Class 12 History Chapter 6 Bhakti-Sufi Traditions NCERT Solutions in English

Q. Explain with examples what historians mean by the integration of cults.

Answer: Historians use “integration of cults” for two processes running at once. First, Brahmanical ideas were deliberately spread outward, through Puranic texts composed in simple Sanskrit verse, explicitly meant to be accessible to women and Shudras, who were excluded from Vedic learning. Second, and simultaneously, Brahmanas accepted and reworked the beliefs and practices of other social groups. At Puri, Orissa, by the twelfth century the principal deity Jagannatha (“lord of the world”) was recognised as a form of Vishnu, even though the image was, and still is, carved from wood by local tribal specialists, a visibly different Vishnu from anywhere else in the country. Goddess worship, often simply a stone smeared with ochre, was integrated the same way, given an identity as a wife of a principal male deity: sometimes equated with Lakshmi (Vishnu’s wife), sometimes with Parvati (Shiva’s wife). This two-way process, the great tradition spreading and the little tradition being absorbed, produced the mosaic later classified as “Hindu”, though real conflict (Vedic traditionalists against Tantric practitioners, sectarian rivalry, tension with Buddhism and Jainism) ran alongside the merging.

Q. To what extent do you think the architecture of mosques in the subcontinent reflects a combination of universal ideals and local traditions?

Answer: To a very large extent. Certain features of a mosque are universal, tied directly to Islamic worship: orientation towards Mecca, marked by the mihrab (prayer niche) and the minbar (pulpit) from which the sermon is delivered. Since namaz must be offered facing Mecca, these elements appear in every mosque regardless of where it stands. At the same time, roof style and building material vary a great deal with local climate, materials and craft tradition. The Atiya mosque in Mymensingh district, Bangladesh (1609), is built with brick; the Shah Hamadan mosque in Srinagar (1395), on the banks of the Jhelum, is one of the best examples of Kashmiri wooden architecture, with a spire and beautifully carved eaves, decorated with papier mache; and a thirteenth-century mosque in Kerala has a shikhara-like roof, a form familiar from local temple architecture. This combination is not a contradiction: it shows a single universal faith accommodating itself comfortably to the geography and craft traditions of very different regions of the subcontinent.

Q. What were the similarities and differences between the be-shari’a and ba-shari’a sufi traditions?

Answer: Both traditions arose from the same root: a mystical, ascetic dissent against the Caliphate’s growing materialism and against rigid, scholastic interpretations of the Qur’an, both seeking salvation through intense devotion and love of God rather than through legal formalism alone. The difference lay in how far each carried this dissent into practice. Ba-shari’a sufis, such as the Chishtis, Suhrawardis and Naqshbandis, complied with the shari’a and organised themselves around the khanqah under a shaikh’s guidance, formalised into silsilas. Be-shari’a sufis, known by names such as Qalandars, Madaris, Malangs and Haidaris, scorned the khanqah altogether, took to mendicancy and celibacy, ignored ritual, and practised extreme forms of asceticism, earning their name from their deliberate, open defiance of the shari’a. Both streams coexisted within the broader movement of Islamic mysticism, representing two different answers to the same original protest.

Q. Discuss the ways in which the Alvars, Nayanars and Virashaivas expressed critiques of the caste system.

Answer: The Alvars (devotees of Vishnu) and Nayanars (devotees of Shiva), from about the sixth century, drew bhaktas from every social background, Brahmanas, artisans, cultivators, and even castes considered “untouchable” – itself a challenge to a system that reserved liberation for the twice-born. Their verses made this explicit: Tondaradippodi, though himself a Brahmana, wrote that Vishnu preferred devoted “outcastes” over Chaturvedins who showed no real allegiance to him; Appar, a Nayanar, mocked “rogues who quote the law books” and asked what use gotra and kula (lineage and clan) were next to bowing to Shiva. Their compositions were even claimed to equal the Vedas: the Nalayira Divyaprabandham was called the “Tamil Veda”. In Karnataka, Basavanna’s Virashaiva/Lingayat movement (twelfth century) went further: it directly challenged caste and the idea of ritual “pollution” attributed to certain groups by Brahmanas, questioned the theory of rebirth, and encouraged practices the Dharmashastras disapproved of, such as post-puberty marriage and the remarriage of widows, winning support among those the Brahmanical order had marginalised. Where the Alvars and Nayanars still largely worked within existing structures, with Brahmanas remaining important intermediaries and their hymns entering temple ritual, the Lingayats built an alternative social and funerary order (vachana literature, burial instead of the Dharmashastra-prescribed cremation), making theirs the more thoroughgoing challenge of the three.

