Bahinabai: The Woman Who Wrote Her Own Life Down

Content note: this section describes child marriage and domestic violence, in her own account.

The marriage

She was married at three to a widower around thirty years older, a scholar named Ratnakar Pathak.

That was normal. Child marriage was standard practice, and marrying a small girl to a much older man was common where the man had been widowed.

It is now illegal. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 sets the minimum ages at eighteen and twenty one and makes arranging such a marriage a criminal offence. Childline 1098 takes reports, and so do the district child protection units.

That has to be said in an entry about a saint whose life story begins with it.

What she describes

Her account is specific and she does not soften it.

• The family was poor and moved repeatedly, living on what her husband could earn as a puranik, a reciter
• A cow and its calf came into her life and the calf became attached to her and followed her everywhere
• The calf died, and she fell seriously ill from grief, and this episode is one of the most affecting things in Marathi
• She encountered Jayram Swami of Vadgaon, a kirtankar, and through him became drawn to devotional life
• She received a vision of Tukaram and took him as her guru
• Her husband objected violently

Why he objected. She states his reasons and they are not mysterious.

One: Tukaram was a Kunbi, a cultivator, which is to say a Shudra, and Ratnakar was a brahmana scholar. A brahmana woman taking a Shudra as guru was, to him, a disgrace on the household.

Two: people came to see her. She had a reputation. That inverted the order of the house.

Three: a wife's role, as he understood it, did not include a spiritual life of her own with an authority other than her husband.

What he did

She writes it plainly:

• He beat her
• He confined her, and in one passage she describes being tied
• He threatened to leave and take up sannyasa, abandoning her
• He abused her verbally over a long period

And she was pregnant during part of this.

How it resolved. In her account, he fell ill, or had a change of heart, and afterwards accepted her practice and even supported it. She records the reconciliation without pretending the earlier years did not happen.

That is the thing to notice about her writing. She does not erase him and she does not excuse him. Both the violence and the later peace are in the same document, in her own words.

What has to be said now

This app is not going to present that marriage as a model of endurance rewarded.

• Domestic violence is a crime. In India the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 covers physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic abuse, and it provides for protection orders, residence orders and monetary relief
• The women's helpline is 181, the police are 112, and One Stop Centres, the Sakhi centres, exist in most districts and provide shelter, medical aid, legal aid and counselling in one place
• Free legal aid is a statutory right through the district legal services authority, national number 15100
• Tele MANAS 14416 for the mental health side

Nothing in devotional life requires anybody to remain in a house where they are being hurt. Bahinabai's account is a record of what a woman endured in the seventeenth century, not an instruction to endure it now.

And her own text supports that reading, because she does not describe the violence as a spiritual opportunity. She describes it as what was done to her while she tried to keep a practice.

How it happened, in her account.

At Kolhapur, she heard Tukaram's abhangas being sung and was affected by them. She then had a vision, or a dream, in which he gave her initiation and the mantra.

Tukaram was alive at the time, living at Dehu, and the tradition holds that he acknowledged her.

Why this was a scandal

Three separate objections, and she records all of them.

One. Caste. Tukaram was a Kunbi, of the cultivator community. Bahinabai was a brahmana. A brahmana taking a Shudra as guru inverted the whole order, and it was her husband's principal grievance.

She addresses it directly in her abhangas, and the position she takes is the tradition's: that the guru is recognised by what he is, not by what he was born as, and that anybody who cannot see that has not understood the first thing.

Two. Sex. A woman having a guru of her own, a following, and an independent spiritual standing was outside the expected order of a household.

Three. A living guru, not the family's. She did not receive initiation through the household's line, which meant her authority did not come from her husband's family.

The Kolhapur episode: a local brahmana is said to have objected publicly to her devotion to a Shudra, and the dispute became a matter for the town. She records the hostility.

What she says about being a woman

This is the material she is most cited for, and it needs quoting fairly, because it is often misrepresented in both directions.

She states the restriction as it stood, without softening it. In one much quoted abhanga she says, in substance:

The Vedas cry out, the Puranas shout aloud, that no good may come to a woman. A woman's body is a body controlled by another. Therefore the path of renunciation is closed to her.

And then she does not accept the conclusion.

What she goes on to say is that the way is open anyway, through bhakti, through the name, through service done where she is, and that what is closed to her by rule is not closed to her in fact.

How to read this correctly

She is not endorsing the restriction. She is quoting it, accurately and bitterly, as the thing she has to work around, and then working around it.

The abhanga is often quoted in isolation as though it were her view of women. It is her statement of the obstacle. The rest of the poem is the answer to it.

Her position in full:

• The formal paths of study and renunciation were closed to women by the rules as they stood
• That is a description of a fact, and she is angry about it
• The devotional path is not closed and no rule can close it
• Her own life is the demonstration: a woman, married as an infant, beaten, confined, and she has a guru, a body of work, and a following anyway

And the parallel with the caste question is exact. Chokhamela says the exclusion by caste has no ground. Bahinabai says the exclusion by sex has no ground. Both state the rule accurately first, which is why both are convincing.

The Bahinibai Gatha

Around 473 abhangas, in several groups:

• The atmanivedana, the autobiographical sequence, which is the celebrated part
• Abhangas on the guru and on Tukaram specifically
• Abhangas on vedanta and on the nature of the self, which are more technical than most Varkari poetry
• Abhangas on the conflict between householder duty and practice, which is her distinctive subject
• A famous set on the structure of the tradition

The famous structural abhanga

One of her best known verses gives the Varkari tradition its own self image, and it is quoted constantly in Maharashtra:

Jnaneshwar laid the foundation. Namdev built on it. Eknath was the pillar. Tukaram is the pinnacle.

