Divine Sounds from the Heart—Singing Unfettered in their Own Voices: The Bhakti Movement and its Women Saints (12th to 17th Century)

Recent years have seen a sea change in the way history is written and also in the way our conceptions of the past are being rewritten. In traditional historiography, women's articulation is often marginalized and dominated by male voices. Through centuries of patriarchal control, women negotiated many layers and levels of existence working out different forms of resistance which have often gone unnoticed. Bhakti was one such medium. Religion provided the space in the medieval period and women saints embraced bhakti to define their own truths in voices that question society, family and relationships. For all these women bhaktas, the rejection of the male power that they were tied to in subordinate relationship became the terrain for struggle, self assertion and alternative seeking. Most of these women lived during the period from 12th to 17th Century. While the dominant mode of worship in bhakti was prostration to a deity like a feudal lord, the women bhaktas' idea of God as a lover, a husband and a friend came as a breath of fresh air. The individual outpourings and the voices of these women, who had the courage to sing unfettered in their own voices, refused to melt in the din of the feudal scene which was largely patriarchal. This book will be useful to scholars interested in Feminist History, Comparative Religion and Asian Studies. The sensitive and rigorous research will be of great help to young scholars interested in embarking on a journey to discover religious history, especially with regards to women's history in the South Asian context.

About the Author :
Rekha Pande is the Head of the Centre for Women's Studies, and a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Hyderabad, India. She is a feminist historian who has been working in the area of Women's History and Women's Studies for the last three decades, with a large number of articles to her name which have appeared in national and international journals. She is the author of Religious Reform Movement in Medieval India (New Delhi: Gyan Publishers, 2005), Gender Issues in the Police (Hyderabad: S. V. P. National Police Academy, 2000), Child Labour in the Beedi Industry (Hyderabad: Delta Publishers, 1998), and Succession Struggle in the Delhi Sultanate (New Delhi: Commonwealth Publication, 1990). She has been the Editor of International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP; Routledge Taylor and Francis group, UK) and the Foreign Policy Analysis (Blackwell, USA). She received the International Visiting fellowship, University of Bristol, London, UK; the International Visiting Fellowship, Maison Des Sciences De L Homme, Paris, France; and the International Visiting Scholarship, Women's Studies Department, University of Buffalo, The State University of New York.Professor Pande combines her academics with activism. She has been the National Core Group Resource Person of the Mahila Samkhya Programme (Women's Empowerment), Government of India, Feminist Jurisprudence Committee, National Commission for Women and Sensitization and Capacity Building Towards Eliminating Child Labor, Government of Andhra Pradesh. She has been the Project Director of thirty five projects funded by different funding agencies in India and abroad. She is a Member of the Board of Studies in a large number of Universities in India. She has travelled widely in India and abroad to deliver lectures and present papers at conferences.