Q. Describe the major teachings of either Kabir or Baba Guru Nanak, and the ways in which these have been transmitted.

Answer: Baba Guru Nanak (1469-1539), born to a Hindu merchant family near the river Ravi in Muslim-majority Punjab, preached a firm nirguna bhakti: he rejected sacrifices, ritual bathing, image worship, austerities and the scriptures of both Hindus and Muslims. For him the Absolute, “rab”, had no gender or form, and the only path to it was remembering and repeating the Divine Name, expressed through hymns called “shabad” in Punjabi, which he sang in various ragas while his companion Mardana played the rabab. He organised his followers into a community with rules for congregational worship, “sangat”, and appointed his disciple Angad as the next preceptor (guru), beginning a line that continued for nearly two hundred years. His teachings were transmitted first orally and through this succession of gurus: the fifth preceptor, Guru Arjan, compiled Baba Guru Nanak’s hymns together with those of his four successors and other poets (Baba Farid, Ravidas and Kabir among them) into the Adi Granth Sahib. The tenth guru, Gobind Singh, added the ninth guru Tegh Bahadur’s compositions, forming the Guru Granth Sahib, and founded the Khalsa Panth with its five symbols (uncut hair, a dagger, a pair of shorts, a comb, a steel bangle), consolidating the community as a socio-religious and military force. Guru Nanak most likely never intended to found a new religion, but his followers gradually distinguished themselves from both Hindus and Muslims as this scriptural and institutional structure took shape after his death.

Q. Discuss the major beliefs and practices that characterised Sufism.

Answer: Sufis (the Islamic term is tasawwuf) emerged in the early centuries of Islam as ascetic, mystical dissenters against the Caliphate’s growing materialism and against rigid, scholastic interpretation of the Qur’an, seeking salvation instead through intense devotion, love of God, and imitation of the Prophet Muhammad as a perfect human being. By the eleventh century this had become an organised movement: sufis gathered around a khanqah (hospice) headed by a shaikh (Arabic) or pir/murshid (Persian), who enrolled disciples (murids) and appointed a successor (khalifa). From the twelfth century, silsilas formalised this relationship into an unbroken spiritual chain reaching back to the Prophet, through which blessings passed; initiation involved an oath of allegiance, a patched garment and shaved hair. After a shaikh’s death, his tomb (dargah) became a centre of pilgrimage (ziyarat), especially on his urs (death anniversary, marking union with God); such a shaikh was venerated as a wali, holding barakat (grace) that enabled karamat (miracles). Not all sufis accepted this organised life: be-shari’a mystics (Qalandars, Madaris, Malangs, Haidaris) rejected the khanqah for mendicancy and celibacy and openly defied the shari’a, unlike the ba-shari’a sufis who complied with it. Music and dance, especially qawwali, were central to many orders’ devotional practice, evoking divine ecstasy through zikr (reciting the Divine Names) or sama’ (“audition”, mystical music) – a practice through which Indian sufi orders, above all the Chishtis, interacted closely with indigenous devotional traditions.

Q. Examine how and why rulers tried to establish connections with the traditions of the Nayanars and the sufis.

Answer: Both the Nayanars and the sufis had a popular following rulers could not build through military or administrative power alone. Both Nayanars and Alvars were revered by Vellala peasants, so the Chola kings (ninth to thirteenth centuries) built magnificent temples adorned with sculpture recreating the saints’ visions, took the initiative of organising Tamil Shaiva hymns into the Tevaram for temple ritual, and, as an inscription of about 945 records, had the Chola ruler Parantaka I consecrate metal images of Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar, which were carried in festival processions – all tying royal legitimacy to a devotion the people already felt. The Delhi Sultans faced a related problem from the other direction: ruling a non-Muslim majority, they resisted the ulama’s pressure to impose the shari’a as state law, since this risked provoking opposition, and instead sought out sufis, whose spiritual authority came directly from God rather than from jurists interpreting the law. Sufis’ piety, scholarship and reputed miraculous powers (karamat) made them popular among the masses whose support kings wished to secure; kings also wanted their own tombs built near sufi shrines, believing the auliya could intercede with God on their behalf even after death. In both cases, then, association with a revered religious figure supplied rulers with a kind of legitimacy that political and military power alone could not.

