Mīrābai in the Academy and the Politics of Identity

Abstract

Abstract A fifteenth or sixteenth century rebellious woman poet-saint, who pursued her devotion to Kr i:ia with complete dedication, composed exceptionally beautiful songs of love and longing for God, and endured severe persecution because she did not behave as a member of the royal household should or because she crossed caste boundaries, seems a likely candidate for those who would look to the past for exemplary women of power and independence. Mīrābai is such a saint, but as soon as we begin to try to uncover the precise details of her life, we encounter multiple Mīrās. People have told her story in myriad ways, making her over in their own image and sometimes trying to appropriate her absolute devotion for their own purposes. l Her story of struggle and perseverance is compelling, but was she a good wife who turned to serious devotion only after her husband’s death, suffering unjustly at the hands of her in-laws, as some would have it, or was she a woman who knew her own mind and risked her life, disregarding hierarchies of gender, caste, and religion, in her shameless passion for God, as others claim? No single image of Mira wins universal acceptance, and a stubborn multiplicity remains. Her devotion to none but God, coupled with the resistance so fundamental to her character, appears to inhibit her complete incorporation into any political and social agenda (or institutionalized religious sect, for that matter). Many people also speak in her name-of their own suffering, of dignity and resistance in the face of oppression, of love fulfilled or denied.2 No authentic original body of works attributable to an individual woman of medieval Rajasthan has yet been reliably identified either, and stories and songs continue to multiply around her.3

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