Dadu Dayal: Of No Party at All

His distinctive contribution, and it is worth having because almost nobody else made it a rule.

The word

Nirpakh, also nipakh, from Sanskrit nispaksha: without a side, without a party, non partisan.

The standard nirguna position

Every sant in this tradition says some version of it.

Kabir: I am neither Hindu nor Turk. Ravidas: caste is a thing people made. Nanak: there is no Hindu and no Musalman.

And Dadu says it too, in many verses: that he belongs to no community, that the divisions are made by people, that the names are different and the thing is one.

What Dadu does with it that is different

He makes it the constitutional principle of an organisation.

The order he founded is not called a Hindu order or a Muslim one. Its members are to be nirpakh: of no side.

And crucially, that includes the order itself.

The instruction, in substance: do not become partisan for this either. The sampradaya is not a new team to join in place of the old one.

Why this is unusual

Because it is the thing that always goes wrong.

The standard trajectory of a movement that rejects sectarian identity is that it becomes a sect, with its own boundary, its own members, its own outsiders, and eventually its own quarrels with everybody else. It happens almost every time.

Dadu named the failure mode in advance and made a rule about it.

Whether it worked

Partly, and a guide should say so.

What did happen: the Dadupanth became an order with lineages, seats, branches, a distinctive dress, initiation, and eventually armed sections. It acquired a boundary. That is what institutions do.

What also happened: it retained members of every background, its principal disciples included Muslims, it never adopted caste rules, and the non partisan instruction remained in its texts and is quoted within it.

Both are true. The rule did not prevent institutionalisation and it did shape what kind of institution resulted.

His other positions

One. The formless.

God has no form that can be depicted, no name that captures him, no book that contains him and no community that owns him. This is standard nirguna and he states it clearly.

Two. Against external observance.

Pilgrimage, fasting, ritual bathing, rosaries, marks on the forehead, and the whole apparatus of visible religion are attacked repeatedly, in the manner of Kabir, on the ground that they can all be done without anything happening inside.

Three. Against caste.

Direct and repeated. A well known sakhi in substance: do not ask about caste; what is the distinction of caste? The one who has met the lord, do not ask about their caste.

Four. Non violence.

Stronger in Dadu than in most of the sants. He is emphatic against animal sacrifice, against killing for food, and against violence generally, and the Dadupanth is vegetarian.

Five. The guru and the name.

The sat guru, the interior repetition of the name, and satsang, the company of others doing the same, are the whole method. There is nothing external to acquire.

Six. Work.

He remained a householder and a working man, and the order includes householders. The nirguna sants generally hold that the practice belongs inside ordinary working life, and he is no exception.

His disciples

The Bavan Bhai, the fifty two, is the traditional list of his principal disciples, and it is one of the most mixed groups in this whole series.

The ones worth naming:

Rajjab, also Rajab, a Muslim and formerly Rajab Ali.

His story: he was on his way to his own wedding, in the procession, dressed for it, when he encountered Dadu. He turned round. He remained in his wedding clothes for the rest of his life, as a standing reminder, and became one of the two principal literary figures of the order.

Sundardas, who is a major Braj poet in his own right. He was given to Dadu as a child, was educated at Kashi for many years at the order's expense, and wrote the Sundar Vilas and other works. He is the most formally accomplished poet the Dadupanth produced.

Garibdas, Dadu's son, who succeeded him at Naraina.

Jan Gopal, who wrote the Dadu Janma Lila, the earliest biography.

Bakhna, Jaimal, Prayagdas, Madho Das, Wajid, Sundar Das the elder and others.

And note the composition: Hindus and Muslims, high caste and low, householders and renunciates, in the same list, which is what nirpakh looks like in practice.

His writings

Around 5,000 verses: padas, songs, and sakhis or dohas, couplets.

The language: a mixed sadhukkadi, the trade language of the wandering sants, drawing on Rajasthani, Braj, Khari Boli and Punjabi, with Persian and Arabic vocabulary where it is useful.

The compilation: the Dadu Vani or Dadu Bani, assembled by his disciples, principally Rajjab and others, in the years after his death.

The Panch Vani

And this is why Dadu matters far beyond his own order.