Q. Analyse, with illustrations, why bhakti and sufi thinkers adopted a variety of languages in which to express their opinions.

Answer: Both movements wanted to reach ordinary people, not only a scripture-trained elite, so using a region’s spoken language rather than a classical, restricted one was a deliberate strategy. In the south, the Alvars and Nayanars sang in Tamil rather than Sanskrit from about the sixth century, and their compositions were later claimed to equal the Vedas (the Nalayira Divyaprabandham as the “Tamil Veda”). Basavanna and the Lingayats composed their vachanas in Kannada, bypassing the Sanskrit of Brahmanical learning that had excluded so many of their followers. Delhi’s Chishtis conversed in Hindavi, the language of ordinary people; Baba Farid’s verses in the local language were valued enough to be incorporated into the Guru Granth Sahib. Some sufis composed masnavis, long poems using human romantic love as an allegory for divine love, in regional languages, such as Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmavat on the romance of Padmini and Ratansen of Chittor. Around Bijapur, Chishti sufis composed short Dakhani poems – charkhanama (spinning-wheel songs), lurinama (lullabies), shadinama (wedding songs) – likely sung by women at household chores, probably drawing on Lingayat vachanas and the Marathi abhangs of Pandharpur’s sants: one of the very routes by which Islam reached Deccan villages. Finally, Kabir’s poems survive in several languages and dialects, some in the sant bhasha, the special language of nirguna poets; Baba Guru Nanak composed his shabad in Punjabi, the language of the region. In every case, choosing a regional or shared language was itself doing ideological work, challenging the elite, sect-specific control of classical scripture and putting devotion directly within ordinary people’s reach.

Q. Read any five of the sources included in this chapter and discuss the social and religious ideas that are expressed in them.

Answer: Five sources chosen here: Source 1 (Tondaradippodi, a Brahmana Alvar, declaring that Vishnu prefers loving “outcastes” to unaffiliated Chaturvedins) and Source 2 (Appar mocking “rogues who quote the law books”) together express the idea that devotion, not caste or ritual learning, is what actually matters to God – a direct social critique from within the bhakti tradition itself. Source 4 (Basavanna’s vachana contrasting milk poured on a stone serpent with a real serpent being killed) expresses the idea that empty ritual towards a lifeless image is valued over practical compassion towards the living, exposing a contradiction at the heart of unreflective ritual practice. Source 7 (Jahanara’s 1643 account of her pilgrimage to Ajmer, walking barefoot, circling the tomb seven times, applying perfume by hand) expresses the intensity of personal devotion (ziyarat) a Mughal princess felt for a sufi shrine, and shows the specific gestures a hagiography of this genre considered worth recording as evidence of piety. Source 9 (Nizamuddin Auliya declining a royal land grant, recalling Shaikh Fariduddin doing the same) expresses the Chishti ideal of austerity and deliberate distance from worldly power and property, even while accepting cash for immediate charitable use. Source 10 (Kabir’s “One Lord”, comparing God’s many names to gold shaped into rings and bangles) expresses nirguna monotheism directly: that the reality behind different names for God is one and the same, and that sectarian disputes over names are only “words we invent”. Each source has to be read in light of its own genre, whether devotional verse, vachana, hagiography or malfuzat, since the form shapes what the source can and cannot tell a historian.

Q. On an outline map of India, plot three major sufi shrines, and three places associated with temples (one each of a form of Vishnu, Shiva and the goddess).

Answer: Plot these on your own outline map of India. All six lie inside present-day India; the places are the chapter’s own.

How to plot it: (1) Put a dot at each place in its state and write its name beside it. (2) Use one symbol for the sufi shrines (for example a crescent) and another for the temples (for example a triangle). (3) Add a key. Ajodhan (the dargah of Shaikh Fariduddin Ganj-i Shakar) is a major Chishti shrine too, but it lies in present-day Pakistan, so it cannot be plotted on an outline map of present-day India.

Q. Choose any two of the religious teachers/thinkers/saints mentioned in this chapter, and find out more about their lives and teachings. Prepare a report about the area and the times in which they lived, their major ideas, how we know about them, and why you think they are important.

