Tukdoji Maharaj: The Saint Who Wrote About Drains

Published in 1955, in Marathi ovi, in forty one chapters.

And it is a devotional text. It is written in the metre of the Jnaneshwari and the Dasbodh, it is addressed to a spiritual reader, and it is read in Vidarbha the way those texts are read elsewhere.

And here is what is in it.

What the chapters are about

• Cleanliness and sanitation. Drains, refuse, latrines, standing water, the state of the village lanes
• Water. The well, its condition, who is allowed to draw from it
• Education. The village school, sending girls to it, adult literacy
• Untouchability, and its abolition, stated directly and not as an aspiration
• Cooperation, cooperative societies, and shared work
• Cottage industry and local production
• Prohibition, on alcohol and other intoxicants
• Superstition, and its removal, which the next part of this section covers
• Women, their education and their standing
• Communal harmony
• Shramdan, the donation of labour
• Samuhik prarthana, collective prayer
• And the ordinary devotional material: the guru, the name, bhakti, and what a person is for

A scripture with a chapter on drains is a strange object and it is the most interesting thing about him.

Why that is the right ending for this series

Because it is where the argument goes.

Every sant in these fifty entries attacked ritual that produced no change. Kabir, Akho, Bhoja Bhagat, Paltu, Garibdas, Soyarabai, Chokhamela, all of them, in every language, for six centuries.

And the obvious question, which the poetry does not answer, is: change into what.

The Gramgeeta answers it.

Into a village where the water is clean, the girls are in school, the well is open to everybody, nobody is drinking the household into ruin, and the labour is shared.

That is not a lowering of the spiritual claim. It is the claim, made operational, and it is what six hundred years of attacking empty ritual was always pointing at.

Samuhik prarthana

Which is his signature practice and is worth understanding because it is cleverer than it looks.

A collective prayer, held in the village, open to everybody, with no qualification of caste, sex or literacy required to attend or to lead.

And the point of it is structural rather than devotional.

In a village where people who could not eat together and could not draw water from the same well sat in one place and said the same words at the same time, the seating was the argument.

He did not have to win a debate about caste. He had to get everybody into one room, and the prayer was the reason to be in the room.

Superstition, and what came after him

The Gramgeeta attacks it directly: the bhagat who claims to cure by expelling spirits, animal sacrifice, the quack, the person who takes money to lift a curse, and the ruin these bring on poor households.

And that strand has a legal descendant, which is worth knowing.

Maharashtra passed the Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act in 2013, which criminalises a specific list of practices: claiming to cure by supernatural means and thereby causing harm, assault or forced ingestion in the name of exorcism, sexual exploitation under the promise of supernatural benefit, claiming to be possessed and demanding money, and several others.

Karnataka passed a comparable law in 2017.

These are not laws against religion. They are laws against a specific set of frauds and assaults that are committed under religious cover, and the list of practices is narrow and enumerated.

If somebody is being harmed this way: police 112. Women's helpline 181. Childline 1098. Tele MANAS 14416 if the person is unwell rather than possessed, which is usually the case and which the Ganagapur entry sets out.

And on temples, which he was blunt about

Tukdoji Maharaj argued that money spent on ostentatious construction while the village had no school, no clean water and no dispensary was misdirected.

Which is an uncomfortable thing to read on a devotional site and it is his position and this entry is not going to hide it.

Its honest form is not that temples are wrong. It is that a village which can raise four lakh rupees for a gate and cannot raise forty thousand for a water tank has told you what it actually worships.

The honest limits of the book

It is a text of the nineteen fifties and it reads like one.

The material on women is progressive for its moment and is framed within roles that a reader today will not simply accept. The vision of the self sufficient village has been overtaken by fifty years of migration, markets and mobile phones. And the register is moralistic in a way that can grate.

Say so, keep the book, and do what this series has argued for throughout: take the part that is alive and decline the part that is not.

This is the last entry in the series, and it is worth saying plainly what fifty lives of saints turned out to have in common, because the same things kept appearing whatever the century or the language.

Seven things recurred

One. The deity insists on the excluded person.

