Sant Kanhopatra: The Only Grave Inside the Temple

What happened

Word of her reached the court. In the accounts it is the Badshah at Bidar, the Bahmani sultan, though the identification varies and the sultanate politics of the fifteenth century Deccan make it hard to fix.

A messenger came, and then soldiers, with an order that she be brought to the court.

What that meant. It was not a proposal.

A woman of her status, summoned by a ruler, had no standing to refuse. The order would be enforced. The soldiers were there to enforce it. Refusal meant her own death or the destruction of the town's people who had sheltered her, and both threats appear in the accounts.

What she asked for: permission to enter the temple and take leave of Vitthal before going.

And it was granted.

What happened inside: she went to the image, sang, and died at its feet.

The abhanga she is said to have sung is one of the most desperate things in Marathi devotional poetry, and its refrain is a version of:

Nako devaraya anta aata pahu. Do not test me any longer, lord.

And it asks: who else will take a woman like me? Whose refuge do I have? I am fallen, I am impure by everybody's reckoning, and you are said to lift the fallen, so lift me or say plainly that you will not.

How she died. The tradition holds that she gave up her life there, in front of the image, having asked to be taken.

A historian would say: a young woman under an order she could not refuse died at the temple. The mechanism is not recoverable.

What has to be said, plainly

This is a story about a young woman being trafficked, and about a death under coercion. It is not a devotional model.

• No tradition asks anybody to die rather than be dishonoured, and any framing that treats a woman's death as the honourable outcome of being threatened is a framing this app rejects
• The person who did wrong in this story is the one who sent the soldiers
• Trafficking and forced sex work are crimes in India under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act 1956 and under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provisions on trafficking
• The anti human trafficking units operate in every state, police 112
• Childline 1098 for anybody under eighteen
• Women's helpline 181, and One Stop Sakhi Centres in most districts provide shelter, medical aid, legal aid and counselling together
• Free legal aid is a statutory right, national number 15100
• Tele MANAS 14416 for the mental health side, free and 24 hours

If you are being pressured into sex work, or somebody in your family is being pressured, that is a crime being committed against you and not a fate.

What happened afterwards

She was buried at the temple.

Specifically, at the southern door of the Vitthal temple at Pandharpur, and a tarati tree, the tarat, grows at the spot.

Why that matters: hers is the only samadhi inside the temple precinct.

Set that against Chokhamela, whose samadhi is at the step, outside, because his caste kept him out in life.

A courtesan's daughter is inside. An untouchable labourer is at the door. Both facts are true, both are consequences of the same system, and the tradition contains both.

The Varkari position on her is unambiguous: she is a saint, her abhangas are sung on the wari, and pilgrims stop at the tarati tree.

Around thirty abhangas survive under her name, and they are unlike anybody else's in the Varkari corpus in one specific way.

They are pleading, and they are frightened.

The other saints argue, complain, describe, praise, instruct. Kanhopatra is asking to be taken in, repeatedly, by somebody she is not sure will have her.

The recurring content:

One. The question of whether she is acceptable.

She returns to it constantly. She says she is fallen, that her birth is what it is, that everybody knows what her mother was, and that she has nothing to offer.

And then she says that this is precisely why he should take her, because taking the acceptable is no achievement.

Two. Having nowhere else.

Several abhangas make the same point in different words: if you refuse me, where do I go. There is no second option in her poems, and that is a description of her actual situation and not a rhetorical device.

Three. The direct demand.

Her most famous abhanga, nako devaraya anta aata pahu, tells the deity to stop testing her. It is not patient. She points out his reputation for lifting the fallen and tells him to either do it or stop claiming it.

Four. Fear.

Some of the abhangas are about being hunted. She writes about being pursued, about people wanting her for what she looks like, and about wanting to be somewhere she cannot be reached.

Why they are valued

Because almost nothing else in the devotional canon is written from that position.

The tradition has poems by kings, brahmanas, labourers, servants, potters, gardeners and housewives. It has very few from a woman who was property in practice, who was being hunted, and who wrote while it was happening.

Her place among the women of the tradition:

• Muktabai, a girl of a family that was outcast
• Janabai, a servant of an untouchable caste
• Soyarabai and Nirmala, of Chokhamela's family
• Kanhopatra, of a courtesan household
• Bahinabai, a brahmana wife in a violent marriage

All five wrote from a specific and precisely described disadvantage, and none of them wrote as though it were not there.

How to read her: English translations exist in anthologies of bhakti and women's poetry, and Marathi collections carry her abhangas alongside the other Varkari saints. She is also sung, and nako devaraya is widely recorded.

Where to find her

Pandharpur:

• Her samadhi is at the southern door of the Vitthal temple, inside the precinct
• A tarati tree grows at the spot and is identified with her
• Pilgrims stop there, and it is part of the standard circuit
• Hers is the only samadhi within the temple

Mangalvedha:

• Around 25 kilometres from Pandharpur
• Her birthplace, with sites associated with her
• Also the town of Chokhamela and of Damaji Pant, who is treated in his own entry, and it is one of the densest saint sites in Maharashtra

On the wari: her abhangas are sung by the dindis, and she is named in the roll of saints.

