to him in a dream along with Vithoba

himself and told him to write poetry. Similarly, neither the traditional

miraculous story of Tukaram’s death, nor Chitre’s ‘modernistic’ ver-

sion really make sense; the possibility of murder—for anyone who

knows how Indian politics works—cannot be ruled out. His final

years coincided with the earliest period of the rise of Shivaji, which

was one of political turmoil. Salunkhe has not proved his case, but he

has given a challenge that should not be ignored.^8

A related aspect of the debate regarding Tukaram has to do with

claims of Buddhist influence. An emerging Dalit critique argues

that Vithoba was a Boddhisattva and that he was viewed in this

way by Tukaram and other famous sants. ‘Sant Tukaram [was a]

true Buddhist bhikku’, writes one, regarding the nature of his

teachings (Javale 1999: 46). It is true that most of Tukaram’s life

appears as a classic bhakti devotee, emotional, suffering and

searching through all the trials of life, writing of the beauty and

grandeur of the god, the humbleness of the devotee (there is a

whole series of abhangswhere he pictures himself as Vithoba’s

‘dog’), throwing himself on god’s mercy and getting angry at its

absence. He also makes references to his own greatness: ‘Smaller

of his poetry.^7 As with other non-Brahman bhakti devotees,
Tukaram is given a Brahman guru. On the basis of a single poem
(#368) one ‘Babaji’ is said to have been his guru, giving him a
‘lineage’ going back to Chaitanya, the Bengali follower of Krishna.
Tukaram’s sufferings are described, including a period where he
drowns his manuscripts in the river and they are saved after a
miraculous intervention by Vithoba. He goes through periods of
meditation and madness, and finally, at the young age of 41, leaves
the world—either miraculously lifted to the heavens, in the tradi-
tional religious version or, as a more ‘modern’ version has it simply
slipping into the forest saying farewell to his followers (see Chitre’s
introduction to Tukaram1991: x–xiv).
As in the case of other low-caste popular sants, this traditional
story is hotly contested, most recently in a popular Marathi book
by A.H. Salunkhe, who depicts Tukaram as a social rebel chal-
lenging Brahmanic dominance. He begins with the argument that
Tukaram drowned his debt records to renounce the exploitative
life of a moneylender and challenges the notion that Babaji
was his guru, noting that Tukaram himself had said in many poems
that he had no guru except ‘Pandurang,’ the legendary first
devotee of Vithoba (Salunkhe 1997: 9–33, 137–69). Salunkhe
stresses the role of Brahmans in persecuting Tukaram, describing
a case that was brought against him for slander and heresy for
having taken Brahman disciples; following this his property was
confiscated, he was banished from the village, and his poems
were immersed in the river—resulting in the loss of so many
valuable contributions.
Finally, carrying the charge of Brahman conspiracy to its height,
Salunkhe has argued that Tukaram was murdered, pointing out
that he disappeared the morning after the second day of Holi, an
inauspicious day for any kind of religious happening, but one easy
enough to commit a murder on (ibid.: 234–82); that his family fled
and his property was confiscated. In arguing this, he also claims
that some well-known abhangsare interpolations— and makes the
point that this despoliation of Tukaram’s thought was the most
murderous attack of all.

206 Buddhism in India

(^7) This tendency to characterise low-caste devotees as inept in the everyday world of
affairs seems to be a way of rendering them ‘spiritual’ and thereby minimising the
significance of their worldly revolt.
(^8) It seems that Tukaram, though writing a series of songs praising the courage and
dedication of ordinary soldiers, rejected almost with horror contact with Shivaji
himself, seeing in it only the false lures of worldly success (1884–1897). Because of
the adultation in which Shivaji is held today, this issue is evaded both by Tukaram’s
most prestigious Marathi interpreter, Sadanand More (himself a descendent of the
family) and by Salunkhe, most well-known proponent of a radical interpretation see
him as a proto-nationalist and inspirer of Shivaji (More 1996: 33–39) and by
Salunkhe. Phule, however, sees a Brahmanic conspiracy in Ramdas’ (the Brahman
santpurported to be the guru of Shivaji) preventing a meeting a Shivaji and the great
Shudra saint Tukaram (Phule 1991: 236). The truth is more likely that particularly
in these early years of Shivaji’s own career, Tukaram had no reason to see him as
any different from any of the other looter-rulers he criticised in his poems.