Not tolerates. Insists. The Puri chariot stops for Balarama Das. Vitthal shaves a king for Sena, grinds grain for Janabai, pays a treasury as a Mahar for Damaji, and walks out to the road for Kurmadas. Tara appears to Bamakhepa after the temple servants beat him.

In every regional tradition, independently, the story a devotional culture tells about itself is one in which the establishment is wrong about who counts.

Two. Devotional lines get turned into weapons against the person hearing them.

Sahjo Bai's verse about her guru, used by organisations to demand obedience. The Gita's line about action without fruit, used on people who are being underpaid. Malukdas's doha about the python, used to shame the anxious. Bhima Bhoi's vow to accept hell, used to justify not fixing anything.

The rule this series arrived at is constant: a statement a person makes about their own risk is a vow, and the same statement pointed at somebody else is an instruction, and the person pointing is never the one who pays.**

Three. Traditions are manufactured backwards.

Lineage charts drawn to authorise the branch that drew them. Gurus supplied posthumously where there was no teacher to name. Prophecies that appear after the events. Noble birth invented for a sant whose origins were ordinary.

None of which makes the poetry worse, and all of which should be known before you build on it.

Four. The women are in the record and filed under a man.

Soyarabai as Chokhamela's wife, though the argument in her four lines is sharper than anything in his. Daya Bai as the second of two. Panbai as the person being sung to. Nirmala and Karmamela, in the same household, barely read.

Five. Succession always fractures.

Ekasarana into four samhatis. The Gaudiya Math into a court case. The Datta avatar list into branch specific versions that do not agree. Every single time.

Six. The work is the practice.

Kabir wove. Ravidas made shoes. Namdev printed. Gora Kumbhar threw pots. Savata Mali grew vegetables. Sena shaved. Narahari worked gold. Damaji kept accounts. Niloba kept the land records. Garibdas farmed.

Not one of the sants in this series told anybody to leave their job, and a great many of them said the opposite in writing.

Seven. And the tests for a teacher never changed.

• What do they want from you: money, obedience, distance from your family, property, labour, silence, sexual access
• What happens if you leave, since in a legitimate arrangement the answer is nothing
• Can they be questioned, directly, and what happens to the conversation when you do
• Who is not allowed to speak
• And what is in the court record, which is public, free and takes ten minutes

What is actually left to do

Very little, which is the point.

• A name, said daily. Whichever one your household uses. Fifteen minutes, before the phone
• One text, read slowly, a page at a time, without a fear based observance around it
• A plate set aside before you eat, which is the oldest instruction in the tradition and the least disputed
• The work, done properly, which every one of them said was the practice
• And whatever your version is of getting everybody into one room

And the line to end on

Tukdoji Maharaj's most sung bhajan opens: har desh mein tu, har bhesh mein tu.

You are in every country. You are in every guise.

A poor man from a Vidarbha village, singing with a hand drum, writing a scripture with a chapter on drains, ends up at the least sectarian sentence in the language.

That is not a coincidence and it is not softness. It is where the argument goes if you follow it honestly, and six hundred years of Indian sants followed it honestly, and this is where they came out.

Where to go

• Gurukunj Ashram, Mozari, Amravati district, Maharashtra
• Yavali, his birthplace, in the same district
• Shegaon, for Gajanan Maharaj, in the same country of Vidarbha

A daily practice from this entry

• Har desh mein tu, har bhesh mein tu, which takes ten seconds
• A chapter of the Gramgeeta, if you read Marathi
• And his question, which is the last one this series will ask: what does this village actually need, and what are we spending on instead

Who: Tukdoji Maharaj, 1909 to 1968, born Manik Bandoji Ingale at Yavali in Amravati district, in the Vidarbha country of Maharashtra, into a poor family. The name came from his guru, Aadkoji Maharaj: Tukdya, from tukda, a morsel, from the practice of going for morsels of food at doors, which he did as a young man following his teacher. He sang with a khanjari, the small frame drum, in Marathi and Hindi, composed a very large number of bhajans, and the singing was the method rather than decoration around a message, since he would arrive in a village, sing, and a crowd would form.