What her position in the temple means

Worth thinking about, since it is the physical fact everything else rests on.

In life: she was a courtesan's daughter, outside respectable society, refused by parts of the temple establishment, and finally summoned by a ruler who could take her.

In death: she is the only person buried inside the temple, and everybody who comes to Pandharpur passes her.

That is not a resolution and this app will not present it as one. She died at around twenty, under a threat she could not escape, and her being honoured afterwards did not save her.

But it is what the tradition did with her, and the position of the grave is a statement: the person the society said was least eligible is the one inside.

A comparison worth holding

Chokhamela: at the step, outside the door, because caste excluded him.

Kanhopatra: inside the precinct, at the southern door, because the tradition put her there.

Both graves are at doors, and the tradition put its two most excluded people at the thresholds of its most important building, which is either an accident or the most eloquent thing the Varkari tradition has done.

One. She refused, and the refusal is the story.

Everything else follows from a girl born into a hereditary profession saying she would not enter it. She had no legal standing, no property, no family support for the decision, and no alternative offered to her, and she said no anyway.

Two. She addressed the deity from exactly where she was.

She did not clean herself up first. Her abhangas name what she is, in the words the society used, and then ask on that basis.

The argument she makes: taking the acceptable is no achievement, so if you are what you are said to be, take me.

That argument is available to anybody who has ever felt they were not eligible to approach, for any reason: their past, their work, their family, their failures, their state of mind. It is one of the oldest arguments in devotion and she makes it in its purest form.

Three. The tradition put her inside.

Whatever the temple establishment thought of her in life, the Varkaris made her a saint, sing her abhangas on the wari, and her grave is the only one within the precinct.

Four. And the thing that must not be taken from her.

Her death is not a model, and this needs saying because stories of women dying rather than being dishonoured get used badly.

The wrong is entirely on the side of the person who sent soldiers for her. A woman who is threatened, trafficked, or coerced owes nobody her death, and nothing in any tradition says otherwise. Survival is the correct outcome and there is no dishonour anywhere in it.

If any of this is live for you or somebody you know:

• Police 112
• Women's helpline 181
• Childline 1098 for anybody under eighteen
• One Stop Sakhi Centres in most districts: shelter, medical, legal and counselling in one place
• Free legal aid, national number 15100
• Tele MANAS 14416, free, 24 hours, many languages
• Anti human trafficking units operate in every state and trafficking is a serious criminal offence

A daily practice from this entry:

• Vitthal Vitthal, or Rama Krishna Hari
• Her line, when the eligibility question comes up: taking the acceptable is no achievement
• At Pandharpur, stop at the tarati tree at the southern door

A closing thought

She was born to a courtesan in Mangalvedha and was trained from childhood in dance and music because that was what the household needed her for.

When her mother told her what her life would be, she said she would only have a man who was her equal, and that she had heard there was one at Pandharpur, and she walked there and stayed.

She sang in front of the image for years, and wrote about thirty poems, most of which ask, in one form or another, whether somebody like her is allowed to be there.

And when the soldiers came for her, she asked for a minute to say goodbye, and went in, and they buried her at the southern door, where she is still the only person inside.

Who: Kanhopatra, fifteenth century, died around 1468, a Varkari saint of Mangalvedha in Solapur district, Maharashtra.

Her birth: daughter of Shama, a courtesan. Hereditary courtesan communities trained daughters from childhood in dance and music and expected them to enter the profession, with no choice in the matter and no possibility of conventional marriage.

Her refusal: she said she would accept only a man who was her equal in beauty and character, that she had heard there was such a person at Pandharpur, and that his name was Vitthal. She walked there and stayed.

How she lived: singing and dancing before the deity, composing abhangas, treated with suspicion by parts of the temple establishment and accepted by the Varkaris.

The summons: word reached the court, given in the accounts as the Bahmani sultan at Bidar, and soldiers came with an order to bring her. Refusal meant her death or harm to the town. She asked to take leave of Vitthal first, went into the temple, and died at the image.

Her abhangas: around thirty, pleading and frightened, unlike anything else in the corpus. The most famous, nako devaraya anta aata pahu, tells the deity to stop testing her, and her central argument is that taking the acceptable is no achievement.

Where she is: buried at the southern door of the Vitthal temple at Pandharpur, with a tarati tree at the spot. Hers is the only samadhi inside the temple precinct, while Chokhamela's is at the step outside.

What must be said: her death is not a model. The wrong is entirely on the side of the person who sent soldiers. Police 112, women's helpline 181, Childline 1098, One Stop Sakhi Centres, free legal aid 15100, Tele MANAS 14416.