Answer (suggested choice: Kabir and Baba Guru Nanak): Kabir (c. fourteenth-fifteenth centuries) lived and composed chiefly in the region of Awadh (present-day Uttar Pradesh); his nirguna verses survive in three overlapping manuscript traditions, the Kabir Bijak, the Kabir Granthavali and verses within the Adi Granth Sahib, all compiled well after his death. His major idea was that the one ultimate reality lies behind every name given to God – Allah, Ram, Karim, Hari – so that sectarian disputes over religious labels were pointless; he drew on Islamic, Vedantic and yogic vocabulary all at once to make this point. Baba Guru Nanak (1469-1539), born to a Hindu merchant family near the river Ravi in Muslim-majority Punjab, spent much of his life among sufis and bhaktas and travelled widely; his companion Mardana played the rabab while he sang his Punjabi shabad hymns. His major idea was also a firmly nirguna one: the Absolute, “rab”, had no gender or form, and could only be reached by remembering the Divine Name, not through ritual, sacrifice or scripture. We know of both men mainly through orally transmitted compositions, compiled into written form only after their deaths (Guru Nanak’s by his eventual successors, ending in the Adi Granth Sahib and Guru Granth Sahib), which is precisely why historians treat claims about their exact biography with caution. Both are important because each offered, in the language of ordinary people, a path to the divine that cut directly across caste and the Hindu-Muslim distinction, a message so durable that both continue to command millions of followers today.

Q. Find out more about practices of pilgrimage associated with the shrines mentioned in this chapter. Are these pilgrimages still undertaken? When are these shrines visited? Who visits these shrines? Why do they do so? What are the activities associated with these pilgrimages?

Answer (suggested choice: the dargah at Ajmer): Pilgrimage (ziyarat) to Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti’s dargah at Ajmer continues on a very large scale today, particularly during the urs, the shaikh’s death anniversary, when thousands of pilgrims gather. Both Muslims and Hindus visit, a pattern the chapter’s own eighteenth-century witness, Dargah Quli Khan, records for a different Chishti shrine (that of Nasiruddin Chiragh-i Dehli): “Muslims and Hindus pay visits in the same spirit.” People come seeking blessings, the fulfilment of vows, relief from illness or the birth of children – the same motives NCERT records for Akbar himself, who visited the Ajmer dargah fourteen times up to 1580 for conquests, vows and sons. Associated activities include qawwali (devotional singing performances), the ritual of ziyarat itself (circling and touching the tomb, as Jahanara describes doing seven times in 1643), applying perfume (itar) to the tomb, offering a chadar (cloth covering) at the grave, and eating at the langar, the shrine’s open community kitchen, which historically ran on futuh, unasked-for charity.

Q. Find out about gods and goddesses worshipped in your town or village, noting their names and the ways in which they are depicted. Describe the rituals that are performed.

Answer: A model answer: in our town the main temple is of Shiva, worshipped as a linga, and there is a shrine of the local goddess, who is simply a stone smeared with vermilion and ochre under a neem tree. Families offer water, milk and flowers at the linga, especially on Mondays and during Shivaratri, while the goddess receives coconuts, red cloth and lamps, and is taken out in a procession at her yearly festival. Such a mix, a major Puranic deity alongside a local goddess worshipped in the form of a stone, is exactly the kind of integration of cults the chapter describes.

Q. Do you think Tondaradippodi was opposed to the caste system?

Answer: He was certainly critical of caste as a measure of religious worth. Though himself a Brahmana, he says Vishnu “manifestly” likes the “servants” who love his feet, even if they are born outcastes, more than the Chaturvedins (Brahmanas versed in the four Vedas) who are strangers to his service. For him devotion, not birth or Vedic learning, is what counts before God. But the verse does not call for the caste system itself to be abolished; it rejects caste-based privilege in devotion. So he challenged the religious claims of caste rather than setting out to overthrow the social system.

Q. Are there any similarities or differences in the attitudes of Tondaradippodi and Appar towards Brahmanas?

Answer: Similarities. Both reject birth and ritual learning as the way to God: for both, devotion alone matters, and both belong to Tamil bhakti traditions that drew followers from every caste.
Differences. Tondaradippodi, himself a Brahmana and an Alvar, makes a gentle comparison: Vishnu prefers loving outcaste “servants” to Chaturvedins without allegiance. Appar, a Nayanar, is openly scornful: he calls those who quote the law books “rogues” and asks what use their gotra and kula are, telling them to bow to Shiva of Marperu as their only refuge.