That single verse is why the four are counted as four, and it comes from her.

The twelve births

Her autobiography opens with an account of her previous births, twelve of them, described in sequence, leading to this one.

How to take that: it is a devotional convention and it is her frame for explaining how somebody in her position came to have the pull she had. It is not a historical claim and nothing in this app depends on it.

The calf

The episode readers remember, and it is worth telling.

• A cow was given to the household, and it had a calf
• The calf became attached to Bahinabai and followed her everywhere, into the house, into gatherings
• When she went to hear Jayram Swami, the calf came
• The animal is described as showing every sign of distress when she was away
• Her husband, angry at her devotional life, struck her, and in some accounts struck the calf
• The calf stopped eating
• And it died
• And she fell dangerously ill from grief, and her own account describes days of it

Why it belongs in her life story

Because it is the only unambiguous affection in it.

She was married at three to a man who beat her. She had children in a household that resented her. The one creature that simply followed her about and did not want anything from her, died, apparently of the household's hostility to her.

She writes it without moralising and without turning it into a lesson, which is why it lands.

Her later life

• The household eventually settled at Shiur, in Ahmednagar district
• Her husband came round and supported her practice
• She had a son, Vishwambhar, who compiled and preserved her work, and a daughter, Kashibai
• She had a following in her later years and her abhangas circulated
• She died at Shiur in 1700, and her own account describes her foreknowledge of it and her instructions to her son

Her samadhi is at Shiur, in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra.

One. She wrote it down herself.

Every other saint in this series is known through somebody else's account. She is known through her own, including the parts nobody would have put in for her.

That is worth imitating in a small way: a record of your own practice, kept plainly, including what did not work.

Two. She stated the obstacle accurately before answering it.

She quotes the rule that excluded women, in full, with its authority, and does not pretend it did not exist. Then she says the devotional path is open regardless.

That is a much stronger method than pretending the exclusion was never there, and it is why she is still read.

Three. A guru is recognised, not inherited.

She took a Kunbi cultivator as guru while being a brahmana, was attacked for it by her husband and by her town, and did not move.

And the corollary, which this series keeps stating: a teacher's authority comes from what they are. It does not come from birth, and it does not come from a title, a lineage certificate, a following, or a fee. Any teacher who requires money for access, isolates you from your family, demands secrecy, or behaves in ways that would not survive being described plainly, is failing on the tradition's own terms.

Four. The householder conflict is real and she says so.

She is the tradition's most honest voice on the collision between domestic duty and practice, because she is the one who was living inside a hostile household while trying to keep one.

She does not resolve it neatly. She describes the cost.

Five. And the limit that this entry has already stated.

What her husband did was criminal by the standards of any decent household and by Indian law now. Her endurance is not the lesson.

Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005; women's helpline 181; police 112; One Stop Sakhi Centres in most districts; free legal aid 15100; Tele MANAS 14416. Child marriage is prohibited by the 2006 Act, and Childline 1098 takes reports.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Rama Krishna Hari, the Varkari name
• Her four line summary of the tradition, worth memorising: foundation, walls, pillar, pinnacle
• And, occasionally, her method: write down what actually happened, including the parts that do not flatter anybody

A closing thought

A girl was married at three to a scholar thirty years older. She was beaten for listening to the poems of a farmer, and tied up for it, and the calf that followed her around stopped eating and died.

She wrote all of that down, in the metre farmers sing in, under her own name, at a time when almost no woman in India was leaving a first person account of anything.

And in the middle of it she wrote the four lines that Maharashtra still uses to describe its own tradition, and put her guru, the Kunbi cultivator her husband had beaten her over, at the top of them.

Who: Bahinabai, 1628 to 1700, a Varkari saint of Maharashtra, born at Devgaon near Ellora into a brahmana family and settled finally at Shiur in Ahmednagar district.

Why she is unique: she wrote her own life, in around 473 abhangas including a continuous autobiographical sequence, the atmanivedana. Almost every other saint in this series is known only through hagiographies written by other people, often centuries later. She is one of the earliest women in India to leave a first person life account.

Her marriage: at three years old, to Ratnakar Pathak, a widower and scholar around thirty years older. Child marriage is now prohibited in India by the 2006 Act.

Her guru: Tukaram, taken after a vision while he was still alive, and a Kunbi cultivator, not a brahmana. Her husband beat and confined her over it, and she records this plainly, along with the later reconciliation.

On being a woman: she quotes the rule excluding women from the formal paths accurately and bitterly, and then says the devotional path is open regardless and that no rule can close it. The quotation is her statement of the obstacle, not her view.

Her most quoted verse: Jnaneshwar laid the foundation, Namdev built on it, Eknath was the pillar, Tukaram is the pinnacle. That verse is why the four are counted as four.

The calf: an animal attached itself to her, followed her everywhere, stopped eating after the household's hostility, and died, and she nearly died of grief. It is the one unambiguous affection in her account.

Where: her samadhi is at Shiur, Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra.

What must be said: her endurance is not the lesson. Domestic violence is a crime under the 2005 Act; women's helpline 181, police 112, One Stop Sakhi Centres, free legal aid 15100, Tele MANAS 14416.