The Dadupanth compiled anthologies of the sants, and the most important is the Panch Vani, the five voices:

• Dadu
• Kabir
• Namdev
• Ravidas
• Haridas

Rajjab's Sarvangi is a much larger anthology, organised by topic, containing verses of dozens of sants.

Why this is significant

Because the Dadupanthi manuscripts are among the oldest surviving sources for Kabir and Ravidas.

The problem with the north Indian sants is that none of them wrote anything down. Their verses circulated orally for generations, were composed under their names by later poets, and were written down much later by various communities, each of which shaped what it recorded.

There are three major early recensions of Kabir:

• The Bijak, of the Kabirpanth in Bihar
• The Guru Granth Sahib, compiled in 1604
• The Rajasthani or western tradition, which is principally the Dadupanthi manuscripts

And the Dadupanthi manuscripts are dated, some of them to the early seventeenth century, which makes them among the earliest hard evidence for what these poets actually said.

So a Rajasthani cotton carder's order, by keeping careful anthologies of poets it did not own, preserved a substantial part of the textual basis of north Indian devotional literature.

The order today

• The Dadu Dwara at Naraina, Jaipur district, is the principal seat
• Branches include the Khalsa at Naraina, the Viraktas who wander, the Uttaradhe, the Khaki, and the Nagas
• The Nagas are the armed ascetic branch, and they served as soldiers in Rajput and later armies, which is a real part of the order's history and is not usually mentioned in devotional accounts. It is the same phenomenon as the armed akharas in other orders
• Dadu Jayanti, on Phalguna Shukla Ashtami, generally February or March, is the principal observance
• The Naraina fair draws large numbers

One. Nirpakh, including about this.

The instruction to belong to no party, applied to his own order as well as everybody else's.

Why it is worth keeping: the standard trajectory of a movement founded on rejecting sectarian identity is that it becomes a sect with its own boundary and its own quarrels. Dadu named that failure in advance.

And the honest assessment: it happened anyway, partly. The Dadupanth became an institution with lineages, dress, initiation and armed branches. And it also kept members of every background, never adopted caste rules, and kept the instruction in its books.

Applied to yourself: notice when a position you hold because you think it is true has become a team you are on. The two feel identical from inside and behave completely differently.

Two. Do not ask about caste.

His sakhi in substance: do not ask about caste, what is the distinction of caste, the one who has met the lord, do not ask about theirs.

And the modern position: caste discrimination is illegal in India under Article 17, the Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955 and the SC and ST Prevention of Atrocities Act 1989, which covers denial of temple entry and much else. National SC Commission helpline 1800-180-0203, and complaints may be filed at any police station.

Three. He kept working.

A cotton carder, a householder with a wife and three children, who founded an order that includes householders, in a tradition that consistently locates the practice inside ordinary working life.

Four. The manuscripts.

His order kept careful anthologies of poets it did not own, and those manuscripts are now among the oldest surviving sources for Kabir and Ravidas.

Which is a lesson about custodianship. They wrote down other people's work, dated it, and kept it, and four hundred years later that turns out to be one of the most valuable things anybody in that tradition did.

Five. Rajjab's wedding clothes.

A man on the way to his own wedding turned round, and wore the clothes for the rest of his life so that he would not forget the moment.

Take that however you like, but the detail is worth keeping: he did not throw them away, he did not replace them with a renunciate's dress, and he kept the specific thing he had been wearing when it happened.

Six. Forty days with an emperor.

A cotton carder from Rajasthan spent forty days in conversation with the ruler of most of India, on the question of which religion is correct, and the answer he gave was that the question was badly formed.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Ram Ram or Sat Naam, or whichever name is yours, repeated in the course of work
• One sakhi of Dadu's, read and kept. Translations exist and the Dadu Vani is available in Hindi
• The nirpakh question, asked once a week: is this something I think, or a side I am on
• On Phalguna Shukla Ashtami, Dadu Jayanti

A closing thought

A man who carded cotton for a living, whose community of origin nobody can now establish and whose order made a principle of not asking, spent forty days at Fatehpur Sikri telling the Mughal emperor that the question of which religion was correct did not have an answer of the kind he was looking for.

He founded an order and told it not to become a party, including a party for him.

One of his fifty two principal disciples was a Muslim who had been on his way to his own wedding and who wore the clothes for the next several decades.

And the thing his order did that turned out to matter most to everybody else was to write down, carefully and with dates, the verses of poets who were not theirs, which is why we know what Kabir and Ravidas said.

