From Lover to Mauli: Bhakti, Sufism, and the Emotional Geography of Devotion in India

The history of Indian spirituality is not merely a matter of theology or ritual. It is a vast emotional landscape, shaped by how human beings choose to relate to the divine. While the sacred goal may remain constant—union with God—the emotional idioms, metaphors, and relationships we assign to that journey vary deeply across time and geography. One of the most revealing contrasts in this landscape lies between the **Sufi-influenced Bhakti movement in North India** and the **Sant and Varkari traditions of Maharashtra**.

As Sufism swept through India from the 12th century onward, it brought with it a mystical vocabulary centered on **Ishq-e-Haqiqi**—divine love that is overwhelming, intoxicating, and deeply personal. The Sufi seeker is often portrayed as a lover, undone by desire, longing for an absent beloved. This emotional intensity found a striking parallel in the Bhakti poetry of North India. Saints like **Meera Bai**, **Surdas**, and **Chaitanya Mahaprabhu** did not merely praise God—they **yearned** for Him. Krishna, in particular, became the archetypal **divine beloved**: elusive, beautiful, mischievous. The devotee often imagined themselves as **Radha**, or one of the gopis, caught in an eternal dance of love, separation, and union.

Meera’s devotion to Krishna was not only spiritual; it was **radically intimate**. She called him her husband, rejected the authority of her earthly family, and walked a path of defiant, emotional surrender. Surdas, while renowned for his descriptions of Krishna's childhood, also captured the profound ache of love and longing. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is said to have become so immersed in Radha’s emotions that his very body became a vessel for her devotion. These saints didn’t approach God as an abstract force, but as a **passionate presence**, using the language of **eros** to articulate the soul’s deepest hunger.

This devotional model was profoundly influenced by the Sufi metaphor of **divine romance**—where the lines between human and divine, lover and beloved, blurred into spiritual intoxication. It was emotional, physical, and often ecstatic. The goal was not just knowledge of God, but **experience**, **feeling**, even **madness** (*junoon*). This tradition celebrates separation (*viraha*) as much as union (*visaal*), and finds divinity not in logic, but in love’s delirium.

But in **Maharashtra**, particularly within the **Varkari movement** and the broader **Sant tradition**, a different kind of devotional imagination emerged. Here, God was not primarily a lover. **Vitthal of Pandharpur** was not Krishna the seducer of gopis. He was **Vithoba**, a friend, a child, a companion, or even a mother. The relationship with God shifted from the romantic to the **familial**—from passionate longing to **intimate closeness**.

The saints of this tradition—**Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Tukaram, Eknath, Janabai, Muktabai**—crafted a bhakti that was **deeply rooted in love**, but deliberately **non-erotic**. Their devotion was built on **everyday intimacy**, not dramatic yearning. Instead of imagining God as a beloved who abandons and returns, they saw God as someone who is **always present**, always within reach. The image of Vithoba standing patiently on a brick—waiting eternally for his devotee—embodies this accessible, gentle God.

One of the most beautiful shifts in this tradition is the emotional re-framing of the divine as **Mauli**—a Marathi word that means both **mother** and **the top of the head**, implying reverence and closeness. **Dnyaneshwar himself is often called "Mauli"**, not because of gender, but because of the **maternal tenderness** his spiritual legacy evokes. This metaphor is powerful: it sidesteps gender binaries, avoids eroticization, and offers a form of love that is nurturing, soft, and available to all.

This difference in devotional language was likely not just poetic, but philosophical and social. Many of the Varkari saints came from **lower castes**, **women**, or **marginalized communities**. The intimate but non-erotic relationship with God allowed them to express deep spiritual emotion **without transgressing social taboos or inviting misinterpretation**. In making God a child, a parent, or a sibling, they created a form of devotion that was both **inclusive** and **egalitarian**.

Theologically too, there was divergence. Varkari saints like Dnyaneshwar were deeply influenced by **Advaita Vedanta**, which teaches that the soul and God are not separate. In such a worldview, the longing that defines the lover-beloved relationship gives way to a **gentle absorption**, a **natural nearness**. The devotee does not cry out for God across a distance; they recognize God in the breath, in the soil, in the self. God is not absent, but **always near**, like a mother to a child or a friend at your side.

This philosophical intimacy gave rise to a **bhakti of quiet surrender**, not of theatrical despair. There are no dramatic dances of longing here, no weeping for a lover who won’t return. There is instead a **patient love**, a trust that does not need proof or presence. If North Indian Bhakti is a stormy sea of desire, the Sant tradition is a river—steady, flowing, nourishing.

Perhaps the most profound aspect of this shift is how it **liberated devotion from gender**. In North India’s Krishna-Radha model, the devotee is often cast in the feminine, the God in the masculine. This can be beautiful, but also restrictive. In contrast, the Varkari saints approached God as **both father and mother, both child and sibling**, allowing a more fluid, expansive emotional world. God could be anything the heart needed.

Neither tradition is better than the other. Each expresses a different truth about the spiritual experience. The **Sufi-Bhakti tradition** shows us the fire of longing, the ecstasy of surrender, the eroticism of the sacred. The **Sant-Varkari tradition** shows us the warmth of closeness, the softness of presence, the quiet joy of calling God by a nickname and knowing He will answer.

In a time where religion is often made rigid, loud, or politicized, these traditions remind us that **the divine can be tender**. That it is okay to love God like a mother, or cradle God like a child. That you don’t always have to burn in longing—sometimes, you can just sit beside the deity, as one sits beside an old friend. You can call him *Vithu*, *Mauli*, or even say nothing at all.

Because in the end, bhakti is not about the metaphor. It is about the feeling. And whether one finds the divine in desire or in stillness, in Radha’s ache or in Mauli’s quiet care—both are valid, both are true, and both lead home.

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Aniket Kumthekar