Q. List the ways in which Karaikkal Ammaiyar depicts herself as presenting a contrast to traditional notions of feminine beauty.

Answer: She calls herself a female Pey (demoness) with bulging veins, protruding eyes, white teeth, a shrunken stomach, red hair, jutting teeth and long shins extending to the ankles, who shouts and wails while wandering in the forest of Alankatu. Traditional notions of feminine beauty praise soft limbs, a graceful face and figure, modest, quiet behaviour and a life within the home; she deliberately presents herself as the opposite in every respect, showing that she has renounced beauty and social expectations for her devotion to Shiva.

Q. Why do you think kings were interested in proclaiming their connections with bhaktas?

Answer: The Nayanars and Alvars were revered by the Vellala peasants, so rulers who associated themselves with these saints could win the support of the people. The Chola kings also used this link to claim divine support and proclaim their own power and status: they built splendid temples with stone and metal sculpture recreating the saints’ visions, introduced the singing of Tamil Shaiva hymns in temples and organised them into the Tevaram, and Parantaka I consecrated metal images of Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar that were carried in festival processions.

Q. Describe Basavanna’s attitude towards rituals. How does he attempt to convince the listener?

Answer: Basavanna is sharply critical of empty ritual. He points out that people pour milk on a serpent carved in stone but cry “Kill. Kill.” when a real serpent comes, and offer dishes of food to the image of a god that cannot eat while driving away the servant of the god who could eat. He convinces the listener through simple, everyday examples set side by side, so that the contradiction and irony of such rituals become obvious without any argument from scripture.

Q. Who were the people from whom Akbar anticipated opposition to his order?

Answer: The farman orders that “the dignitaries of the city of Kambayat should in no case stand in their way”. So Akbar expected opposition from the local dignitaries of Khambat, the town’s officials and influential men, who might try to stop the Jesuit fathers from building a church; that is why he added that the emperor’s order “should be obeyed in every way”.

Q. Identify the deity worshipped by the Jogi. Describe the attitude of the emperor towards the Jogi.

Answer: The Jogi worshipped Shiva: Aurangzeb calls him “Shiv Murat” and wishes that he remain “under the protection of Sri Shiv Jio”. The emperor’s attitude is respectful and reverent: he addresses the Jogi with honorific titles (“the possessor of the sublime station”, “Your Reverence”), sends a piece of cloth for a cloak and twenty-five rupees as an offering, and invites him to write whenever the emperor can be of service.

Q. Find out more about the architecture of mosques in your village or town. What are the materials used to build mosques? Are these locally available? Are there any distinctive architectural features?

Answer: A model answer: the main mosque in our town is built of locally made brick with a plaster finish, and its floor is of local stone; both materials are easily available nearby. Like every mosque, it is oriented towards Mecca, with a mihrab in the western wall and a minbar beside it. Its distinctive local features are a flat roof with small domes, arched verandas that keep the prayer hall cool, and a courtyard with a water tank for ablutions. As the chapter shows with the Kerala, Atiya and Shah Hamadan mosques, universal features combine with local materials and building styles.

Q. Are there any khanqahs or dargahs in your town or village? Find out when these were built, and what are the activities associated with them. Are there other places where religious men and women meet or live?

Answer: A model answer: our town has the dargah of a local sufi saint, built about two hundred years ago over his grave. People of all communities visit it, especially on Thursdays and during the urs, to offer flowers and a chadar, tie threads for their wishes, and listen to qawwali; food is distributed to the poor. Other places where religious men and women meet or live include temples with attached ashrams, a gurdwara with its langar, and maths where monks live.

Q. Describe how the artist differentiates between the Shaikh and his disciple.

Answer: Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya is shown larger, seated at ease on a raised seat, in a plain green robe, with a white beard and a golden halo of light around his head, marks of his age, dignity and spiritual power. Amir Khusrau is smaller, seated before him in a humble, attentive posture, dressed in a patterned robe and holding a musical instrument, which marks him as the disciple and the poet-musician.

Q. Find his signature on the painting.

Answer: Look for the small line of Persian writing on the rocky background at the top right of the painting: Mughal painters wrote their names or short inscriptions in such tiny lines within the picture. In the textbook’s cropped reproduction the writing is too small to read with certainty, so check it on a larger reproduction of Manohar’s painting.