Public life: an unusual list for a sant. He took part in the Quit India movement in 1942 and was imprisoned for it. He was given the title Rashtrasant, associated with Rajendra Prasad, and nobody in Vidarbha calls him anything else. He attended the World Conference of Religions in Japan in 1955. He worked with Vinoba Bhave on Bhoodan. He worked in the border districts during the wars of 1962 and 1965 on morale. And throughout he ran the Gurudev Seva Mandal, whose centre is Gurukunj Ashram at Mozari in Amravati district, where he died in 1968. Nagpur University was renamed after him in 2005.

The Gramgeeta: published 1955, in Marathi ovi, in forty one chapters, written in the metre of the Jnaneshwari and the Dasbodh and read in Vidarbha the way those texts are read elsewhere. Its chapters cover cleanliness and sanitation, meaning drains, refuse, latrines, standing water and the state of the village lanes; water, the well and who is allowed to draw from it; education, the village school, sending girls to it and adult literacy; untouchability and its abolition, stated directly; cooperation and cooperative societies; cottage industry; prohibition; superstition and its removal; women, their education and standing; communal harmony; shramdan; samuhik prarthana; and the ordinary devotional material. A scripture with a chapter on drains is a strange object and it is the most interesting thing about him.

Why that is the right ending: every sant in these fifty entries attacked ritual that produced no change, in every language, for six centuries, and the obvious question the poetry does not answer is: change into what. The Gramgeeta answers it: into a village where the water is clean, the girls are in school, the well is open to everybody, nobody is drinking the household into ruin, and the labour is shared. That is not a lowering of the spiritual claim but the claim made operational.

Samuhik prarthana: a collective prayer held in the village, open to everybody, with no qualification of caste, sex or literacy required to attend or lead, and its point is structural rather than devotional. In a village where people who could not eat together and could not draw water from the same well sat in one place and said the same words at the same time, the seating was the argument. He did not have to win a debate about caste; he had to get everybody into one room, and the prayer was the reason to be in the room.

Superstition and its legal descendant: the Gramgeeta attacks the bhagat who claims to cure by expelling spirits, animal sacrifice, the quack, the person who takes money to lift a curse, and the ruin these bring on poor households. Maharashtra passed the Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act in 2013, criminalising a narrow enumerated list: claiming to cure by supernatural means and thereby causing harm, assault or forced ingestion in the name of exorcism, sexual exploitation under promise of supernatural benefit, claiming to be possessed and demanding money, and others. Karnataka passed a comparable law in 2017. These are not laws against religion but against a specific set of frauds and assaults committed under religious cover. If somebody is being harmed this way: police 112, women's helpline 181, Childline 1098, and Tele MANAS 14416 if the person is unwell rather than possessed, which is usually the case.

On temples: he argued that money spent on ostentatious construction while the village had no school, no clean water and no dispensary was misdirected. Its honest form is not that temples are wrong but that a village which can raise four lakh rupees for a gate and cannot raise forty thousand for a water tank has told you what it actually worships. And the book has honest limits: it is a text of the nineteen fifties, the material on women is progressive for its moment but framed within roles a reader today will not simply accept, the self sufficient village has been overtaken by fifty years of migration and markets, and the register is moralistic in a way that can grate. Say so, keep the book, and take the part that is alive.

What fifty lives had in common: the deity insists on the excluded person rather than tolerating them, in every regional tradition independently; devotional lines get turned into weapons against the person hearing them, and a statement about your own risk is a vow while the same statement pointed at somebody else is an instruction, and the person pointing never pays; traditions are manufactured backwards, with lineage charts, posthumous gurus and predictions that appear after the events; the women are in the record and filed under a man; succession always fractures; the work is the practice, since not one sant in the series told anybody to leave their job; and the tests for a teacher never changed, being what they want from you, what happens if you leave, whether they can be questioned, who is not allowed to speak, and what is in the court record. What is left to do is very little: a name said daily, one text read slowly without a fear based observance around it, a plate set aside before you eat, the work done properly, and whatever your version is of getting everybody into one room. Tukdoji Maharaj's most sung bhajan opens har desh mein tu, har bhesh mein tu, you are in every country and every guise, which is where the argument goes if you follow it honestly.