Vaarkaari Sampradaya

Varkaari Sampradaya

‘Varkaari’ is one who makes a "vaari", which in Marathi means, "round trip" or "pilgrimage" or "regular visit to a place and return from it"; a Vaarkari is vowed and committed to undertake, twice every year, a pilgrimage to Pandharpur to attend the Ashadhi and the Kartiki festivals of Vitthal; this is scrupulously observed by every Varkari, Varkaris also avoid eating meat, refrain from intoxicants and stimulants, and follow certain other regulations and codes of conduct.

Vaarkari sampradaya was Samaaj seva (service to the community) and Hari sankirtan (group worship through music) according to Thukaram.

Sant Thukaram proved to the world with his own life that one does not need to abandon the life of a householder to climb to the highest rung of the spiritual ladder. The caliber of this saint was that of one ever ready for " jyoti sey jyot milana". In other words the individual, the jiva was enlightened enough to merge with the Divine Light, which he indeed concretized.

Bhakti poetry as a whole has so profoundly shaped the very world-image of Marathi speakers that even unsuspecting moderns cannot escape its pervasive mould. But Thukaram gave Bhakti itself new existential dimensions. In this he was anticipating the spiritual anguish of modern man two centuries ahead of his time.

He was also anticipating a form of personal, confessional poetry that seeks articulate liberation from the deepest traumas man experiences and represses out of fear. Thukaram's poetry expresses pain and bewilder-ment, fear and anxiety, exasperation and desperateness, boredom and meaninglessness - in fact all the feelings that characterize modern self-awareness.

Thukaram's poetry is always apparently easy to understand and simple in its structure. But it has many hidden traps. It has a deadpan irony that is not easy to detect. It has deadly paradoxes and a savage black humour. Thukaram himself is often paradoxical: he is an image-worshipping iconoclast; he is a sensuous ascetic; he is an intense Bhakta who would not hesitate to destroy his God out of sheer love. Thukaram knows that he is in charge of his own feelings and the meaning of his poetry. This is not merely the confidence of a master craftsman; it is much more. It is his conviction that man is responsible for his own spiritual destiny as much as he is in charge of his own worldly affairs. He believes that freedom means self-determination.He sees the connection between being and making choice. His belief is a conscious choice for which he has willingly paid a price.

Thukaram is therefore not only the last great Bhakti poet in Marathi but he is also the first truly modern Marathi poet in terms of temper and thematic choice, technique and vision. He is certainly the most vital link between medieval and modern Marathi poetry. Thukaram's stature in Marathi literature is comparable to that of Shakespeare in English or Goethe in German. He could be called the quintessential Marathi poet reflecting the genius or the language as well as its characteristic literary culture. There is no other Marathi writer who has so deeply and widely influenced Marathi literary culture since.

Thukaram's poetry has shaped the Marathi language, as it is spoken by 50 million people today and not just the literary language. Perhaps one should compare his influence with that of the King James Version of the Bible upon speakers of the English language. For Thukaram's poetry is also used by illiterate millions to voice their prayers or to express their love of God.

Thukaram speaks the Marathi of the common man of rural Maharashtra and not the elite. His language is not of the Brahmin priests. It is the language of ordinary men such as farmers, traders, craftsman, labourers and also the language of the average housewife. His idiom and imagery is moulded from the everyday experience of people though it also contains special information and insights from a variety of sources and contexts. Thukaram transforms the colloquial into the classic with a universal touch. At once earthy and other-worldly, he is able to create a revealing analogue of spiritual life out of this-worldly language. He is, thus, able to prove how close to common speech the roots of great poetry lie. Yet his poetry does not yield the secret of its seamless excellence to even the most sophisticated stylistic analysis. He is so great an artist that his draughtsmanship seems to be an integral part of a prodigious instinct, a genius.

Thukaram's prolific output, by and large, consists of a single spiritual autobiography revealed in its myriad facets. It defies any classification once it is realized that common thematic strands and recurrent motifs homogenize his work as a whole. In the end what we begin to hear is a single voice - unique and unmistakable - urgent, intense, human and erasing the boundary between the private domain and the public.

Tukaram is an accessible poet and yet his is a very difficult one. He keeps growing on you....

The post also grows..Stay tuned to the Divine Musical Vibes...................................