Q. What are the gestures that Jahanara records to indicate her devotion to the Shaikh? How does she suggest that the dargah was a special place?

Answer: Gestures. She performed two cycles of optional prayer every day at every halt; for several days she did not sleep on a leopard skin, did not stretch her feet towards the sanctuary and did not turn her back towards it; she spent the days beneath the trees; she rubbed her face with the dust of the threshold; she went barefoot from the doorway to the tomb, kissing the ground; she went around the tomb seven times; she put the finest itar on the tomb with her own hand and placed her rose scarf on it.
A special place. She calls it “the pure region of incomparable Ajmer”, “the blessed sanctuary”, “the illuminated and the perfumed tomb”, “the holy sanctuary” and “the light-filled tomb of my master”, words of holiness, light and fragrance.

Q. In what ways are the ideas and modes of expression used in this song similar to or different from those used by Jahanara to describe her ziyarat (Source 7)?

Answer: Similar. Both express devotion to a sufi master and both turn devotion into disciplined bodily acts: counting breaths and doing zikr in the song, prayers, barefoot walking and circling the tomb in Jahanara’s account. Both end with an offering to the saint (the zikr as a gift to the pir; itar and her scarf on the tomb).
Different. The charkhanama is a simple work-song, probably sung by ordinary women in Dakhani while spinning, using everyday images (cotton, thread, the spinning wheel) and fitting devotion into daily household work. Jahanara’s account is written prose by a Mughal princess describing a special, once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to a famous shrine, with courtly and reverent language.

Q. What are the potential sources of conflict in the relationship between religious and political leaders?

Answer: (1) Both claim authority over the people, so each may expect the other to acknowledge it: the chapter notes that both sultans and sufis expected rituals such as prostration and kissing of the feet. (2) Titles such as sultan-ul-mashaikh (Sultan amongst shaikhs) could seem to rival the ruler. (3) Grants and gifts: rulers wanted to associate with saints, but sufis like the Chishtis kept their distance from worldly power and sometimes refused gifts. (4) The ulama pressed rulers to impose the shari’a as state law, which rulers of a mostly non-Muslim population resisted. (5) A saint’s popularity with the masses could make him a rival centre of loyalty.

Q. What aspects of the relationship between the sufis and the state do you think are best illustrated in this account? What does the account tell us about the modes of communication between the Shaikh and his disciples?

Answer: Sufis and the state. Rulers sought the sufis’ goodwill with grants of land, gardens and money; the Chishti shaikhs kept their distance from worldly power, refusing land and property but accepting cash that could be used at once for the dervishes, just as Shaikh Fariduddin did with Ulugh Khan (the future Sultan Ghiyasuddin).
Communication. Disciples showed deep respect (the author kisses the Shaikh’s feet); the Shaikh taught through conversation and by telling stories about earlier spiritual masters; and disciples recorded these conversations in writing, as Amir Hasan Sijzi did here (a malfuzat).

Q. What is Kabir’s argument against the distinction made between gods of different communities?

Answer: Kabir argues that there is one lord of the world, not two. God is called by many names, Allah, Ram, Karim, Keshav, Hari and Hazrat, but just as gold shaped into rings and bangles is “gold all the same”, these are names for the same reality. “Distinctions are only words we invent”: those who insist on them are mistaken, neither finds the only Ram, and they waste their lives in disputation.

Q. What does this indicate about Mirabai’s attitude towards the king?

Answer: She is fearless and defiant: “What can Mewar’s ruler do to me? If God is angry, all is lost, but what can the Rana do?” She cares only about God’s displeasure, not the king’s. Her devotion to Krishna places her beyond the power of the Rana, the ruler of Mewar into whose family she had been married against her wishes.

Q. Why do you think the traditions of Kabir, Baba Guru Nanak and Mirabai remain significant in the twenty-first century?

Answer: (1) Their message that God is one and that distinctions of caste and religion are man-made remains a powerful answer to communal and caste divisions today. (2) They taught devotion without empty ritual, in the language of ordinary people. (3) Their compositions are still sung: Kabir’s verses across India, Baba Guru Nanak’s hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib, and Mirabai’s songs by women and men, especially the poor and those considered “low caste” in Gujarat and Rajasthan. (4) Mirabai’s defiance of the traditional role of wife and of royal authority inspires ideas of women’s independence. (5) As the chapter says, Kabir remains a source of inspiration for all who question entrenched religious and social institutions.