Who: Dadu Dayal, 1544 to 1603, founder of the Dadupanth and a major figure of the north Indian nirguna sant tradition alongside Kabir, Ravidas and Nanak. Born at Ahmedabad and resident in Rajasthan, at Sambhar, Amber, Bhairana hill and finally Naraina in Jaipur district, where the Dadu Dwara is the principal seat.

His trade: dhuniya, a cotton carder, which places him in the same social category as Kabir the weaver and Ravidas the leather worker.

His origins: genuinely disputed. One account has him found as an infant floating on the Sabarmati and raised by Lodhi Ram; another has him of a Muslim family of the cotton carding community. The Dadupanth's own position is that the question does not interest it, which is consistent with what he taught.

Akbar: in around 1585 he spent forty days in conversation with the emperor at Fatehpur Sikri, which is the best documented episode in his life.

Nirpakh: his distinctive contribution. The word means without a side or party. Every nirguna sant says he belongs to no community, but Dadu made it the constitutional principle of an order and applied it to the order itself: do not become partisan for this either. He named in advance the failure mode by which movements founded on rejecting sectarian identity become sects.

His positions: the formless; attacks on pilgrimage, fasting, ritual bathing and visible religion; direct opposition to caste; unusually strong non violence, including against animal sacrifice and killing for food; the guru, the name and satsang as the whole method; and practice located inside ordinary working life.

The fifty two: his principal disciples, including Rajjab, a Muslim who turned back from his own wedding procession and wore the clothes for the rest of his life; Sundardas, a major Braj poet; Garibdas, his son and successor; and Jan Gopal, who wrote the earliest biography.

The manuscripts: the Dadupanth compiled the Panch Vani, an anthology of Dadu, Kabir, Namdev, Ravidas and Haridas, and Rajjab's much larger Sarvangi. These Rajasthani manuscripts, some dated to the early seventeenth century, are among the oldest surviving sources for Kabir and Ravidas, alongside the Bijak and the Guru Granth Sahib.

Reading Dadu

• The Dadu Vani is available in Hindi editions with commentary, and selections exist in English translation
• W. G. Orr's A Sixteenth Century Indian Mystic is an older English study and is out of copyright
• Scholarly work on the Dadupanth and on the Rajasthani manuscript tradition is substantial, particularly on the manuscripts as sources for Kabir
• Sundardas is worth reading separately; he is a considerable poet in his own right

How to read the sakhis

They are couplets, and one at a time is the pace. They are constructed to be memorable and to be carried around, and reading forty in a sitting is the wrong use of the form.

Expect them to be blunt. The nirguna sants are not decorative poets. The verses are arguments, most of them short, most of them against something.

The nirguna sants, as a group

Since Dadu belongs to a family and it is worth having the family.

What they hold in common:

• God is nirguna, without attributes, without form, without a body to be depicted
• The name, repeated internally, is the practice
• A sat guru is necessary
• Caste is a human invention with no ultimate standing
• External observance achieves nothing by itself: pilgrimage, ritual bathing, fasting, marks, rosaries, temple and mosque alike
• The practice belongs inside working life and does not require renunciation
• Religious identity is not the point, and most of them refuse to claim one

The principal figures:

• Namdev, thirteenth to fourteenth century, Marathi, whose verses are also in the Guru Granth Sahib
• Ramananda, fourteenth to fifteenth century, the figure the north Indian tradition traces itself to
• Kabir, fifteenth century, weaver of Kashi, the central figure
• Ravidas, fifteenth to sixteenth century, leather worker of Kashi
• Guru Nanak, 1469 to 1539, whose tradition became a distinct religion
• Dadu Dayal, 1544 to 1603
• Malukdas, Sundardas, Rajjab, Charandas, Paltu Sahib, Tulsi Sahib, Garib Das and many others in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

And a note on how they are related

The traditional accounts make them a lineage, with Ramananda at the head and everybody descending from him.

The historical picture is looser: overlapping regional movements, shared vocabulary and shared verses, a lot of cross attribution, and a common idiom, the sadhukkadi, in which they all wrote.

What is not in doubt is that they were reading and quoting each other, that verses moved between corpora, and that the Dadupanthi anthologies are a large part of the reason we can see any of it.