John Stratton Hawley. A Storm of Songs

Is another study of bhakti or the “bhakti movement” in India necessary at a time when religion and nation have come together in perilous ways? John Stratton Hawley persuasively answers “yes” in this well-researched work. He insists on the necessity of unearthing the “history” that lies behind ideas, particularly the idea of bhakti and of the bhakti movement, in order to dislodge the “assumed fact” of their natural long-term, transhistorical, and transcendental existence (295). By carefully treating the ideas as history, Hawley lays bare the vagaries and contingencies—political and historical—that underlie their manifestation in the twentieth century. Such laying bare does not completely discard the role of bhakti in cementing the idea of an inclusive, unitary nation; rather, this uncovering of the divergent tracks of the master narrative of India’s religious past underscores its recent origin and interrogates exclusive accounts. Bhakti, often represented as a female being and usually translated as devotion, is “heart religion”; it touches individuals but generates great collective awakening. Bhakti emanates from divine encounters of individuals; it engulfs them with love, passion, and joy and inspires them to break out in poems and songs. Their exhilaration infects others with effervescent enthusiasm, resulting in a “glorious disease of the collective heart” (2). Hence, while bhakti is acutely individual in the sense that it is what the bhakta (devotee) says it is, it is inherently collective, poised on sharing, communion, and adoration. Bhakti, moreover, is liberating in different senses from societal hierarchies, sectarian rivalries, and Sanskritic supremacy.

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